The Rewatchables - ‘Do The Right Thing’ With Sean Fennessey and Wesley Morris

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey and The New York Times’s Wesley Morris record this podcast on the hottest day in Brooklyn to rewatch the 1989 classic, ‘Do The Right Thing,’ starring Danny Aiello, Giancarlo Esposito, and John Turturro, and directed by Spike Lee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Rwatchables is brought to you by Voodoo. Voodoo is a leading streaming app with a library of over 150,000 titles available to rent or buy, and over 10,000 titles you can watch for free on their ad-supported on-demand service. Enjoy everything from the latest Hollywood blockbusters to your favorite indie films without subscriptions or contracts. You know, I've been watching a bunch of movies on Voodoo of late, especially since we've been doing the Rwatchables. And with the Matrix 4 coming, now might be a good time to check out some of the Matrix movies they've got on the service. So head over to voodoo.com

slash rewatchables to sign up and start watching today. That's V-U-D-U.com slash re-watchables. Today's episode of the re-watchables is also brought to you by all birds. All birds are the perfect shoes to express your personal style to the fullest. Their simplicity stands out in a good way.

There are no logos to distract from the rest of your look, only clean lines and subtle detailing to create a visually appealing look. Plus, their range of colors can follow however you're feeling. Be as subtle or as bold as you want. And choose from a variety of silhouettes

to match your style in any situation. Allbirds are the perfect shoes for any style. Get your own pair now at allbirds.com. Yo! Y'all need to take a chill! You need to cool that shit out! And that's the double truth, Ruth. This is the rewatchables.

Do the right thing. Always do the right thing. Universal Pictures presents a new film from Spike Lee. Good morning, Miss Mother, sister. Now, Moogie don't work too hard. The man says it's going to be hot as the devil. I believe 25 years, Sal's famous Pisserie was here to stay.

Trust me. Monkey, the last time I trusted you, we ended up with a son. I know you can't stand it. You can't stand it. Hey, say, how are you going to burst from the war here? People, please. If we don't stop this, you can stop it now.

We're going to do something. We're going to regret it for the rest of our lives. Doctor. Come on, what? What? Always do the right thing. That's it? That's it. I got it. I'm gone. I'm Wesley Morris. I'm just going to say that right now. You don't even have to introduce me because you just did it. Now, I will also say to everybody watching this thing and listening, you set me the fuck up.

How so? Because what you said was the... Okay. I understand what you mean now, but I didn't know what you met. I saw you up, Wesley. I'm so happy to be with you. My name is Sean Fennacy. I'm the editor. Chief of the Ringer, we're talking about do the right thing. Spike Lee's 1989 masterwork, signature film. Masterwork.

Signature film, hmm, both. Something for us to discuss. Both, both, both. I'm going to do a couple of data points, and then we're going to dive right into the conversation. This movie was released by Universal Pictures, which isn't a fascinating thing into itself. It premiered at Cannes, May 19th, 1989.

It had a budget of $6 million, and it made $37 million at the box office. On Rotten Tomatoes, which does not matter, it has a 93% score. My guy, Roger Ebert, I'm going to read something a little bit longer than I normally would read for what he says. This is from a four-star review, I presume. I have been given only a few film-going experiences in my life to equal the first time I saw do the right thing. Most movies remain up there on the screen. Only a few penetrate your soul.

In May of 1989, I walked out of the screening at the Cannes Film Festival with tears in my eyes. Spike Lee had done an almost impossible thing he'd made a movie about race in America that empathized with all the participants. He didn't draw lines or take sides but simply looked with sadness at one racial flashpoint that stood for many others.

So... I just got to chill. Yes, that is a meaningful way to describe it. This is... That is film criticism, everybody. Obviously, Ebert at the top of his game when given something meaningful to chew on. I gotta say,

I've been really looking forward to talking to you about this movie. I don't think you and I have ever had a conversation about this movie. Nope. It's the 30-year anniversary, obviously. There's a lot of obvious things. You know, it was not nominated for Best Picture quite famously. This is, of course, the year that Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture.

Famously, like, at the time, not nominated for Best Picture. It was a big talking point. It was a huge talking point of the critical community. And in fact, is one of the all-time, I don't know, debated incidents in film criticism history. Of it's not being nominated for Best Picture. Just the film in general. Oh, the movie itself. The reaction to it, the reception to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, we'll get into that a little bit in this conversation. It did get two Oscar nominations that got a best original screenplay nomination for Spike and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Danny Iiello. The tagline of this movie is it's the hottest day of the summer. You can do something. You can do nothing or you can do the right thing. What's your relationship to do the right thing right now?

When did you see it? How do you feel about it 30 years later? When did I see it? I saw it when it was out. I can, oh, you know what I remember about do the right thing? This is a roundabout way of telling you what my priorities might have been as a, how old would I have been? 13 year old? That was the weekend that weekend at Bernice.

We can look that up, but I'm almost 100% sure. Great double feature. That weekend at Bernie's opened the same weekend. or maybe it was either the weekend before or the weekend after. And I can remember being much more fascinated. It was two weeks before. Two weeks before. Okay.

I can remember being much more fascinated by Weekend at Bernice or seeing Weekend at Bernies than I was about to do the right thing. Also, the controversy, I grew up in Philadelphia, and the controversy about that movie had made its way to Philadelphia. and it was like, you were risking your life if you went. And I at that point was seeing movies by myself. Like, I wasn't going, I didn't go see movies with my friends. I'd see them with my mom and my sister every once in a while and my dad

when he would take us with his family. But for the most part, I would say I watched most of the movies that I saw in a movie theater alone. Or, you know, I didn't go with anybody or other people in the theater. I have to be honest, what I remember about do the right thing was watching it. I remember two other viewing experiences, not the theatrical one. One was watching it in 1990 with, now I want also to make clear, I read every single thing written about that movie that I could get my hand. That's what I was going to ask you, was were you aware of a kind of reaction community to movies?

or were you just a kid that saw everything? Well, it was so controversial that, like, my mom watched, like, three hours of news when I was a kid, right? So she'd watch the 5 o'clock news, the 5.30 news, the 6 o'clock news, the world news tonight. So that's what?

That's only seven. That's only two hours of news. But that's a lot of news. And I grew up in Philadelphia. We have, by the way, Philadelphia, WPVI, best local news in the country. Like, they don't redo anything. anything. They give you 90 minutes of new news. And it's just great. Anyway, I remember it being

like a news story. And at some point, I think the news storyness of it so overwhelmed me that I don't really, it's sort of supplanted the memory of like the fear of going to see the theater. I see it at the movie theater. I think it was at the Sam Eric, you know, the chestnut. I either saw, I didn't. I know I saw it on Chestnut Street. I just can't remember which theater it was. But I saw it in downtown, Center City, Philadelphia. But I remember watching it in social studies class with Mr. Kaseple, who showed us movies.

No kidding. Yeah. And I can remember... Provocative movie to show in... Were you in public school? It was a private school. Complicated private school, but not a public school. And trusted us...

I mean, all my classmates were, we were mostly black. There were a couple white kids and we talked about it. And we, I remember being really confused by, and like electrified in a confused way by the ending. Right. I think we'll spend a lot of time on the ending here. Like classic Spikely fashion, there were actually three endings. But the, the very last. shot. Not the

whole, actually all of the endings are tough. The idea that Mookie just wants to get paid and Sal's being like, you burn down my pizzeria. You want me to pay you? I built this place with my bare fucking hands.

You want your money? Here. Take your fucking money. Let me throw in these bills at Mookie. And then Mookiee picks up the money. and they proceed to have a like talk about the weather kind of conversation

and it's weird that was so confusing to 13 year old me and that's for that was forgotten in the way that the movie was written about because the movie the way that critics and columnists at the time wrote about the movie was as if there was a a black man was killed by the police

that man was dragged off Mookie throws the trash can through the window The riot ensues They burn the place down And then you would imagine that it just cut to black And then the movie was over Oh yeah You know the way that people talked about

The way that it would incite a feeling It didn't talk about how there was this kind of elegiac Ending and then you know There's two codas And then there's the you know The very famous text on the screen From Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X and the kind of contrast

Between those two ideas The other thing that confused me I had never, like, the idea that those two men, they aren't even pitted against. People, the read on that moment was that Spike Lee, it told you everything about who was writing about our movies at that time. Because people were assuming that Spike Lee was endorsing Malcolm X and not Martin Luther King.

They missed the whole point of the movie, which is that it's a complete dialectic, right? There is a one hand and then there's another hand. and he never ever loses sight of that at any moment in this movie. It is almost a perfect philosophical text in that way. I completely agree. I think that to write about that in that way, to even understand the movie in that way,

and I think a lot of people just didn't understand the movie at the time, even though it was, as you say, a news story every day, was that it requires nuance. It is meant to be, is purposefully meant to hold two thoughts at the same time. And if you can't get on board with that, then you can't. We should probably just say maybe if you're listening to this you haven't seen do the right thing,

please run out and go see you do the right thing. Oh, stop. One of the most important American movies of the last 40 years. You know, it's set all in one day in bedstay. It largely takes place in the apartments of the denizens on the street, basically on one street and in one pizzeria.

And all of the goings on there, all of the figures there. It's a major ensemble cast. It features the discovery of some of the best character actors still working. It's one of the most beautifully shot, films I've ever seen, Ernest Dickerson. Oh, yeah.

Astonishing use of color, communicating weather in a way that is hard to do sometimes. And just this or like this, just his use of camera angles to establish character. Dutch angles out the ass in this movie. He's tilting the camera at all times. But only when it matters, right? Only when you have to be uneasy.

It isn't a trick. It is an actual literary device. It's a cinematic device, right? No question. Here's how the movie is described on Wikipedia. Here's the synopsis. Tell me how you feel about the way that this is positioned. I'm still adjusting to whatever.

All right. Salvatore Sal Frajione, played by Danny Ayello, is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local Buggin' Out, Giancarlo Esposito, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzerias, Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees.

The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to bugging out and to other people in the neighborhood and tensions rise. I don't really think that that's what this movie is about. That is an incident in the movie, but is that what do the right thing is about? Because that doesn't even feature the word mookie who is Spike Lee's character. But, Sean, if you think about it,

that is the movie, right? Like, there's a version, there's a bad version of this movie that is that, right? It is not so much that the synopsis is inaccurate. It's just that when you boil it down to what the movie is actually about, it's that. It is the thing that having that pizzeria in that neighborhood comes to mean to the people who've always lived in it.

And the idea that Sal and his two sons, Pino and Vito, are they from Bensonhurst? Yes, they are. Which is another part of Brooklyn. Primarily Italian. Yes. Although I don't know. Is it still? I think so.

Okay. Maybe Polish as well. And the idea that these guys will come from Bensonhurst, which, you know, not exactly a welcoming place for black people at the time. Which I think is explored in jungle fever a couple years later. Isn't Bensonhurst the part of that story? And, you know, that synopsis is pretty great. Now, it obviously omits... It's about things that happen in the movie.

It omits all of the color and flavor and seasoning and texture and, and, and a wonder and sound and all the things that make the atmosphere. Everything that makes the movie great is not in that synopsis. But the actual politics of the movie are, like, encapsulated in this one relationship. and it really is a movie about capitalism in so many ways. And it really is a movie about ownership and disenfranchisement. And it really is a movie that's about a thing that if you live in a major American city or even like a less than major American city, like a mid-sized American city, this is a, in a small town, if I'm thinking right,

like this is a thing that you are actively being forced to deal with which is like what foothold in my black neighborhood do I actually have and who is given one just by virtue of who they are and that I mean this movie is basically that's what the movie's about right it could have been even more explicitly about that and so it's funny that like that is like a needle and a haystack explanation in this movie to me. But it's a gold needle, if you think about it. So I think a lot of times on this show, we're looking to locate movies that are comforting. Rewatchable means we're going to return to something because it makes us feel good.

So you and I and a couple of other folks had a conversation about Beverly Hills Cop recently. Now, there is a lot to unpack about Beverly Hills Cop. Oh, yeah. And there is probably some social import that you can glean from it. But a lot of it is basically extra texture. You have to work a little bit harder to say This was important because A lot of the movies we do on this show are like Wedding Crashers

It's fun to watch the movie Wedding Crashers and to say the lines and to talk about whether something was funny or not That montage. Yes, it's one of the great montages. This movie is different from that. Now, I will say, as I rewatched it again this week, I've probably seen it 10 or 15 times in my life. It was kind of comforting.

It was fun. There's a lot of fun to be had in this movie. but it is also not only is it important but it's working hard to be important and it's working hard to disrupt your feeling of ease and comfort and

you know at the risk of exposing myself a little bit I was just in tears watching the end of the movie again which is a feeling I've had watching it before which is just an irreconcilable feeling that you have. Was it the was it Radio Rahim's death? I think it's pretty much everything yes as soon as he is grabbed

You know, the movie obviously goes into a new state of panic. Yeah. And there's no way to clarify. There's no way to fix it. Even if you know what's coming, there's no way to fix it. And it feels like a problem. And it's not a solvable problem in the country. Obviously, it's not a solvable problem in the movie.

No one, for a movie called Do the Right Thing, I think a lot of people felt like, why didn't anybody do the right thing? Now, there are a lot of other people who are like, well, Mookie does do the right thing. And that's part of a complex part of this conversation. Right. Right, right, right. I am a proponent of nobody does the right thing, right? Like, there's no, that neighborhood, I mean, it is, it is, it was shot in a real part of Bedstuy, Bedford-Syvenson, which is a neighborhood in Brooklyn.

And it was shot in a real block and everything, like I still think, you know, he had a big, Spike Lee had a big party at that location. And I didn't go, but I thought about. what it would mean to, like I was near there. What was I? I don't know. It doesn't matter what I was doing. I made an effort and didn't wind up doing it. But what I was thinking about was what would that neighborhood look like right now, like 30 years after that incident?

What is in the spot where Salas was? Do they, has it been memorialized? I mean, Spike Lee himself, I think, complicated that. question because he made a movie called Red Hook Summer. Right. Okay. Six or seven years ago. Yes. Yes. Yes. In which the mooky character appears and he's delivering pizza for a pizzeria called Salz that has

ostensibly relocated to Red Hook. So maybe Bedstey has changed a little bit. But that idea that we can't necessarily get away from who we really are and what we're about and who we're close to and how we choose and where we grow up and how that influences is who we are, is he's not, he hasn't resolved that either, you know what I mean? And he kind of went out of his way to say that Red Hook Summer was not a sequel to do the right thing. But that

was not a, that was a choice with purpose. Oh, sure. Mookie is still here. Mookie is still doing this work. Brooklyn is Brooklyn. You know, Brooklyn's not going to change. And no. That's like a, that feels like a central to the idea that he's getting after. And the under, the sort of

underlying thing about that, what that incident in that neighborhood on that day comes down to is like it isn't just about Brooklyn it's like that is that is an American it is an American problem and it still is and the great thing about the movie is that it feels I don't know if you feel this way but it just feels timeless to me it I mean there are things about it that are clearly 1989 things but that story and And the way it's delivered to us is timeless.

And the reason that you can keep watching it is because in a weird way, you want to see, you want to, there's two things for me at least. I want to see how he did it. Like, I still don't know how he did it. I don't, it is a magical event, this movie.

And a magical achievement. But the other thing is, I watch it because I feel like, you know, it's so, like, again, it's like a perfect work of philosophy. And you return to it to understand something about, about us as people. And like America as a society and New York as a specific place within that society. And what the, what about us is so, has such a capacity for love and contempt.

I mean, that is even built into the movie, right? Like the first time you see Radio Rahim, you know, he's excited to show Mookie his new, his new, like, knuckle, like his big, what do we even call? The story of love and hate. Right. I mean, the love and hate rings. But what are those rings? Like, what do they have actual name? Brass knuckles? Are they really, though? They're not. But I mean, that's not a mistake either. That could be mistaken for those sorts of things. Right. Well, right. Once the dude's dead and in handcuffs or whatever. Like, he had a pair of brass knuckles. It's a love and hate. I don't know. That feels purposeful too. That felt provoked. And, you know, obviously all the, so much of the text of the movie is inspired by everything that had happened in Howard Beach in New York a few years earlier. The death of a graffiti artist living in New York at the time.

Well, this I'm going to have to read. Like, there's a whole, like, starting in 1984, there's Eleanor Bumpers who was shot and killed by the police, Michael Griffith, Arthur Miller in 78, Edmund Perry in 85, Yvonne Smallwood in 87, Michael Stewart in 83. This was the same summer that the Central Park 5 were arrested for not raping that woman.

Yep. That poor woman. This is a, it's a zeitgeist film in the truest sense of the word. It was capturing a feeling that was happening in the city, a frustration,

a fear, and anxiety, a rage. That was the result of a series of horrible things that happened to real people. Right. And that's risky

and hard to do. Did I say Yousev Hawkins? You did not. Hawkins also is that year. It's not a thing. Jungle fever is dedicated to Yusuf Hawkins, who also, I think, dies in 89. Right.

And most of those people, the film is dedicated to that you just listed and do the right thing. Right. And, you know, what complicates it is, and we'll get to the category soon, I promise, is the way that the movie was positioned by white media. I mean, the David Denby review in New York Magazine more than any other,

and Spike has cited this over and over again, is, you know, one of the worst pieces of film criticism that I've ever read. It's like a very poorly considered misread of a movie in recent times. I'll read very briefly from this piece. I found that in the library. I remember the day that I read that. It's June 26, 1989.

Here's what he writes. The explosion at the end of the movie, an outburst intimate and scale, but truly frightening, should divide the audience, leaving some moviegoers angry and vengeful, others sorrowful and chastened. Divide in himself, Lee may even be foolish enough to dream, of increasing black militants

and of calming it. But if Spike Lee is a commercial opportunist, he's also playing with dynamite in an urban playground. The response to the movie could get away from him. He continues. If an artist has made his choices

and settled on a coherent point of view, he shouldn't be held responsible, I believe, if parts of his audience misunderstand him. He should be free to be, quote, dangerous. But Lee hasn't worked coherently. The end of this movie is a shambles, and if some audiences go wild, he's partly responsible.

Lee wants to rouse people to, quote, wake them up. But to do what? Those matching quotations from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. are little more than a confession of artistic and moral impotence. My guess is that Spike Lee thinks that violence solves nothing, but he'd like to be counted in the black community as an angry man, a man ready, despite his success to smash things.

The end of the movie is an open embrace of futility. What? Well, it is an open embrace of futility, right? Like, the movie is not, for you to be like, there's some like a stopped clockness to this right sure uh my favorite spike lee critique whenever

anybody has anything construct like quote constructive to say about spike Lee they always include his success they always include the idea that he like it did there were a complaint about all the money that he's made and at this point he hasn't really made that much money

but he the critiques of of him as a as a as a sort of cultural figure for a lot of his early success when he was a superstar artist were about money and how much money he was making. And we should let's let's talk about that though because his he was a famous person in part because of Mars Blackman in part because of Michael Jordan and the commercial work that he did and so he was he's not the same as um he's not the same as uh ernest dickerson who is his DP here who went on to be a filmmaker who does not have a huge public profile.

So that is also being factored into all criticism of him. Right. But it's also typically, like usually when it comes up irrelevant to the matter in hand. Like his is like changing our relationship to basketball to like tennis shoes and sneakers. Has nothing to do with, nothing to do with the ideas in this movie. Whether Mo Better Blues is a good movie. Yeah. But it's a thing that.

comes up a lot when they write about whether the movies are good or not. Maybe he should spend less time making commercials with Mr. Michael Jordan person and better, more time writing on screenplays. It makes sense. Yeah, I mean, in the Denb piece, and there was a Jack Crowell piece in Newsweek, and there was also a Joe Klein piece. The Joe Klein one is the, and Stanley Crouch, too.

I did not reread Stanley Crouch's piece. Stanley Crouch was another, Stanley Crouch is one of the few black people who wrote about this movie and wrote scathingly about what it did and should do. Armand White was, I think, another person who didn't like this movie. I can't remember now. I think Armand White is another person

who did not like to do the right thing. I could be wrong about that. The way that Klein positioned it was in opposition to David Lincoln's mayoral campaign. Yes. This is going to be a problem for Dinkins. Which is obviously kind of the opposite of what Spike was trying to get out. I mean, much of these criticisms are

literally the opposite. They're not even watching a movie at this point, right? They are watching, and this is a sort of thing that I just drives me crazy about the, like the degree to which black people, black artists have had to fight to be taken seriously as artists who have ideas that aren't telling you white person how to be a good white and are acknowledging that the shit is complicated. And part of the complexity is that it can't be resolved. Because the work that we need to do to resolve it, nobody is really willing to do. And I don't think

the tragedy in a weird way of this movie is a tragedy of having nobody be able to like offer a history lesson, right? There's something about Smiley being the representative of both sides of this, of both sides of the equation between violence and nonviolence.

He's walking through the movie holding a Malcolm X postcard on the one hand and a Martin Luther King Jr. postcard. They're on the same card. They're on the same card. It's a photo of them together. Doesn't he rip them at some point? He like puts magic marker around them and draws on them.

He makes a little bosky out of them. I don't know. That's exactly right. And the idea that you have this person, the person who's representing the, right, they're in the same, what movie are people watching? That's obviously the point of the movie. They exist together. They have to exist together. So, and again, this is just a perfectly made movie from top to bottom.

The person holding this photo is what in classic theater you would call the village idiot. And this is a sort of disabled, you know, mentally challenged man played by the excellent Roger Grosier-Smith. And this sort of the inability to articulate, his, Smiley's inability to articulate to anybody's, with anybody's patience. anyway, what is happening in this photo and to be able to talk to people about Malcolm and Martin working together. There's no, the one person equipped to give this history lesson,

nobody has the patience to listen to. And at the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, that character was not in the original script and the only reason that Smiley's in the movie and he is a key figure in the movie. He's like the living metaphor of the movie is because Roger Guinevere Smith, who knew Spike and lived around the corner in Bedstuy,

came to the set every day and begged and begged and begged and begged to be in the movie. And he created the character and Spike put the character in the movie. So it's a sign that while Spike is brilliant and while he's one of the foremost movie directors of his time, sometimes luck and relationships are a huge part of this too. If you don't have smiling the movie, it doesn't work as well. It doesn't work as well. So it's just a fascinating thing. Any other general observations you want to make about the movie before we go to the categories?

I just, I think it's perfect. I think it is, it is just, when people ask me, I get asked all the time what my favorite movie is. All, like, there is really not, there, there's almost a day that does not go by. Number one, steel magnolias. Number two, Jurassic World. Oh, Jurassic.

Wow, you really. That hurt. What do you say? Steel Magnolias is God. That's a great one. I would not, not say still Magnolias. I usually say this. Really?

It is in my mind, too, in my mind, it is actually a very lazy choice. It requires zero thought. And for a while, I was reluctant to say it because it's like, oh, the black film, the person who is like a film critic and is also black, thinks that do the right thing is his, but no. It's perfect.

It's nothing to do. I mean, it may have something to do with my being black. I mean, I get emotional. by so much of this movie, including its blackness. Like, it is, it is so vividly and specifically black in so many ways.

But also vividly and specifically Italian. And very open to what it would mean to live in a community with, like the Korean bodega, for instance, and the moment that it happens with them, with the husband and wife who own that bodega. I mean, Anyway, I just think it's a perfect movie.

It's so easy. It gives me such pleasure to be able to have this movie in my back pocket to be like, here it is. I don't have to like really search my brain and like pick a Bong Joon-Ho movie because it sounds, it sounds. I mean, I could pick one or in a Pechipong-a-Pong-or-a-Cole movie because it sounds like a thing. If you said Uncle Boone me, people would say, you're pretentious. But if you say, do the right thing, people say, oh, he's a black critic. So you're kind of damned if you do and damned if you don't. You know what?

If I tell you do the right thing and that's what you say, I'm. I'm like, well, then you really need to see this movie because this is the movie for you, sir. You know, we had a conversation on this show about broadcast news a few months ago. I know. Great movie. It's a perfect, another perfect movie. So the conversation was, is that the best movie of the 80s. This is a movie that is frequently in that conversation, too.

Best movie of the 80s? Tough one. Best American movie of the 80s? Sure. Yes, it's probably easier to narrow that down. You know, there's a pop answer to that. There's like, oh, is it diehard? Is it?

I wouldn't put die hard in my top 10. I mean, I love Die Hard. But this movie is frequently cited as... Harry? And the decade is bookended. It's Raging Bowl, 1980. Do the right thing, 1989. New York runs the movie industry.

You know, I don't. I know you don't go for Raging Bowl. There are some... Listen, there are some amazing things, but my Scorsese movie from the 80s is After Hours. King of Comedy and After Hours are my two... We're going to have to work on Bill

to get those to be rewatchables. We're going to go to the categories, but first, a message from our sponsor. The new Netflix original series, The Dark Crystal, Age of Rewatchable, Resistance returns to the world of Thra with an all-new adventure. Based on the Dark Crystal Jim Henson's groundbreaking 1982 feature film, the Dark Crystal Age of Resistance tells a new story set many years before the events of the movie through classic puppetry with cutting-edge visual

effects. The world of Thra is dying. The crystal of truth is at the heart of Thra, a source of untold power, but it is damaged, corrupted by the evil Skexey and a sickness spreads across the land. When three Gelfling discover the horrifying secret behind the Skexie's power, they set out on an epic's journey to ignite the fires of rebellion and save their world. The characters in the Dark Crystal Age of Resistance will be voiced by a star-studded cast, including Mark Hamill, Simon Pegg, Taryn, Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Helen Abottom Carter, Natalie Dormer, Eddie Izard, and more. Watch the Dark Crystal Age of Resistance on Netflix on August 30th.

Wesley, the first category's most re-watchable scene. I've written down a few. I'm hopeful you can help me go through this a little bit. first one obviously has to be opening sequence Rosie Perez dancing. You can imagine Young Sean Fantasy hearing public enemy watching Rosie do her thing.

Are you about to do the thing? Hold on. It's like double-dutch though. You got to be ready to jump in. I will not be joining you. It's like, I mean, she was choreographing the Fly Girls at that point and you can see

I mean, you can see an entire like five years of dance just in that, Wait, was the other one? Oh my gosh. Anyway, I... The story is that Spike met Rosie in a club in New York. This is, can I just pause you for one second? How many filmmakers are just casting their movies from being out in the world?

Just everything in this movie is an accident. Really? Yes. Right? Like, he just was out, mine in his business and here's Rosie Perez. Rosie tells us great story about how they're having this conversation in a club, the music is blasting, whatever. It's a Wednesday night in Brooklyn.

And he says to her, he says, you want to be in my movie. And she says, I'm not an actress. And he says, yes, you are. That's everything. I mean, that's everything. This is going to be harder to do. Hold on.

This is the real flag. You know who she was choreographing for at that time. Who was in the Fly Girls? Jennifer Lopez? That's right. Jennifer Lopez wasn't, she was just, Jenny from the block. She was just Jenny from the block.

She remains Jenny from the block. Okay, that's the number. That's the first one. Wait, I, Jennifer Lopez was like not even a remote, she hadn't even made money train. She wasn't even near money trade.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. She was nothing. She was just a dancer. She was not a famous person yet. Oh, you're saying when she was a fly girl. Oh, I got, yes. I'm saying Rosie was working with J-Lo. Yes, yes.

Second scene. Bugging out in the Wall of Fame. Mook! What? How come we got no brothers up on a war? Man, ass Sal, right? Hey, hey, style. I'm getting the brothers on the wall here.

You want brothers on the wall? Get your own place. You can do what you want to do. You can put your brothers and uncles and nieces and nephews, your stepfather, stepmother, whoever you want. But this is my pizzeria. American Italians on the wall only. Complicated scene.

We don't totally, we're not necessarily on bugging outside here. I think famously Spike has always said about that scene where he's having the debate with Sal about why there are more black people on the wall. Spike has always said there were good points on both sides. Sal had a point. That's his shop. You want to put some stuff up on the wall? Go ahead.

Buggin' out's point is the only people who eat here are black people. To not respect black people and put them on the wall is a failure on your part. Well, you know what's interesting about that conversation is it's kind of an internet conversation. It is. Right? It is a proto-internet conversation. and it isn't so much that bugging out is not right,

but there's no subtlety in the critique of, there's no, there's no compromise. Yes, how will they meet in the middle on this? How many, how many brothers should go up on the wall, bugging out?

And who? And who decides? Choosing the brothers to go up on the wall. Yeah. And, I mean, he does, I feel like there is a really interesting critique of, I mean, couldn't they just have gone somewhere else

to get the pizza? Right? You'd think, I don't know. But bugging out. But they were raised on that pizza. But bugging out is such an, like, is such an interesting version of black, of a kind of black activism, right?

Which is all, like, very emotional, not anti-historical, but sort of a-historical, right? Like, there is a history that his anger is attached do, but he's focused so much on the moment and the implications of his anger and the hypocrisy of it too are sort of counterproductive. They're never going to make Sal do anything more than feel confronted and like aggrieved. It's a showdown. Right. I feel like I know, I mean, I feel like this could go on for another 20 minutes. Okay, I'm going. No, I mean, take your time. No, no, no, the fire hydrant.

Frank Vincent driving through the fire hydrant Love that scene One of the funniest parts of the movie I mean anybody who's lived in a city Where you play in the firehead Did you play in fire hydrants as a kid? No Sprinklers

There was more sprinklers where I grew up We didn't have wands where I grew up Don't be This is one less thing for me to do On a Saturday afternoon Were you in the fire hydrant though? Oh yeah There was a fire hydrant

I'm pointing like I'm pointing from like my front window I'm pointing from my front window To the fire hydrant that would come on We, every once in a while, there'd be some reason to open the fire hydrant, and we would use it. It was on the corner of our street. It didn't happen that often, but you'd, like, wait for the cars to pass, and every once in a while, you just want to mess with some driver, and you'd sit on the hydrant and make the water go down just because somebody, it'd be a motorcycle or, like, like a hearse or something. And then somebody would inevitably have a can that had no top or bottom, and you just, like, you'd spray it. at the car. And it would just be the sound of the water hitting the car. It all reminded us of a really

hard pee. And it was just like to like an eight year old kid. It's just the funniest thing in the world. Anyway, that experience with Frank Vincent is a thing that lots of kids and lots of cities in. In cities in America. But not in, if you didn't grow up in a city, perhaps you don't even recognize what's happening there. It'd be completely confusing. Yeah. Why are they playing in the fire hydrant? Because you know what? We didn't have a pool. Good point. I didn't either. There were pools that we were pools that we were. We weren't even allowed to go into. That's true.

So fire hydrant, sorry. Next scene, Pino and Sal have a debate about what they should do with the pizzeria. Daddy, you know, I've been thinking, maybe we should sell this place. Get out of one. We're still ahead and alive. You really think you know what's best for us, Pino? Maybe we could, can we sell this and open up a new one in our own neighborhood? there's too many

Pissarie is already there and maybe we could try something different what am I gonna do that's all I know what am I doing? One long shot It's a really good Interrupted by Smiley Another movie does not

And what do they do they They like Sal wants to talk The one person Well not the one person Who wants to talk to buggin' out But like surprisingly Wants to Engage

But Pino is like Get out of it Get out of here Yeah Why is that conversation in this movie? Is you the two of them? Like, I think I know one. No, no, no.

I know why. But just think about what... It's so generous. It's necessary, but it's not essential, right? Like a bad... Like another version of this movie does not have that conversation. I think it's to create a false sense of trust in South. Yes.

Well, sure. And it's because he's just had this experience. with Jade. Yeah. Mooky sister Jane. And we're like, is he leering? Is he weird? Is he actually a good person?

Does he care about the people in this community or not? And then Spike literalizes it in Sal's voice. He says, I'm proud to have fed the people in this community. That means a lot to me. I'm staying. Right. And it indicates his own personal pride of ownership, his own relationship with the customers that he's had over the years.

And also his defiance of what he views as a kind of insolence and his son, but that's not all of Sal. That's just something he's saying. It doesn't mean it's how he completely feels. And then 10 minutes later, we see a different thing that he feels. Which is he hates rap, and he hates being confronted,

and he hates the idea of an aggressive black person in his face trying to control his business. Right. And he's hateful about it. Yeah. Takes out a baseball bat and beats the shit out of the boombox. Yeah. And so it's the same thing as Martin and Malcolm.

Yeah. Sal is both. Yep. Sal's got love and Sal's got hate. Everybody in the movie has both. That's the genius of the movie. Completely. Mother's sister is full of both.

Yes. She's so mad at Ozzy Davis. She's so mad at the mayor, except when she loves him. Right. Well, also, she's fine with Sal's being there, but when the pizzeria is on fire, she's screaming, burn it down, burn it down?

Yes. Like, this movie, like, now I'm really going to, like, maybe lose it because because it's so good at like how can you not get emotional but it's just a like the the risk and I don't know if Spike Lee would sort of classify his the way that he wrote these characters and directed the actors to play them as as as as risky but there's not a single person in this movie with the exception possibly of jade who is just purely good whatever we mean by good, right? And I just think that that is just being a person, you know, like the degree to which all

these people are people, are just people with high stakes. And the last, the last, the last, most rewatchable scene is, of course, the final sequence, the extent of final sequence. Now, I would say that that also exists in the kind of most unwatchable, can't look away, painful. It's not in the Wedding Crashers montage category of most rewatchable. It's in the...

This is hard to confront what he's trying to do here. Filmmaking is so good in that sequence. Like, the camera angle where they kind of tumble into the pizzeria, or they tumble out of it when the melee breaks out, the jump cut where the

trash can going through the window is repeated, I think, three times. That's the only part the movie, and I think it might be the only example in Spike's history of where he storyboarded. He doesn't storyboard any movie, but in that particular sequence, him and Dickerson, storyboard exactly what happens as soon as Smiley Buggin' Out

and Radio Rahim enter the pizzeria and then everything that happens for the rest of the film, which is notable, because that precision is important. And it's amazing that they were so precise and the ending was so misunderstood and miscalculated by people. Because people don't, I mean,

here's the thing about the response to them. Wait, you left something off the list. Yeah, share. What else? The racial slur montage. Oh, yeah. I know. You know, he's done that a few more times now,

and so it's gotten less effective for me over time. There's a 25th hour version of that, too. Ed Norton's looking in the mirror. It's not as good. It's not as good. I mean, 25th hour is great, but, or it has greatness in it. Yeah. But that one, I mean, because it explains,

It gives everybody, it gives all the, it establishes what the factions are in the movie. And it lets everybody let off some steam about what they would claim to stereotypically not like about the other people in the movie. Yes. There's no reason to include the bodega owner except he gets to go in a rant about like an anti-Semitic rant about Merkotch. Yep. There's a really funny story that Tarturo tells about working on the movie. where Spike invited him to watch Dailies, and after they watch the dailies of that

sequence where he gives his speech, which is pretty rough. That is, I mean, but I will say it is exquisitely well delivered. Oh, Tataro's amazing in this movie, but Taduro says, hey man, people in New York are really going to hate me and I ride the subway.

So what I'm going to need you to do is get on the cover of Ebony Magazine with your arm around me so that I can be protected going forward, which I thought was pretty good. Um, but there is like, there, like, his is, his is the best of that sequence, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like he, I can, I can quote, the, I can quote the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, take your fucking piece and go the fuck back to Africa, you fucking, I'm not going to say the rest, but it is, it's just, it's great. I, I don't, I think that's an extremely rewatchable scene. It is. Despite everything. It is. What's, so what's your, is that your pick? Um,

Rosie dancing bugging out in the Wall of Fame The Fire Hydrant Sal and Pino The racial slurs And then the final Showdown The extended sequence at the end

Really chewing on this one Well, I just, you know, it's funny Because I, every time I don't know how Every time I watch this show Or listen to it I don't know Let's not explore

The intellectual hopscotch Of the rewatchables Let's just pick because we have gamified something with no winner. Yeah, that's true. I'm going to go at Rosie Perez. Love it.

I'm going to go at Rosie Perez. I'm choosing the end, but Rosie is a close second because she's an important person. What's age the best? I'll run down just a few of these. You can tell me where you want to chat about. Public enemy.

Fight the power appears in this movie over 20 times. We got to fight the powers that be. Fight the power. Fight the power. Amazing. song, obviously hugely important artist. This song was written specifically for the movie because Spike approached Chuck D

and said, I need an anthem. This is what Chuck returned. Jesus Christ. Lee's unforgiving view with a clash between generations and races, which is a huge part of this story. Ozzie Davis and Ruby D. As the mayor and mother sister. Spike Lee, comma, movie star.

I feel like that works, I feel like, is Spike good in this movie? No, but he's... No, I mean, look, but he doesn't, the great thing about this movie, another great thing, is that he doesn't need to be a good actor, right? But how rare is that? But how rare is that? And all he's really doing is giving a charismatic version, doing a charismatic version of a thing that really good movies have had lots of, which is, which are people at the center who aren't the best actors, but they're. They've got something.

It's true. And unlike a lot of those people, he's not dead on screen. And this is basically the last time he put himself in the center of one of his movies, right? Yeah, he's a sidepiece and pretty much everything else. That's really interesting. Keep going. Danny I yellow. He was nominated and was recognized in his time, still Powerhouse Performance.

Robin Harris, who I miss and who I loved. Everybody is so funny to watch Sweet Dick Willie, one of the funny. characters in the movie. I mentioned Ernest Dickerson cinematography. The red wall, the musty, sepia tone, and sals, the pink room in Jay's room, Senor Love Daddy's Studio, the way that he shoots all of these spaces.

Which is great. Incredible stuff. Mr. Softie? Clarion Call the Summer. Oh, man. I forgot about Mr. Softie. Using direct address into the camera as a style, which has been now jacked by basically the whole envy revolution that came after him, Wes Anderson probably more than anybody.

And then I got one other thing that I think is interesting. So there's this long time clash between Spike and Tarantino. I had forgotten that in this movie, there are two things that Quentin Tarantino stole. One is, you shoot me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize. Which is something that I think Robin Harris says in the movie, which later appears in Reservoir Dogs, which comes out. You shoot me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize. Yes.

That's one. The other one. That's my really bad Robin Harris. It was not bad, but he's Robin Harris. Was it Robin Harris or was it Harvey Kytel? You could hardly tell in your impression there. The other thing is the whole weirded... You need to stop.

Well, Sicilians and Africans and the Moors in that whole speech that appears in true romance, which is also something that Mookie essentially says to Pino when they're having a conversation in Salz. That's another rewatchable conversation, by the way. True romance? No. Oh, that scene. The Prince Eddie Murphy, blacker than black, more than black.

You're right. I forgot it. I do have that in best quotes, but that is also. also a great scene. But those two things, along with a bunch of other things that Spike has done over the years in his career,

I think that Spike, and he's never said this. But I think Spike is like, this dude ripped me off a couple of times. It's not like this movie came out in 1965. It came out three years before Reservoir Dogs

and was a hugely important movie and there are things just directly from it. I've never heard anybody address that. That's interesting. Is there beef aging well because of this? Okay, so I would say... What else is on your list? Anything?

The thing that's aged the best. I mean, I think it's the movie's sort of timelessness. I mean, it might be the movie itself. Yep. And just everything that's contained in the movie. I love the idea of Ozzie Davis and Ruby D. Two legendary actors who never, for all kinds of obvious racism-related reasons, never quite got... I mean, Ozzie Davis could cast himself and things and direct them in.

cast her and they had great stage careers, but this was a love letter, this was like a salty love letter to their love and to their importance. And Ozzy was in school days. Yes, he was in school days. Ruby was not in school days. No, not as far as, no, she wasn't in school days.

Is that your vote? But they were in Jungle Fever together. That's right, that's right. So is Ozzy and Ruby? No, I think the thing. Just the film? I think the film. And, you know, what was the first one?

Public Enemy. Yeah, I think that's obviously another one. right, where I never get tired of hearing that song, even though I probably have heard it about 11,000 times at this point. It has to be the kind of song that you're not annoyed to hear again. And it's not, you know, it is an anthem. It's a loud and aggressive and plain spoken song. Yeah.

But there's kind of a great musicality to it. The samples are just perfect. And, you know, it's the kind of song where I've tried to do it at karaoke. and you kind of, the breathwork, there's, like, lots of, lots of rap. It's hard to rap when you're not a rapper because you just have to have the lung capacity to do it. I will say also as a person who spent almost 10 years writing rap criticism, there is no way to mimic Chuck D. He is the most unreproducible vocal intonation in the history of the genre. What he was doing was different from everybody else.

not smooth. He was not melodic. He was muscular. He was very powerful. And he was off kilter in a way. And the idea of anybody else being able to do what he did and being able to work with the Shockleys and Eric Sadler and that whole crew from the bomb squad, that was just also much like this movie, that whole little five-year window of public enemies is the miracle of music. Also, the harmony with Flav of Flav, right? I mean, you don't really give their relationship a lot of credit musically. But the thing about Flav of Flav, and, you know, there's been a lot written about the problems of Flav of Flav, like the history that his mere physical presence invokes. Yep. Why do we have to look at this person? Bringing up 100, like, you know, 250 years of mentalty. I'm going to look at it.

That also felt like an active comment, though. Like the whole design of public enemy was a comment on that. I know you know. I'm just saying we just got to say these things so that people don't repeat them poorly. Now, Flav, obviously, when he became a sort of reality star, he complicated some of that conversation. It's not an easy answer. I'm just saying, like the history of this stuff, he embodies it, and people were made uncomfortable by it. But just as music, the two of them together, because you can, whenever I hear that song and I'm not singing it, like just when, just when we were just talking about it right now, I can hear Flav under 1989, another summer.

I mean, it's just, it's just perfect. It's a math equation. Two of them together, it just, that's the music, right? In addition to all of the sort of hard, percussive throbbing of the song. Agree. There's real beautiful sound between those two voices. Yeah, that's your winner. Fight the Power.

What's age the worst? There's not a lot here. If I'm being rude, this is Rosie Perez's first movie and you can tell. Yeah. Well, she's given, the thing that's aged the worst about what she's, has to do in the movie is what she has to do in the movie, which is like, like, browbeat this man for being a shitty dad.

Yeah, and I think, yeah, she is morally in the right. She is circumstantially in the right, but there's something about, you know, there's something about the way she's made to be unpleasant, but even she, I mean, she's got two dimensions. She is perfectly lovable and seduceable and willing to, like, let him run ice along, like, you know, up and down her chest.

But she's also going to, like, attack him for, not being a good son to Hector! I think that's the other thing that has not aged well is the nude scene and the way that she's talked about shooting the nude scene, it's evident that she was not terribly comfortable with the way that was done. She said I think 10 or so years ago,

my first experience with doing nude scenes was do the right thing and I had a big problem with it, mainly because I was afraid of what my family would think. That was what was really bothering me. It wasn't really about taking off my clothes, but I also didn't feel good about it because the atmosphere wasn't correct. And when Spike Lee puts ice cubes on my nipples, the reason you don't see my head

because I was just about to say. I was like, I don't want to do this. That's not great. That's obviously not how you want to make a movie. So that has not aged well. Wait, hold on. I didn't know that. It's sad.

I love Rosie Perez. She's phenomenal. And she's like one of my favorite. She's like a reason I would wake up in the morning. And even as an, I don't. And the idea that, I mean, I'm sure. I wonder what Spike would say like an apology to her for making her fill the way. If he hasn't already apologized.

They have, but. I know that they are in communication. I've seen interviews with them recently. This isn't a war. I think she's just honestly reflecting on what was a bad experience for her. And obviously she doesn't have her career as a movie star without this movie

so that is also, there's nuance there. Well, I mean, there's like a history of how women become famous there. 100%. That is totally a factor. I think she feels both things. And I think honestly within like one or two movies, I mean, white man can't jump is not that, it's pretty soon after this.

And she's amazing in that movie. Her great run between that movie and Fearless and What's the other one we're missing? There's a third one and she's just she's oh the Marissa Tomey movie What's the one they work in a in a in a in a in a in a diner or a restaurant? It's her and Marissa Tomey their waitresses And it's called it's the it was called originally baboon heart oh untamed heart untamed heart That's right. Yeah And is it Downey Jr? Who's the guy?

Christian Slater, right? Christian Slater! Yeah, yeah. She's also really good in that movie. Rosie Perez really, oh man, I just love. There's some actors where it's just completely irrational. But Rosie Perez, Marisotou Tamey is another one of those people. But Rosie Perez, for me, is a person who also, like, why weren't there more, like,

Latino women in the movies? Because Rosie Perez is the answer for how it could, go because you had people making original things that was very easy to just cast Rosie present and she did nothing but enliven the circumstances. How many, I would love to know who else auditioned for that part in Fearless, for instance? Oh, God, I don't know. I mean, there was not a lot of attention paid in Fearless or in White Men Can't Jump. I don't think to the fact that she was a Latino. No, no, not at all. It was not really a talking point. That's my point. There was a moment where this woman became a very good character actress and a little bit of a star.

Yep. Without having to go through some racial crucible, she just was, like, you were just grateful she was there. Things are always changing, though. It's like, things feel worse now than ever, where if you put a character like that in a movie, then there has to be some sort of explication about their identity. It's all, it's all cyclical. Casting what ifs, I only found one.

Do you know what it is? He wasn't going to play mooky. No, I think that that was always the plan. Spike Lee campaigned for Robert De Niro as a history owner. Oh, I did know this. I did know this. I did know this. But De Niro had to decline due to prior commitments. Better or worse movie with De Niro. Different movie. How so? It becomes a De Niro movie. It becomes the movie about how Robert De Niro is a racist or something. You know what I mean? Like, it just is a different movie. I think maybe it makes more money and maybe like there's an argument for like maybe getting it closer to best picture. But I don't know. Danny Ayelho was still nominated for Best Supporting Actors, so that didn't really help. I don't know.

But I definitely think that the thing that makes the movie special is that everybody you're watching and it is equal in some way. And I think that De Niro, I mean, despite, you know, with all due respect to Ruby D. and Asi Davis, the way that you're watching this world unfold, everybody is presented as equal. And it's not as though Osie Davis and Ruby D are American popular culturally.

They're not Robert De Niro. And Robert De Niro completely tips the engagement balance. And I also think it's a lot easier to like to bring your Robert De Niro baggage with you to this movie. I completely agree. So that when he is, so that when he does like beat Radio Rahim's radio, like you're kind of like, yeah. Yeah. De Niro did it. Right.

De Niro did it. Right. You might be more likely to, he might have been cheered in a way that I don't think Sal is cheered, even from the most confused viewer, there's like a, there was a, De Niro is a rooting interest for some people. Right, exactly. I mean, he just, it just is a different movie. It's a morally different movie if De Niro is in it. And who is Danny Iello at this time? He's Moonstruck. I mean, what, like, what is he is the,

he is one, he's a that guy. Yeah. He's a that guy. I mean, he, like, to me, he was that guy in Moonstruck. He also had a part in, oh, he's something else right before do the right thing. He's got a very small rolling Godfather, too. He's got a very small role in a handful of movies like that. He's not a crime movies. But he's not Robert Temeiro. Let's take one more quick break to hear from Hines. Heinz mayonnaise transforms ordinary foods into an unforgettable creamy experience.

You may forget your co-worker's names, your mom's birthday, or what happened three seasons ago on that show everyone's talking about, but you'll never forget a delicious potato salad made with creamy Heinz mayonnaise. Foods made with Hines mayonnaise won't just be the unforgettably creamy highlight of your week. They may well be the highlight of your third. 30s. Slather it onto a mouth-watering turkey club, incorporate it into your tuna salad, mix it into a luscious garlic aoli, layer it on a thick cheddar cheeseburger, or spread it on a BLT, and because of the unforgettable creaminess, hours later, you'll be telling everyone with an earshot

just how good it is. So leave the boring old blah mayonnaise on the shelf where it belongs, and try something new, try unforgettable creamy Heinz mayonnaise, and the new Heinz mashups, Mayo Chup, Mayo Chub, Mayo Must, and Crunch. The Dion Waiters Award for the biggest heat check. Can't wait to hear the nominees for this one. Bill Nunn is Radio Rahim. Dee, motherfucker, D! Robin Harris is sweet Dick Willie.

Rosie Perez. I wrote down three. You could probably do 10 or 12. Sam Jackson probably is... Martin Lawrence. Martin Lawrence. Is this Martin Lawrence's first role? The first time I'd seen him.

I think Roger Gronverer Smith. Maybe I'd seen him do some stand-up. Yeah. I never seen it in a movie before. He check is a tricky one here because every character basically gets like one and a half scenes with the exception of Mookie and Sal and Pino. And Robin Harris isn't really like in on the plot.

No, not at all. He's like something you just throw in the pot. Yes. Because it'll make it taste a little bit better. He's a bay leaf. And he's not, I mean, he's also like never alone. Right. You know, he's always with Frankie Faison.

and who's the third actor that he's with all the time? Oh, I can't remember the guy. Is it Paul Benjamin? Yes. Paul Benjamin. Yeah. Yeah.

Who else? Who else did you put on the list? I mean, I mean, it's like, this is crazy, John Savage. Yeah. John Savage. He's a white boy.

Yeah. John Savage. We didn't, crazy to say it. But John Savage. That is a rewatchable scene. In the Larry Bird jersey. He's bugging out getting his foot run over, his Jordan's run over.

Yo! You're just a little. Redo Jordan. Just like that. Just over her new Jordan. Not only do not. We now, you step by my brand new white head. Jordan's that I just bought.

And that's all you can say is, excuse me? Are you serious? Yeah, I'm serious. I'm fucking. Two times. Two times. Who told you stepped by my sneakers? Who told you to walk on my side of the block?

Who told you to be in my neighbor? Do you know that John Savage used to tell a story that... Yo, your shit is fucked up. That's Martin Lawrence. Yeah. John Savage tells the story that the Larry Bird shirt he's wearing, the shirzy. He's wearing in the scene. I think I heard this.

Yeah. was given to him by Larry Bird because his sister used to go out with Larry Bird and that's how he got the shirt. Wait, Robin? His sister, John Savage? Yes, yes. His sister Robin, who now hosts a radio show in Boston?

Yes, that story, though. That story is apocryphal because Spike has debunked it and I watched him debunk it in a feature at to John Savage's face where he made him reveal that that is an untrue story because Spike bought that shirt in a store gave it to Ruthie Carter,

the costume designer of this movie and the costume designer on many of Spikes movies, and Ruth Carter gave it to John Savage. So that's a fake story. Interesting. John Savage is a pretty good pick. You sure you want to pick a white guy

for the heat check? I'm not scared. Okay. What's going to happen? You're in charge. He's also the one person who has, he's got one scene makes a memorable appearance.

I mean, he didn't make most rewatchable scenes. but he could have. And I think that that is, that is a heat check moment. I will just say it. I don't care what race the person is. I don't see color. I was born in Brooklyn.

No! Okay. Half-ass internet research. There's a lot going on here. I'm going to read you some stuff and try not to bore you, okay? Spike Lee first got the idea for this film after watching the Alfred Hitchcock presents episode Shopping for Death, where the main characters discuss their theory that hot weather increases violent tendencies.

It was also inspired, as you mentioned, about Howard Beach racial incident and Eleanor Bumpers. Lee wrote the screenplay in two weeks. The original script to do the right thing ends with a stronger reconciliation between Mookie and Sal. Sal's comments to Mookie mirror the mayor's earlier comments in the film

and hint at some common ground and perhaps Sal's understanding of why Mookie was motivated to destroy his restaurant. It is unclear why Lee changed the ending. Because it's better the way it is, that's why. Pretty clear to me. just throwing it out there.

I completely agree with you. I've got the street. Can you imagine how bad that would have been? If he had like, I mean, I don't think it would have been easy to, I don't think the movie would have been remembered in the same way. I think it would have been less well remembered in a way because it's not as provocative. It is not as nuanced. It's more Hollywood.

I also think that there's something about this movie that really was a Rorschach test in the sense that white people and not only white people. But I mean, I think white people had been conditioned to understand that a movie about race could only happen on their terms, right? Where you could get a movie about a black person and a white person, but the white person, there could be nothing wrong with the white person because a white person is perfect and believes in integration and racial reconciliation and that everybody should and could get along. And there's nothing to feel bad about because, look, we solved race. racism in these two hours. I think that the irresponsibility people left at Spike Lee's feet was their inability to wrap their brains around this problem that a movie didn't solve.

And the movie is saying, it's not my job to solve it. This is, like, you think I can solve 400 years of this shit? No, I can't do that. And it's not my job. My job is to present the degrees to which it is unsolvable. It's much more like going to see a play than it. is watching a movie. A lot of movies tie the bow. A lot of plays cut the bow. And this movie cuts the bow. It says, good luck trying to put it back together again. This film was shot entirely

on Stuyvesant Avenue between Quincy Street and Lexington Avenue. If you had it the whole time, Sean, when I was digging on my phone trying to find the cross streets, you could have just said it. The street's color scheme was heavily altered by the production designer who used a great deal of red and orange paint to help convey the sense of a heat wave. It was really perfect. That's just such a perfect choice to... I mean, it's... seems obvious, but it's a perfect choice. During filming, the neighborhood's crack dealers threatened the film crew for disturbing their business,

so Lee hired fruit of Islam members to provide security. I remember this. Samuel L. Jackson later revealed that he spent most of his time on set sleeping as he had no scenes outside. The film was released to protest from many reviewers, which we noted. In a 2014 interview, Lee stated, that still bugs the shit out of me,

calling the remarks, quote, outrageous, egregious, and I think racist. And further elaborating, don't remember people saying people were going to come out of theaters killing people after they watched an Arnold Schwarzenegger film. It's crazy! That was bad. That was really...

It just... If you are on the record... I mean, I feel like you need to take a... You can take a little bit of that Roger Ebert and just sprinkle it all over the rest of that stuff. Not everybody can be Raj. I've been protecting Raj on this show for a long time. God bless you. It's just crazy to me.

the idea that you could say. I mean, I'm trying to think of some things that I have written in moral, in moral agreement, and moral disgust in outrage. I candidly try to stay away from that as an approach to movies. It might not be the place you start.

Like, I don't know. It would take something extra special. Like, I'm more interested in winding up at that place. I don't, I don't, it's hard for me to start there because I might risk, I want to keep you with me. Yeah, I mean, one thing that we talk about on the show all the time that I think is kind of a controversial idea is what's age of the worst, because it's impossible to go into 1989 and say, I remember exactly how I felt. And I remember the exact state of the culture.

And so what we need to do now is adjudicated. And I think we're kind of disagreeing on this show all the time, trying to figure out what's the right way to kind of put a moral valence on everything that happens in this movie? That's not really the right way to solve the problem. The thing about this movie is it is presented as. a morality play. Right. Purposefully. So it's different.

So it demands that we interrogate that. But there's something about race, especially during this period, but really still, that just short-circuits people's common sense. Yeah. Like they just aren't watching this movie that was made for them.

They are reacting to a thing that's inside, then that they are bringing to this movie. That's true. Right. I mean, the idea that it's this movie's fault if Dinkin loses the fucking election. It also, I have to say, I must say, it really speaks to this movie's power.

I mean, the thing, like, the thing that Roger Ebert is talking about about a movie like just staying on the screen and the movies that, like, pierce your soul, Joe Klein, David Denby, Stanley Crouch, all these dudes had their souls pierced, even if they don't recognize that that's what happened. That's so true. You don't say these things if a movie has not gotten way in here. because it is making you feel something that you don't want to feel and you want to blame Spike Lee for making you feel this.

You want to blame your hopes and dreams on David Dinkins' mayorship on not happening because of this movie that's, you know, in the scheme of things, not going to make that much money in the summer of weekend at Bernie's and what else is happening that year? Batman's on its way. That's right. Sex Lise and videotape, honestly, it didn't make that much money either.

But the point is... Similarly, change culture, though. And reviews like this that you're describing change culture. And they drew more attention to the movie. And they ultimately benefit Spikes persona as a Maverick independent filmmaker. And so in the same way that the movie is larded with all this nuance, and you can't just say it's good or bad. Weirdly, perhaps unfortunately,

because I don't think it's doing anything beneficial to society. But press like that, criticism like that, which draws attention and then becomes the center of controversy, draws more attention to the movie. And it plays a part in this idea of kind of showpersonship and the idea that everything is an event and analyzing it from every angle, even the dumbest angle possible,

is beneficial to career, the film, et cetera. But there's, I mean, I'm trying to think of another movie. Let's think of some other things that have, like, produced this kind of outrage, right? of like fear. Basic instinct, not the fear so much. That was more shock, I think.

Or scandal. There was concern, though, about whether or not basic instinct was going to, what effect it was going to have. I think there's a lot of, like a little bit on the gay community, but mostly like.

That's true. You're right. But the other, but that's a different fear, right? I think there's been a lot of retroactive energy on the matrix about this. Ooh. Not just red pill, blue pill.

Oh, right. Violence. Yep, yep. Living inside the internet. Oh, yeah. All of that, the way that we are deprogrammed by certain ideas. That wasn't at the time as much of a driving incident, though. Well, it's funny because I actually remember seeing the Matrix.

I mean, now we're in a tangent, but like, I remember seeing the Matrix and thinking that the battery, human battery revelation, I was like, this is it. This is the thing that I knew is true the whole time. No, I'm just saying. I believed in that in that argument, right? Okay. The idea that humanity is basically either at this place or headed very much. So between that movie and Wally, I'm like, we're set for life because the thing that we will not admit is happening to us is like literally in Wally there are people. I have seen people at the airport like under blankets just waiting for their flights.

I don't know if they're going to be able to get up because they are like grown. into the seat because they're on their phone. It's just crazy. How did they even get to the airport? I don't know. It's like they've been there for 100 years. Scooter? Oh, the scooters.

I've got a couple more half-ass internet research items. Okay. Spike remarked that he has only ever been asked by white viewers whether Mookie did the right thing. Black viewers do not ask the question. Lee believes the key point is that Mookie was angry at the death of Radio Rahim and that viewers who questioned the riot's justification

are implicitly failing to see the different. between property and the life of a black man. In Lee's 2002, 2006 film Inside Man, the police provides Sal's pizza to the hostages. Oh, yeah. In 2016, Air Jordan released a special Radio Rahim sneaker based on the colors of the shirt that he wears in the film. And in 2014, the 25th anniversary of the film,

Barack and Michelle Obama praised the film and said they went to see it together on their first date. Yeah. Nice little pocket history of America there. Yep. One more quick break for Hotel Tonight. Here's an insider travel secret from Hotel Tonight. There are tons of empty hotel rooms out there just waiting to be booked.

Hotel Tonight teams up with awesome hotels to help them sell these rooms and then passes those savings along to you. It's your one-stop shop for booking cool top-rated hotels at incredible values. Their name is Hotel Tonight, but you can actually book in advance. Perfect for planners and procrastinators alike. This summer, you can score an extra amazing deal with Hotel Tonight's Daily Drop feature. In most cities, you can use Daily Drop Feature. in most cities you can use Daily Drop

to unlock a special deal at a hotel selected just for you. Once your deal is unlocked, move quickly. You'll only have 15 minutes to book. If you want to swipe again, you can unlock a new deal every day. It's a great way to take an even more spontaneous trip because you never know what you're going to get.

From staycations to weekend getaways, great hotel deals are just one swipe away. So go to Hotel Tonight.com or download the app to unlock your daily drop. Apex Mountain. I think it's an interesting question, if this is spike at the peak of his powers. Yes.

The peak of his filmmaking powers, yes. Absolutely 100% yes. No, not Malcolm X. No. Not 25th hour. Not Moveda Blues. The peak that he, the apex... About four little girls.

See, this is an interesting conversation. Like, he is one of the best non-fiction filmmakers ever, right? And the thing. and I don't know what he would say about what his relationship is to figuring out how to make those movies. But part of their greatness is he has to figure them out after he shot them. And the problem with some of his movies, even his very good ones, is sometimes screenwriting. This is a black Klansman thing too. There's some parts of that movie, which I think are very effective.

And there's some parts of it where I'm like, I don't really understand this story. Right. How did this movie end? Right. I mean, sometimes there's perfection, like inside man is perfection. And a lot of that perfection, I mean, I think the thing, the reason that I'm saying do the right thing is the apex of his filmmaking, at least his fiction filmmaking, is that the screenplay is perfect. I mean, Tom Schulman won the Oscar, but that is the real travesty. Right. I could have lived with, I mean, I don't care if it didn't get a best picture nomination.

and like, I would never have expected it to. It's remembered because driving Miss Daisy won. That's why, you know, that's been adjudicated over and over again. Did y'all just move to America? Because I just don't, I don't know under, there are no circumstances even in 2019 where do the right thing is winning Best Picture over anything. I hate to break it to everybody. Not happening.

But the not winning of the original screenplay category of screenplay Oscar is just crazy. Apex Mountain Danny Aiello? Yeah, I mean, his best performance he ever gave in a movie. He's great. Torturo? No. What would be your Tertoro Apex, do you know?

Oh, there's so many. Some of them in Spike Lee movies, right? He's so good in Jungle Fever. He's so good in Jungle Fever. Yeah. I mean, but come on, Barton Fink. He's really good at Dirton. directing himself?

Like, he's good in all the movies he makes it with himself. He's good in that Transformers movie. I mean, I'm just, like, off the top of my head, great Terturo. Oh, my God, Gloria Bell? I was hoping we would get into Transformers on this podcast, so I appreciate you bringing that. John Taturro, never a dull moment with that man, and he gets sexier as he ages. Wow.

Did you see Gloria Bell? I did. I don't want to spoil Gloria Bell for people who haven't seen it. I felt a great deal of pain for his character. Oh, sure. But nonetheless. Like a real sadness. But shut up. Before we even get there, he's just sexy now.

Okay. He was not sex. Barton Fink wasn't sexy. No, purposefully. I don't think the character's designed to be sexy. I understand that. But I'm just saying, like, he is... The Mink? Is he the Mink?

No. What's his name? What's the character's name in Miller's Crossing? Oh. Oh, this... He's also really good in that, too. Is it the mink? No, I think that's Bushemi.

Shame on me, the one Irish gangster movie. I can't remember the name of the character. Who else? Apex Mountain, anybody else? You got a lot of people here who you're like, who is that? Who is Sam Jackson? Who is Rosie Perez? Who is Martin Lawrence?

But nobody's... But nobody at the peak of their powers, right? I mean, it's the Apex Mountain, the Spike. Okay. Joey Pants Award for that guy. I mentioned Frank Vincent. Yeah. one of the all-time that guys.

It could always be, right, I was going to say, it could always be Frank Vincent. Frankie Faison. I think people would later know as like a, from the wire and a lot of films over the years.

Roger Gwynveer Smith. Mm-hmm. Who we've talked about now. Miguel Sandoval? As one of the cops? Who else? I don't know. Giancarlo Esposito

used to be. Yes. Until Breaking Bad. Used to be the winner of this category. Yeah. Six years ago. Now no more.

I don't know. I guess it would have to be phazon. Okay. I mean, Frank Vincent is, I mean, I guess it's Frank Vincent because it's always Frank Vincent.

Yeah, I agree. That's why he's in this movie in some weird way. Do you think he has moved beyond that guyness? No. Okay. Saul Rubenek Award for overacting.

Oh, God. I did write down Gene Carlo Esposito here. That was your pick. I wouldn't pick it. I know bugging out is meant to be bugging out. That's the whole point.

And I know that an, overperformance is purposeful. But there are times when I'm like, chill. Like maybe not, maybe not so much. We're losing some of the subtlety of this. It's Ruby Day. Oh my God. It's Ruby Day.

I'm just going to say it. Wow. I thought I was taking a chance by going after Esposito. Well, there's something about mother sister that like, like, makes all the sense in the world for her being, for her doing too much. But it's not that so much, it's not so much that it's a terrible. It's not a bad performance, but there's something about the burning it down part

where I'm just like, I'm still in shock by it and I think my choice of it being her is that I'd like, mother sister too? Oh no! Oh no! Yeah, it's more of that. I accept. It's not even that Ruby D's bad. I don't have a single knit to pick.

We've said this is a perfect movie a bunch of times. I mean, we did talk about Tina. Yeah. And Rosie Perez. Yeah. To me, that's not like a storytelling problem. Oh, yeah. I don't think that there's anything that happens in the movie.

That's an extra-diagnetic problem. Right. I think the key knit to pick is that there are a lot of people who are like, why did Mookie do that? But we're not having that conversation. Best quote, there's a bunch of them. I did write down, which is something that had gotten past me in the past, but re-watching it, Black Panther Eat Pizza.

We eat pizza. Oh, yeah. Holding the comic book. I did not notice it until I watched it, what, six months ago? That was in the age of Ryan Coochler. Did not notice that. That feels like a very meaningful thing. Once again, Spike ahead of the fucking curve on everything.

Everything. Everything. I mean, just think for a second about what your relationship was to your sneakers before, like, 1986. Completely. In many ways responsible for inventing that cult of sneakerhead. Right. I mean, many arguments to be made against it. But just think about the idea that it wasn't Nike that did this necessarily.

It was Spike Lee. Spike imagined the rock starification of NBA star in that way. Let's just hear the whole Radio Rahim. Let me tell you the story of the right hand, left hand. Let me tell you the story of right hand left hand. It's a tale of good and evil. Hey, it was with this hand, McCain iced his brother. Love.

These five fingers, they go straight to the soul of man, the right hand. The hand of love. The story of life is this. Static. One hand is always fighting the other hand. And the left hand is kicking much ass. I mean, it looks like the right hand love is finished. But hold on.

Stop the presses. The right hand's coming back. Yeah, he's got the left hand on the ropes now. That's right. Yeah. Ooh, it's a devastating right. And hey, this is dirt. Down! Oh! Oh! Left-hand hate. K-O. If I love you, I love it. But if I hate you, there it is. Love and hate you. I love you. Sweet Dick Willie. You want to boycott someone? You ought to start with the goddamn barber that fucked up your head. Might be the funniest line in the movie. I thought of this when Spike won an Oscar last year, the conversation between the mayor and Mookie when he says, always do the right thing.

And Moogie says, that's it. And he says, that's it. He says, I got it. I'm gone. Yeah. That's good. Yo, Muki, what? Stay black.

Yeah. I like the roll call that Senor Love Daddy gives. The roll call. Let's just stop right there. That's the best. That's the best. I mean, because, and I will say like. Such a good diverse collection of artists.

As a person who liked all the music, the idea that there was a, there was a movie and a black artist who could really stand there and say in a movie dominated by public enemy in that one song. But really, I mean, there's all kinds of great, I mean, you know you can't stand it, you can't stand it, you know you can't stand it. You can't stand the heat. I put another bar in there that didn't need to be there, but you can't stand the heat. I mean, you've sung and danced on this episode. Spread like. I don't think you got that note. I can't hit that. Not take six.

Take six is perfect. A giant Keith sweat poster in this movie. Oh my God. And a giant Tracy Chapman toaster in this movie. Well, the great thing about the roll call, and I don't know that anybody, because now, like, after that movie, every, every rap act had some kind of radio roll call something. Yep. I mean, it's like, I mean, M-Tumay, Trey, did you write it down? I did.

You want to read everybody? It's a lot of folks. Can I remember? Can I see if I remember? I'm not going to get everybody. There's literally 60 names here. The thing that's good about it is... Did I write it down when I watched it?

It's a little mini history of black music. It's Branford Marsalis right next to Force MDs, right next to Bob Marley, right next to Bessie Smith. They're all in the list. Whitney Houston is here, as is Jackie Wilson. Because the Whitney Houston poster in the studio, too. There is. As Signor Love Daddy says, we want to thank you all for making our lives just a little brighter here on We Love Radio. Oh, my God.

But We Love Radio. never makes it on to the street. That's true. It just lives in the air. And he stays behind that glass. He's just behind a giant glass. Sal, the fuck is wrong with you.

This ain't about money. I could give a fuck about money. You see this fucking place? I built this fucking place with my bare fucking hands. Every light socket, every piece of tile, me with these fucking hands.

Even at the end of this, after Sal has done this terrible thing and incited this incident by becoming angry, and smashing the boombox with the baseball bat, we're still trying to make our way through his feelings. What happened to him too? He still was like,

I thought I had some pride of ownership in this community, and maybe I didn't. And Spike didn't have to put that in the movie. He didn't have to close the movie with letting Sal say anything ever again. That's another thing that is lost on all the people that were critical of the ending of the movie.

Sal gets to say that. He didn't have to do that anyway. No, I mean, not only does he get to say that, I mean, every... Every step forward for this movie is a step back, right? Like, you really haven't gone anywhere because everything is so evenly balanced. And the idea that that scene, you have this sort of juxtaposition of their, of their respective goals in that conversation, which are opposed to each other. And then after, just like that conversation is two halves, the antagonistic half.

And then there's the, we're not going to be friends, but let's just have a moment that's kind of like our relationship used to be before you threw a trash can in my window and destroyed that guy's radio when he died. I got a few more here. Okay. Why don't you go back to Massachusetts? I was born in Brooklyn.

You mentioned the whole exchange between Pino and Mookie about who's your favorite basketball player, Magic Johnson, who's your favorite movie star, Eddie Murphy, and who's your favorite rock star? Prince, you're a prince freak. Boss, Bruce. that whole exchange about what is and is what is not black.

That's a great I mean, but that's a great I mean that is the best conversation in the movie I would say. They're not really black. Right. Because that is an actual conversation that so many black people have had

with so many non-black people like you're a good one. Yeah. You're, well, you don't. You don't count. I'm your friend. We couldn't, you, you're, you're fine. Like, you're, we're, if we're friends, so you couldn't, I'm not talking about you.

I'm talking about them. He puts his finger right on that. It's amazing. It's, it's just, it is a conversation I still have. I opened this podcast with a senior, Mr. Senor love daddy quote. There's another one here that I like. Opened, you exploded. You exploded this podcast with a C and your love daddy quote.

Whoa, y'all take a chill. you got to cool that shit off, and that's the double truth, Ruth. A couple more, Wesley. Could this work as a 10-episode Netflix show in 2019? I say no, but actually couldn't it? It could. It wouldn't be the perfect math problem that the movie is,

but maybe it'd be a different math problem. As we know, he already made a TV show out of she's got to have it. I wouldn't watch it, and he knows better about that show. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, his bite. Unanswerable questions. Did Mookie throw the chat trash can to save Sal or to express his rage? Did he divert the attention? I think about this all the time.

I really, I mean, talk about a conundrum that you'll never have an answer to. It is unanswerable. Because I think that you could argue, you could argue both. You could argue that he did do it to, I mean, because he does have, we don't know anything about Mookie's family. We know about the family he's starting. We don't know about where he came from. We know about the sister.

We don't know where the parents are. Nope. And I think that there is a kind of, like, he, I mean, at some point, it's explicitly said by Sal, I think that you're like a third son. Yeah. And I do think there's a fealty to Sal in some way. But I also think that he knows the neighborhood he lives in and maybe, maybe this thing should go. Maybe he should go. There's a dead person in this street.

Somebody's got to pay. And it's not going to be the police. So make this other white people do it. I think you're right. I think it can be both. Right. Why is Pino so mad? What is wrong with him? Because Vito is not mad.

He tried to kick it to a black girl and she said no. He tried to step to a black girl and she was like, you ain't got no game. I buy it. I can't do this. It's just that simple because you know what, Sean, it always is that simple. Good to know. Maybe that is an answerable question. Mookie and Sal made up in future Spike films.

How long transpired before they pat? it up a day, a week, 10 years? I don't think they patched it up. He needed a job and Sal needed a delivery person. So, there we go. You're good at answering these questions. I have thought about this movie every day of my life since 1989. So ask away.

Did mother sister and the mayor bone? Oh my God. You mean after the... They boned. They'd previously bone. That's the whole thing about that, right? Like, it was, they probably spent the rest of their lives together, I would say. She made him take a shower, that's for sure.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, excuse me. I could smell him from 1989 or 2019. He still smells. That scene when, you know, when we first meet the mayor, when he wakes up in his bedroom and he's got all the old empty beer bottles in his room and he's sweating. He smells like my grandmother's fourth husband is what he smells like. Did Tina and Mookiee stay together? No way. No way. Not a chance. That's an answerable question. There's only one more question to ask on this podcast and it's who won the movie.

Can I add before we do that? Yeah. Another question. Yeah. Was Sal's pizza good? Was it actually good? Because it, like, I've been thinking about this question for the whole time. I have never seen pizza that looks like that pizza. It looks like Plato? So, you know, there's a story behind this. Oh, that are always is. So the budget of this movie is a little tight. And they only had two pizzas. And the props department had to reuse the same two pizzas. And John Turturo famously was taught how to cut pizza.

When you're cutting with a pizza roller, you need to dig into the crust down and through. And in the movie, if you watch the movie, you can see him just kind of like airing it and not going through it because they couldn't cut up the two pizzas that they had. So,

I don't know if it was good. It was certainly in short supply. But wait, was it an actual pizza? I think it was an actual pizza. It looks like claymation. Well, you know what happens to pizza when you let it sit out?

And they only had two. It's not like they had a hot pizza coming in. I'm sorry, the idea that, like, can I just say something about black people in pizza? Sure. I'm not going to speak for everybody. I'm just going to speak for myself. Are you going to say you don't like,

like pizza? If you say that, you're in a lot of trouble. Sean, Sean, I'm not crazy. Okay. Just. I legit got nervous. No, that's not what I was going to say, but I wouldn't eat South Pizza.

Like, not even as politics as food. Like, am I going to burn down a neighborhood for this? Oh, this pizza does not look good. The worst pizza I've ever had in New York is better than most food I've ever eaten in California. Oh my God. There is a meteor coming? We better answer this last question. Our Angelino producer, Isaac Lee, is his head hurts right now that I said that.

But the truth is, pizza is really important. To you? To all humanity. But you can eat it here. It's fine here. It's not. Wait, let me just be clear. Can I just be clear about what you just.

Never great. Did you just say that all of the, can you just say what you said again? I want to be sure I understand what you're saying. The worst pizza I've ever had in New York is better than any food I've had in California. Have you been to Korea Town? I love the food in Korea Town. You still think that the worst pizza in New York is better than all of the food in Korea Town? Pizza is a holy deity to me.

Okay. Particularly on the East Coast. I don't even know where to start. Where would I even take you to make you change your mind? You've probably been all places. I know that you eat. You're a good eater. I love to eat.

I love a lot of food in California. I'm just explaining to you. It's not a critique of California. It's high praise of pizza in New York. That's what this is about. So all you Angelinos, I don't want to hear your fucking tweets. Don't send them to me. I get it.

You're mad that I said something. But Sean, can I a Philadelphian take you a New Yorker to some bad pizza in New York City? Because it's still not. Don't get me wrong. I am delighted to be living here. You should be because this is the best eating on planet Earth. Yeah, but they don't do pizza grade. But don't hold the rest of the food against...

I'm not. That's not what I'm saying. I'm merely valorizing pizza as a cultural force. I say you would like some poetic license. I will grant it to you. I need another Spike Lee pizza movie. You don't, not if it sells. Just saying. Who won the movie besides pizza? Oh, Spike Lee.

Spike Lee. Spike Lee, it made his career. It is one of the greatest movies this country has ever produced. It is the movie, like, no matter what Spike Lee wants to do with himself, it is one of the things, I mean, his children, his marriage, I don't know what else he's proud of. Like, some of, like a lot of his charitable work. the idea that he inspired generations of people to want to make movies and believe that they could because he did.

The performances that he has allowed everybody from like Edward Norton to his own sister to give in movies, like Sinda Williams is pretty good in a Spikely movie. Like, and he treats her, I would say he didn't try, I don't know what Cindy Williams would say about her treatment, but like as a person in a movie, treated just as well as as Edward Norton

I mean makes clockers my second favorite Spike Lee movie has the greatest ending of all Spike Lee's movies I love that movie too I wish we had spent more time on that Clockers is perfect another perfect movie not a perfect script

script's got a lot of problems but Spikely again is solving Richard Price problems with Spike Lee filmmaking and has a real moral clarity that when he can see things morally clearly, he is at his best. That's why the Katrina documentary is so effective

and the Four Little Girls are so effective. And I just think Clockers is one of the best American movies made about a young black male, period. But still, this movie is the thing that he should be most proud of because it's a thing nobody in this country has ever done before. and hasn't done since, which is make a perfect movie about an imperfect problem, the, like, most America's biggest problem that America is never going to solve. And he made it in a way that people will be watching it in 100 years,

being like, well, he figured this out because we sure haven't yet. And we're in outer space. I don't have anything further to add to that statement for Wesley Morris. I'm Sean Fantasy. This has been the rewatchables to the right thing. Thank you for listening and always do the right thing. Always do the right thing, everybody, especially in 2020. Thanks to Voodoo.

Voodoo is a leading streaming app with a library of over 150,000 titles available to rent or buy, and over 10,000 titles you can watch for free on their ad-supported on-demand service. Enjoy everything from the latest Hollywood blockbusters to your favorite indie films without subscriptions or contracts. With Matrix 4 coming soon, I suggest you guys dive into Voodoo.com and check out a few of the other previous Matrix movies. So head over to voodoo.com backslashables to sign up and start watching today. That's V-U-D-U.com slash re-watchables. Thanks also to Hotel Tonight. Hotel Tonight shows you incredible deals at cool hotels you'll actually want to stay at.

Score an extra amazing deal with Hotel Tonight's daily drop feature. Unlock a special deal at a hotel selected just for you and snag it within 15 minutes. If you want to swipe again, you can unlock a new deal every day. So go to Hotel Tonight.com or download the app to unlock your daily drop. You know,