WHAT WENT WRONG - Do The Right Thing

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Starring Robert De Niro, Laurence Fishburne and Matt Dillon? This week, join Chris & Lizzie as they learn how Spike Lee fought the powers that be to bring his 1989 classic to life! From executives' hand-wringing over riots (that would never happen) to last-minute budget cuts and an all-time Oscar snub, Do the Right Thing’s continued success and relevance is a testament to the power of an incredible cast and crew.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong. Before we get into What Went Wrong on the really incredible movie we're going to be talking about today, we have to shout out that David, our long-suffering and very talented producer, composer, editor, everything behind the scenes has his own movie. It's out in theaters right now. It's called What Happens Later. It stars Meg Ryan and David Duchovny. It is directed and co-written by Meg Ryan. and it is scored by David Freakin Bowman. And that's the whole score of the movie. And he used that sound exclusively the whole time. It's jarring, but it's a bold choice. So go see this film. It is called What Happens Later? It came out on Friday.

It should be in theaters near you right now. It's really cute. Variety called it a sparkling rom-com. They did. And I agree. I agree. So go see it and then send David your revision. reviews personally. He'll love that.

Yeah. And without further ado, Chris, what are we talking about today? What went wrong on this movie? Well, Lizzie, we are talking about Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. An incredible and incredibly significant film that, of course, feels as relevant as ever in many ways. I have to get this out of the way because I feel some shame about this. I had never seen this movie. And it just, it blew my mind. I thought this was amazing. I can't wait to hear about it. And I can't believe I'd never seen this. It's my own fault. Yeah, it's a good, it's a, it's a good movie. It's a really good movie. It's one of my favorite of Mr. Spike Lee's movies. I believe you mean Spikely joints. There's one of his films that is not called a Spikely joint. Oh.

We'll get to that later. Oh. Do the Right Thing is a comedy drama. or dramatic comedy film written and directed by Spike Lee. It was released in 1989 by Universal Pictures. It features a breakout ensemble cast, including but not limited to, Spike Lee, Danny Aie Ellis, Ruby D, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, John Turturo, Samuel L. Jackson, Juali, newcomers, Martin Lawrence, and Rosie Perez.

It was both of their feature film debuts. Actually, so Rosie Perez's first film. Yeah, she's so young. She is. As always, here is the IMD log line for the film. On the hottest day of the year, on a street, in the bedstie section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate in bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence. My next question written here, Lizzie, had you seen, do the right thing before?

The answer was no. No. All right. Let's keep going. This, of course, is the first film that we've covered that has been directed and written by a black man, and it is also the first film that we've covered that stars a non-white lead actor. Oh my God. Is that true? Yeah, we covered... Oh, no. Aon Flux, which was directed by Karen Kusama, who's obviously

a woman and non-white. But yeah, this is, we are, we need to do some work on diversifying our lineup, and this is our first step in doing that. Now, do the right thing, begins and ends with Spike Lee. born Shelton Jackson Lee in Atlanta, Georgia in 1957, Spike Lee has, over the last 40 years or so, as much as anybody, defined American cinema. In the late 1980s, however, he was a two-time writer-director who had exploded onto the independent film scene with 1986's, She's Got to Have It, a black-and-white film that he shot for $175,000, and it was a bit revolutionary. It explored the idea of a woman, Nola, played by a... Tracy Camilla Johns, juggling multiple romantic partners, something that hadn't really been seen,

especially in black film. He had followed up that film with School Days, a 1988 musical comedy that reflected on his experiences at Morehouse College. And that movie was successful, but it seems like it hadn't quite struck the same nerve as his debut. And of course, Mr. Lee was already a prolific music video and commercial director at the time. He had not yet done his iconic commercials with Michael Jordan, but he was in the lead-up specifically to do the right thing working with Charles Barkley on a series of commercials for Nike. What were some of the music videos that he directed? White Lines by Grandmaster Flash.

No One in the World by Anita Baker, DeBut by EU, and of course he would famously direct Fight the Power by Public Enemy, which of course was a song written specifically for Do the Right Thing. Now, in terms of Spike Lee's filmography, do the right thing. is hardly the production plagued with the most hardship. That would likely be his 2013 remake of Park Chanwick's old boy. Lizzie, did you see that? No, I did not see the remake.

So it was infamously taken away from him in the editing room. It was cut down from his preferred runtime of nearly three hours to just 105 minutes. It is actually the one film in his filmography that it does not bear his iconic Spike Lee joint distinction on it. It's just a film by Spike Lee, and that was a form of protest against the final edit. That being said, do the right thing remains Mr. Lee's most enduring film in many ways, both as a testament to his talent, and as we've said, unfortunately, the staying power of the themes that he explores in the movie. Now, my primary sources for this episode are Lisa Jones's wonderful book, Do the Right Thing,

a Spike Lee joint, which should be required reading for anybody interested in making film. It includes his journal from when he was developing the script, all of the entries, his detailed production notes, a copy of the original script, which is different than the final film, storyboards, and more. Further, the audio commentary from the 20-year anniversary release of the film, which I got through Criterion. It's an amazing Blu-ray that you guys should buy. The behind-the-scenes video produced contemporaneously to the film, author Mark Reads

retrospective book on the movie titled Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, in which he analyzes the cultural impact of the film through the lens of a variety of criticisms and essays on the project. And of course, many, many interviews with Mr. Lee and his cast and crew across variety, the New York Times, New York Magazine, Far Out Magazine, and the Hollywood Reporter. And there have been libraries filled with material written about this movie. So this is a small sampling, and I encourage anybody who is interested to continue to go out and find other opinions and dissections of this film. All right, Lizzie. You ready?

I'm ready. Let's rock and roll because this movie kicks off with Alfred Hitchcock. Oh, no. In the late 1980s, a young Spike Lee watched an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents

called Shopping for Death. It's available on daily motion. I watched about 10 minutes of it. It was very boring. The sensationalist story follows two insurance adjusters, very old men, who become convinced

that violent crime specifically murder will increase with the temperature. Huh. This idea, a correlation between heatwave and crime, bounced around Mr. Lee's mind. Now, he was born in Atlanta, but he'd moved to New York City when he was an infant, and he was raised in Brooklyn in the integrated neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Cable Hill, and Fort Green. Mr. Lee's mother was the one that got him into the arts.

She was apparently a huge 007 fan. He said, like, he wasn't a huge 007 fan, but she was. So they saw a lot of 007 movies, and then she would take him to Radio City Music Hall and Broadway. Wow. So he then attended Morehouse College, the historically black college that's in Atlanta, and then he went back to New York to go to the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU

for his master's degree in film. And of course, Jim Jarmouche was like two or three years ahead of him. They became fast friends. Oh, wow. And Aang Lee was in his class while he was there as well. Yeah, and worked on his thesis film. and I'll get to that in a moment. So really a remarkably talented group of people coming out of,

and the New York film scene at this time. So he graduates from film school, and he forms his production company, which he calls 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, which is still his production company to this day. If you don't know, this, of course, is a direct reference to the unfulfilled promise of General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order, number 15,

issued on January 6, 1865, approved by President Lincoln, in which it was stated that they would award 40 acres, parceled from a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina to the St. John's River in Florida, and a mule to the newly freed slaves. This revolutionary order was, of course, overturned by Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor, and known Southern sympathizer in the fall of 1865, which returned the land to the very people that had declared war on the United States,

and this unfulfilled promise of reparations obviously holds significance in Mr. Lee and his fight for black representation on screen. So in his debut feature, as I mentioned, he took on sexual politics and romance. That was, She's Got to Have It, where he won the Best New Director Award at Cannes in 1986. He then revisits the racial politics

of attending a historically black college with his sophomore feature School Days, which was a studio film. It was with Columbia Pictures. and it was profitable. It had about a $6 million budget and it made about $15 million, even though they didn't market it.

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, so it did well. His third film, though, was going to be the most incendiary and challenging one yet. And he already knew what it was going to be called. As he later told Rolling Stone, I had the title before I had anything.

I just loved that saying. I had grown up hearing it in Brooklyn, do the right thing, do the right thing. And so that title, plus shopping for death, led to Mr. Lee's decision to try to show audiences the real status of race relations in New York City over the course of one day, the hottest day of the summer,

and as the temperature rose, so would prejudices and tempers. Now, of course, finding real-life inspiration for this ghetto-set fable of interracial tensions was unfortunately all too easy for Mr. Lee. As he says in his production journal, his goal was to introduce racism lightly at first, then build it to a riot. And so first he had to figure out, like,

what was going to cause the riot. And he writes in his journal, quote, take your pick. An unarmed black child shot. The cops say he was reaching for a gun. A grandmother shot to death by cops with a shotgun. A young woman charged with nothing but a parking violation dies in police custody. A male chased by a white mob onto a freeway is hit by a car. Now, of course, in all of these instances, he is referencing very real cases. Yeah. And specifically, the Howard Beach racial attack is what is typically referred to as the inspiration for Do the Right Thing. That was an incident in which a group of 16 and 17-year-old

white males attacked three black men in Queens after their car broke down, and it resulted in the death of Michael Griffith, a 23-year-old black man after he was chased onto a freeway and got hit by a passing car. But it wasn't just that case. There are references to a number of cases in the film and in his production journals about the film, including Eleanor Bumpers. She was an elderly woman who, when police were enforcing an eviction notice to her in her apartment, killed her with a 12-gauge shotgun. She was also disabled. Oh, my God.

Michael Stewart, a black artist and model, was beaten and choked to death in police custody after being arrested for spraying graffiti in the subway. And Yvonne Smallwood, a 28-year-old black Bronx resident who died of a blood clot in her leg while in jail six days after being severely beaten by the police. Of course, the boombox became the mechanism through which Mr. Lee decided he would incite the riot at the end of do the right thing. According to Mr. Lee, that actually came from an incident at Brooklyn College. A group of black students had faced off with a group of Jewish students, boombox to boombox,

much like the Puerto Ricans and Radio Rain in this movie. And so he decided that would be the kind of moment of culmination when all of the racial tension would boil over. Now, it's often said that Mr. Lee wrote this script in two weeks. It's like an apocryphal tale, which is partially true. Okay. He developed the script for about four months, and that's what really, is really, really cool about reading his book, where he's just, it's diary entries. He's like, I want, okay, this is who I think my character is, this is who bugging out is, oh, I like these actors for these characters.

Oh, this should be a scene. This is a line of diet. And you can see he finds his way toward every beat of the movie through this development period. And then when he goes to script, he's effectively just ordering all of these diary entries. Of course, it's more complicated than that. That being said, he did. Once he was ready to start writing, sit down and in 15 days by hand wrote the entire first draft. He'd wake up in the morning, write for three or four hours, and then break until the next day.

And if you're interested, you can go online and see excerpts from the original handwritten copy online. That's so cool. A few interesting things about the original script. At the end of the film, there's actually an extended conversation between Mookie and Sal. So after Sal throws Mookie's salary at him, the $500, and Mookiei throws $200 back and says, I owe you $50, they have a much longer and more obvious reconciliation. That includes Sal repeating the film's title as advice to Mookie, telling him to always try to do the right thing. And it was actually Lisa Jones, his collaborator who was writing this book at the same time as he

was making the movie that read the script and said, this is too heavy-handed. You need to cut this down. Yeah, I love the way it ended. Anything more would have definitely been too much. Now it's Lisa Jones. Also, if you look at his notes prior to actually writing the first draft, his plan was for Radio Rahim to survive the police attack and actually show up at the very end of the film wearing a neck brace. Oh, wow. Yeah, which would have been very different. I'm guessing he figured at some point that would undercut the stakes of the movie. For anyone who, like me, maybe has not seen this, which if you hadn't, I would just recommend you stop and do go watch it. But if you haven't, the character of Radio Rahim does get

strangled to death by police at the end in the midst of the riot. Played by Bill Nunn. He's great. All right. Script in hand. Now, this is, by the way, March. And he's He's trying to shoot the movie in August. Oh, okay. He is ready to go. And he specifically says, as a black filmmaker, I have to maintain momentum. No black filmmaker has been able to hop from project to project like the white boys do. He writes in his book.

He's got his script and he has three stipulations in seeking financing. And he's going to studios. He wants this to be a studio movie. One, he wants the production budget to be higher than it was on school days. And I read that school days is anywhere between six and six and a half million. So he wants to make sure that he's continuing to grow his budget. Two, he wanted final cut, meaning he has final control over the edit. And three, he wanted mutual approvals on casting.

He wanted to make sure the studio couldn't just shove some star into the movie. Yeah, great. Makes sense. As I mentioned, Columbia Pictures had failed to market school days. So as Spike Lee is going out with the script, he's like, I'm not going to go back to Columbia Pictures. They'd had a regime change in the middle, like towards the end of that. production. And so the new regime just didn't care about his movie, it sounds like. So instead, he goes to Paramount Pictures. And he says, here's the script. I want $10 million to do it. And I want

to be clear. He wasn't the household name yet that he would be after this film. But he had won the Student Academy Award for his thesis film, which was called Joe's Bedstuy Barbershop, We Cut Heads. Ang Lee was his assistant director. Wow. And then, obviously, she's got to have it, made 40 times its budget at the box office. Yeah, what the hell? He's got it for 175,000, and it made 8 million. This is not an unsuccessful director. This is a very successful new director.

And the studios were interested in working with him, but not at $10 million and not with the ending that he'd written for the movie. Paramount counters, they're like, look, we want to get in the Spike Lee business. We want to pay $8 million for this movie. and we want the end to change. Quote, Ned Tannen, the president of Paramount Pictures, has big problems with the end of the picture,

especially Sal's line about blacks being smarter because they don't burn down their own houses anymore. They want an ending that they feel won't incite a giant black uprising. Oh, man. So it was testy with Paramount from the beginning. Now, according to a Hollywood reporter interview with Mr. Lee from 2019, quote, Paramount wanted Mookie and Sal to hug at the end of the movie, I said, hell no fucking way.

Yeah, you can't. So there were apparently two executives underneath Ned Tannen who actually were really pushing for the movie in the way that Spike Lee saw it, and they just couldn't win him over. I think that's because of a specific phenomena here. So William Grant reflected in 1999 that Hollywood's portrayals of African Americans

and their stories in the years leading up to, and including 1989's do the right thing, show what they expected, which is these are vehicles for white heroism, despite being about black subject matter. And the examples he provides are cry freedom, Mississippi burning, and glory. Of course, we could include driving Miss Daisy in that as well. Obviously, Cry Freedom is about apartheid, Mississippi burning, Jim Crow, and Glory,

the first black regiment in the Civil War. I actually really love Glory a lot. And Denzel, an amazing performance in that movie. Also, Andre Brower, I have to say. I feel like no one ever shouts Andre Brower out for that, but he is like the best part of that movie.

Denzel's great. Andre Brower is something else. Yeah, he really is. So here comes Spike Lee with a movie about the racial tensions in a diverse Brooklyn neighborhood that is actually being told from the perspective of the black characters

with an ending that's intentionally left morally ambiguous. The entire movie begs the question, who did the right thing? Did anyone do the right thing? if somebody had done the right thing, could any of this be avoided? As negotiation stalled with Paramount,

Spike Lee sent the script to a what went wrong alum, Mr. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was then running Touchstone pictures. Oh. So Touchstone had originally wanted to produce school days, and so that's how Spike Lee had that relationship. Katzenberg declined. He was willing to do the movie that Spike wanted,

but he couldn't afford to do it at $10 million. He basically said we could do it at $4 million, and that was too low. Yeah. The question studios had was basically, are white audiences going to pay to see this movie? Because that's the only way they economically felt that they could justify spending that much money on it.

And one studio believed that the answer to that question was yes. Universal Studios had recently courted controversy with Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. Oh. Released in 1988. Pissed a lot of people off. Yeah. Scorsese's depiction of...

Jesus departed from the gospel quite liberally. Yeah. And it was subject not only to protest, but a terrorist attack at a cinema in Paris. Thirteen people were injured, none were killed. Wow. And it grossed $34 million against a $7 million budget. So controversy pays. So Universal believed that Spike Lee's name alone was a box office guarantee looking at the financial success of his first two films.

Yeah. They gave him final cut and mutual approval on casting. but they did hedge financially, and they said, the budget is going to be $7.5 million. So it's higher than the six to six and a half. Fine. Mr. Lee says, I want to shoot in New York City. I want to shoot in bedstie.

And they say, no problem, but we're a studio, so you have to shoot with a union crew. Lizzie, do you have any ideas why he might not want to shoot with a union crew? I have no, uh, breaks. I don't know. I have no idea. All right. Here's a quote from his book.

On every film I try to use as, many black people as possible. A major concern I had about shooting with an all-union crew was whether this would prevent me from hiring as many blacks as I wanted. There are a few minorities in film unions, and historically, film unions have done little to encourage blacks and women to join their ranks. And of course, Mr. Lee is not speaking anecdotally.

In 2021, so 30 years after the film was released, Variety published a study of Hollywood's unions, and they found that Latino and Asian American workers were dramatically underwerexed, represented, making up only 16 and 5% respectively of the union force, despite representing 40 and 15% of California's population. Wow. Black workers fared a little bit better, hovering between 3 and 5% at union membership, but that's still behind the 7% of the population that they represent.

As Angela Allen eloquently explores in her 2019 article on Norma Ray for the Atlantic, corporate America was notorious in the 60s and 70s for leveraging racial content. conflict within its unions as a union-busting technique. Furthermore, many unions in New York barred black members from leadership positions. Shooting non-union in New York would be not a great idea. Yeah. Something that cinematographer Ernest Dickerson tried to make Mr. Lee aware of. Going non-union would run them into the risk of having the Teamsters shut down their production.

Right. But Mr. Lee wants the first. freedom to hire who he wants, and he wants to be able to hire black people to work on his movie. So the line producer comes up with a budget for a 10-week shoot with a non-union crew. It's $5.5 million. And they're like, great, we'll tell Universal, you can pay $2 million less. They take it to Universal, and Universal turns around and says, you know what, why don't you just go and shoot somewhere else?

And Spike Lee's like, no, no, no, no, no. I have to shoot in New York. And apparently the project almost fell apart. So he actually slipped the script to Orion Pictures in the meantime because he was convinced, that Universal was going to pull the plug on the movie. Wow. They come back to him with a new proposal. You can have a $6.5 million budget, a union crew, and an eight-week shooting schedule,

take it or leave it. And he's like, where did a million dollars just go? No, leave it. So, quote, Universal is dicking me around. They won't budge from the $6.5 million budget. Won't go a penny over it. It's ridiculous. White boys get real money, fuck up, lose millions of dollars, and still get chance after chance.

And to be clear, Mr. Lee had not fucked up yet. As we said, his movies were successful. Well, and we've seen this over and over again with also the women directors that we've covered if you make one false move or not even, just the chances don't keep coming the same way. So he felt like he had no choice. He accepted Universal's terms,

but he went back to the unions and negotiated a deal to get more black workers on the movie. So in the end, he got the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians and the Teamsters Union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to hire a bunch of black non-union workers for the shoot and then offer union membership to these workers in the transportation, grape and electric departments at the end of the film.

It's the best case scenario. Hopefully those people can then stay in the union, yeah. And by the way, though, it's in the union's best interest to do this, too. Because if there's anyone qualified to do these roles, they want them in the union, that guarantees they have the best leverage in all negotiations. So it's a win-win for everybody. So Universal says make the film you want, but don't go a penny over $6.5 million. Which brings us to casting, which is always one of my favorite parts of these podcasts,

because it's such a fascinating case of what could have been or what almost was. All right, a few fun facts. First of all, Mr. Lee did not intend to take on the lead role of Muki when he set out to make the film. In fact, Mookie didn't exist at the beginning. As he said, quote, I do realize my limits as an actor. could never carry an entire movie, nor what I want to. That changed. But I know the things I can do. In this film, I might want to play a crazy, crazy kid, a psychopath, a madman, but he's funny. The kind who would kill somebody for stepping on his new sneakers, Air Jordans, no doubt.

Does that remind you of a character? Yeah, John Carlo Esposito's character. Yep, bugging out. Interesting. Sidebar, Mr. Esposito is half Italian. And he later reflected on the difficulty he had antagonizing Danny Iiello in the Sal's famous scene when he starts his boycott, as he felt like he had to shed half of his identity when he started dropping racial slurs against Italians in that scene. Oh, wow. Of course, Mr. Esposito is one of many actors that Mr. Lee has cast again and again, a list that includes Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Lawrence Fishburn, his sister,

Juala Lee, and many, many more wonderful actors. Also, you know, this is like, this cast is absolutely insane. But then you think about it and you're like, well, part of that, unfortunately, is probably due to the fact that there were not as many or very many opportunities for black actors at all. So when a movie comes up that is a majority of black actors, then it should not be a shock that out of this film you get an entire crew of incredible actors for many years to come. And a lot of these people were at the beginning of their careers. Including like Samuel Jackson, for example. who had had a much smaller role in school days. Of course, he had actually put together most of these performers in his production diary

before he'd even written the script, which is what's really fun. So you can see the names as he's having the ideas as he's putting the script together. So Bill Nunn, who would play Radio Rahim, was originally in mind for Mr. Senior Love Daddy, who would end up being played by Samuel Jackson. Richard Edson, who ended up playing Vito, was originally cast as Pino, the other brother, And then, of course, Zwa Lee is Spike Lee's sister, if you don't know. She plays Jade, Mookie's sister in the film. I don't know. It's his real sister, but I was thinking, man, they really look alike.

They look alike. Yeah, yeah. And she's great, and she's very striking and a wonderful actress. The roles of Demair and Mother's Sister were written specifically for real-life couple Ruby Dee and Ossey Davis to wonderful actors. They were friends with Spike Lee's father, Bill Lee, who did the music for the movie. Oh, wow. And they're great. And they came to him with a top. ton of notes on like how their dynamic should be from their own marriage. And that's part of what I think works so well in that storyline. Oh.

So for the role of Charlie, the character who gets his convertible soaked by the fire hydrant, you know, the white Italian guy who's driving through. So I don't know if you recognize him from the Sopranos, but that's Frank Vincent, who's a great Italian-American actor. And so Spike Lee actually called Martin Scorsese, like, I need an Italian guy to get real pissed in this scene. And he just worked with Frank Vincent on Raging Bull. And so Lee calls Frank is like, hey, do you want to do this movie? And Frank has no idea who

Spike Lee is. And apparently calls Martin Scorsese and asks like, who is this Spike Lee guy? Is he Asian because of his last name? And there was a little confusion before he joined the project. And of course, if you don't know, Frank Vincent would go on to play Filia Tardo, who's probably the best villain, maybe not the best, but the final villain in the Sopranos that Tony goes up against. All right. Any guesses as to who? Spike Lee went to first for the role of Sal. De Niro? De Niro.

I got to read this quote. It's so funny. Of snagging Robert De Niro, Lee said, quote, hooking up with De Niro would be a monster. It would really fuck with Italians. To see De Niro in a film sympathetic to black people told from a black perspective,

I know it also kills them to see Bobby with black women, kills him dead, unquote. He's out there trying to burn the Italians. There's a real sweetness to Danny Aiello that I feel like you, need in this, and I don't know that he would have had that. That may be colored by the fact that I just read all the headlines about the things that he yelled at his assistant in court. But maybe not.

So an interesting wrinkle to this. Do the Right Thing was the first time Spike Lee was casting white actors in his films. Interesting. So, yeah, he actually addresses this in his production journal, quote, when the film is released, people are going to make a big deal about the fact that this is my first time to use white actors. I have yet to use. read an interview in which Woody Allen has been asked why he doesn't use black people in his films. Would love to see that. Yeah, I'd love to watch that interview. But I'm interrogated all the time about not using white actors.

And now that I've used white actors, people are going to want to know what the big difference is. There is none. Yeah. He also wanted Lawrence Fishburn to play Radio Rahim. Lawrence Fishburn passed on the role. He didn't want to play supporting parts anymore. All right. Other names discussed.

Andy Garcia as Pino. the role would go to John Turturro. Yeah. Matt Dillon, as either Pino or Vito. Would have been good, yeah. For the posse of kids, that's Ahma, C, punchy, and Ella. That's like the three guys and girls that are always walking around together. He said, I love this quote.

We're leaning towards unknowns for those roles. We're considering Wesley Snipes, Leonard Thomas, and this new guy, Martin Lawrence. Oh, my gosh. And, of course, Krista Rivers, who landed the role of Ella, was actually a Howard University student who had good-naturedly heckled Mr. Lee during a talk he gave at her school, the prior year, she had come up to him and very boldly said, I'm going to act in your films. And so when he was looking for an actress that wasn't shy, he remembered how she kind of bullied him. And he actually tracked her down and they auditioned her for the role, which she landed.

Wow. And of course, things would not work out with Mr. De Niro. He passed on the film. Apparently he said he felt like he'd played roles like this before and didn't want to retread the same part. But like you said, I think fate worked in Mr. Lee's favor. Yeah. And the movie would not have been an ensemble in the way that it is now if you had somebody like Robert De Niro standing out in that way. So, character actor Danny Aiello stepped seamlessly into the role of Sal.

He had actually worked with Robert De Niro three times at that point in his career, including The Godfather Part 2 and Once Upon a Time in America. That's right. He is in that. And of course, in one of my favorite movies of all time. Moonstruck. Yes. So he'd been working since the early 70s, but he was always a. a supporting character, and he was really proud of this role. He later called it his first focal part. As he told the Chicago Tribune, quote, when I looked at the script, I looked at it as

making fun of racism. It is serious, there's no question, but it appeared in the first 70 pages to be a culture comedy. Italian Americans make fools of themselves, blacks make fools of themselves, the Koreans. So everyone sort of looks like an idiot for a moment. Spike was very even-handed about that. And then I saw the devastating turn that it took, somewhere 15 minutes from the end. That was obvious even on paper. However, there was one weak person in that film, and it was my character. I told Spike, I didn't think the character was fulfilling enough. I didn't say I wouldn't do it, but I said I would like to have some input into that character.

Would that be all right? He said, anything you want to do, whatever you want to do, you do, whatever. You know, it's a great compliment to him the lack of ego in that area. So what was Mr. I yellow's contribution to the script of do the right thing? as he later said, quote, there was no indication in the script when I read it as to why Sal was in that neighborhood. The scene with John Turturro sitting in the window, we wrote that 10 minutes before we were going to shoot it. That scene, of course, is when Sal tries to impress upon Pino, his openly bigoted elder son, why he doesn't want to leave the neighborhood, why he loves the neighborhood, how he's watched it change,

watched the children grow up. It adds, I think, a layer of complexity to his character that makes his inability to fully embrace the neighborhood and his clientele, the black people who pay for his pizza, all the more tragic. Yeah, absolutely. Of working with Mr. Ayello, Spike Lee said, quote, Danny Ayello is an opinionated guy, but he's a great actor, and he respects a director. I said plenty of nose to Danny. And what's wonderful about Danny is his feelings were never hurt. He didn't clam up. He'd say, Spike, you're right, that's a better idea. I did end up incorporating many of his suggestions and we have a better film because of his insight. So it sounds like they both have very strong personalities, but, and listen, direct in his diaries.

And he does call out Danny Ayyello at one point because he was supposed to get beaten up more significantly by Radio Rahim. And he kind of bristled at that. He claimed it's because he felt it was slapsticky. Some of the black members of the cast thought that it's because he felt like he was losing face to a younger black actor. And they compromised. And Mr. Lee said that that led to him feeling a little alienated from the cast for a little bit.

But then they were back, you know, a family again by the end of the show. Shoot. Had Mr. Iyllo passed, Mr. Lee was looking to go to either Joe Pesci or Joe Montania for the part. Wow. Joe Pesci. It would have been very different. I think part of what works so well is the size difference between Mookie and Sal. Yeah. Because Mookie stands up to him, even though Sal's so big, I think that actually gives a lot of weight to his character. And I think that would be lacking with Joe Pesci.

Also, I would just assume Joe Pesci would be willing to kill someone from the very beginning. Right. I do think that's the thing. Like, Danny Aiello, I think, is kind of a big guy. Like, he looks similar in size to John Torturo, who is tall. And he, like, seems like an imposing big guy with this very big personality. But there's just this very deep sweetness to him. And it was nice because the performance I am most familiar with him from is Moonstruck, which I really, really love. And he's just such a weasel in that.

He's just such a wormy, wormy little mama's boy, weasel. So funny. So funny. But I would never have anticipated that he was just like the strength that he exudes in this. I was blown away by everyone. But I guess because I really only had that one touch point for Danny Iello, I in particular, was just really impressed by his performance. I think it's his best performance of the films I've seen of him in. It's his best and most complex performance.

And last but at least, there's one character who Mr. didn't conceive of it all, and that is Smiley. Oh. So played by Roger Smith. He had like kind of a sketch of a character named Smiley, but Mr. Smith was actually a fan of Spikes. He would pester him throughout pre-production. And basically was like, please write me into your movie.

Please write me into your movie. And he finally said, come up with a character and pitch him to me. And he's like, what if I was the stuttering guy who hawks pictures of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X? And then Spike Lee was like, okay, I kind of like that. And then he wrote the arc where he pins the photo to the wall of Sal's, as it burns down at the end of the film, which is one of my favorite parts of the whole movie

when he runs in there. I thought it was going to end right there, but yeah. I think it goes to show he took a lot of input from his cast. Sounds like it, yeah. He worked extensively with a number of these folks to pull from their personal experiences, and I think that's part of what leads to so much richness in the film. So obviously they want to shoot in New York.

His location manager, Brent Owens, found an existing block in the Bedstine neighborhood on Stuyvesant Avenue between Quincy Street and Lexington Avenue. You can go visit, obviously, today. Now, a number of these buildings don't exist anymore. They were built for the film. How many of them are giant glass modern blocks now? I don't know.

I saw it like there was a video of Mr. Lee returning to the site like 10 years after, and it was mostly the same. Here's what was unique about this film. Instead of shooting interiors on a soundstage and exteriors, on location, which is very standard, they actually decided they were going to turn this city block in the heart of bedstay into a mini back lot. All of their production offices, all of the sets, all of everything would be done in this one block of bedstay. They would be there for six months. Construction, pre-production, production, and then they're out. How did they get, like,

how did they get people out of those buildings? All right. Let's talk about that. So, production designer Wyn Thomas, repainted much of the block, layering in reds and oranges to add to the oppressive sense of heat. They then built Sal's famous pizzeria, the Korean grocery, and the We Love Radio 108 FM storefront station on existing empty lots in the neighborhood. So those were empty lots. The brick oven at Sal's was fully functional and the actors actually cooked pizzas during filming. Of course, shutting down a city block in New York as a black filmmaker brought its own challenges. As you ask, Lizzie, namely, how do you do this without marching in the mostly white police force into this neighborhood? And Mr. Lee and his producer Monty Ross came up with an interesting strategy.

First, they called a meeting with the homeowners on the block. And they basically said, look, we are going to leave this block better than when we arrived. all of the murals you see were painted in by the production team. All of the finishing touches added to the brownstones, etc. were painted in by the production team. Further, they said that they were going to renovate multiple apartments that were released to the production that had fallen in to disuse and had become drug dens.

Now, they said it was pretty brutal. They found spent M16 cartridges in the abandoned buildings that they would use for production offices. Now, getting drug users out would typically require either contracting the police or a private security force. Right. Moni Ross suggested something unusual, which was the security force of Lewis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, a group initially trained by Malcolm X. Now, Fruit of Islam came in and they were successful in clearing out the drug element from the block. You can see this in the documentary.

Young black men in suits and bow ties, it's like a very unique striking look as they can. come through. It should be noted, though, that nothing was done to actually address the drug issue that plagued certain members of this community. It was simply shuffled to a different part of the city, something that journalists at the time criticized. And of course, further criticism would be levied at Lee upon the release of the film for not discussing drugs at all. That's actually a notable omission from the movie. And it actually wasn't until 1995's Jungle Fever that Lee tackled drugs at all in his films. And his production journals are really telling on this. this front. He talks about the responsibility he has to share the black experience from a black

perspective. And he said he felt he needed to honor the plight of black people while remaining aspirational and not sensationalizing the things for the sake of entertainment. Yeah. Also, why does he have to do everything? But it was a conscious decision. So one entry from February of 1988 provides some insight, quote, I'm still deciding about whether to include some stuff about drugs. I haven't addressed the issue on film before. Not to acknowledge that drugs exist might be a serious omission in this film. The drug epidemic is worse than the plague. Entire generations are being wiped out by drugs. And so obviously in the end, he decided not to include drugs in the film. And this led to a lot of criticism and praise of the film saying that it actually feels like a movie not sent in the late 1980s,

but a film set in the 1960s. Yes, it does. There's a lot of it that actually reminds me of even like West Side Story, like the way that scenes are set. Author Mark Reed, argues that Spike Lee's films often dramatize a static African-American geographical location in which the neighborhood personalities infuse the film with a 1960s version of the black community. These figures include a friendly alcoholic, a wise black matron, non-black shopkeepers and policemen. If there is drug use, it consists of the consumption of alcohol, the inhaling of glue, and the smoking of marijuana. And if you read his production diaries, it's very clear that he's pulling from his childhood

in crafting the story and his childhood was the 1960s. To me, it makes the movie feel almost like a parable, like a fairy tale that explodes into violence. Yeah. I think that's effective. But it is very different than like a slice of life drama, like Boys in the Hood by John Singleton, for example. Sure. 100%. I do think it makes the last 15 minutes so much more shocking because it does feel like this drop into reality at that point. It lulls you into it.

Yes. And then, I mean, the other thing to call out in terms of talking about movies that he must have seen as a child is obviously this, this movie does repeat, I think, the entire speech from Night of the Hunter. Yes. So the Robert Mitchum tattoos at Night of the Hunter are obviously, and that he writes in his production journal, Radio Rahim's love, hate, brass knuckles are a specific homage, if not a direct lift from Night of the Hunter. It is, yeah. We can double check this.

I'm pretty sure it is the exact speech that Robert Mitchum gives. I think it is because he specifically says he wants to do that when he's writing the script. I loved it. Yeah. It's such an interesting character and moment to pull for that, too. Okay, so they round into pre-production. He's still cutting three commercials for Nike. He's promoting the release of school days.

He's paying for the movie out of pocket at this point. So they didn't get anything from Universal until June 10th, 1988, and they started filming in the middle of July. Oh, wow. So he was actually paying for the movie until that point. So he puts together an incredible crew. We've mentioned a couple of these names, but I want to reiterate them.

Ernest Dickerson, his cinematographer going back to NYU, would shoot the movie. He would obviously go on to shoot a lot of Spike Lee's films and become a director in his own right. Wynne Thomas, who had worked with Spike Lee on, She's Got to Have It, jumped in as production designer. He'd go on to do a Bronx Tale,

Cinderella Man, Wag the Dog, many, many more. Barry Brown, who had cut school days, was brought on to edit the film. He would edit Malcolm X, Summer of Sam, Inside Man. Ruth Carter provided the cost of, design, which gives the movie its vibrant point, African-inspired look. Spike Lee in his journal is like, no gold. I don't want any gold chains in this movie. So that's what led to the really punchy color palette. Of course, if you don't know, Ruth Carter would go on to make history for

winning the Oscar for costume design for Black Panther, the first African-American to win in that category, and then make history again when she won again for Wakanda forever, becoming the first African-American woman to win multiple Oscars in any category. She was also not. nominated for her work on Malcolm X and Amistad. Spike Lee was insistent that they do a full week of rehearsal prior to the shoot. This was a huge boon to the actors, but a trial by fire for the young John Turturro who met his mostly black co-workers during the full cast read-through

then had to say some of the most intense racial slurs used in the movie. Oh no! As he put it, quote, just saying the stuff out loud for the first time literally made me sick. I kept thinking, God, what have I got myself into? Wow. Another interesting thing. Fight the Power, the film's anthem, was not finished in time for the shoot.

The song, written and performed by Public Enemy, was commissioned by Spike Lee specifically for the movie. So Radio Rahim didn't know what the beat was on his boombox as he was walking down the street. So as Bill Nunn said, quote, it was a handicap working without the song given that it was such an influence on this character's life. Try imagining music you've never heard before. I didn't want to do anything too rhythmic with my walk. for fear of being off the beat, I didn't want to look like a white boy. Yeah, I mean, you can't.

Could have looked like Radio Chris, which wouldn't have been a good look. Production began on July 18th, 1988. So he started conceiving this idea in November, December of 1987, and it was dropping into production seven months later, which is just crazy. The first shot put to film was Mookie's, walk down the block from his house to Sal's greeting various neighbors. Two days in, and it started

raining and rained for the rest of the week, which forced them into their cover set, and it forced a change of schedule. Now, what's a cover set? It's a preset location where you can go and shoot a contingency scene if it starts raining during your outdoor shoot. But the problem is you only have a certain number of cover set aside in a schedule that you can jump to. And so they had five, and they burned through three in their first week. Oh, God. Which is very risky. Actually, one of the reasons Universal didn't want them to shoot in New York

is that the weather is less consistent than in L.A. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it can just pour rain on the drop of the hat in New York. Yep. So the biggest thing Ernest Dickerson, cinematographer, was fighting was the weather. The film, of course, takes place in one day. But they were shooting over eight weeks of varying weather conditions. And they're shooting outside and not on a studio set, right, yeah.

Exactly. Lighting continuity was obsessed over to the point that Dickerson and the production team sat down with Spike Lee and mapped out to the minute the exact time of day during which each scene took place. Wow. And that's how they lit it.

He also would take a lit can of sterno and hold it just underneath the lens to give the heat waves that go off. I was wondering how they did that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And he apparently watched Lawrence of Arabia repeatedly and there are a bunch of funny entries into this production where Spike Lee talks about like,

our shoot went smooth and it was only eight weeks. Like, I don't know how David Lean did a year in the desert on Lawrence of Arabia. From what I understand, it didn't go great. I think that's one that we'll probably cover at some point. We have to. Now, buggin out's glasses, which apparently a lot of the women on the set really didn't like because the rumor was, like, Jean Carlo is fine. And then they show up on set and he's wearing these goofy glasses and they're like, why does he look so weird?

Those were actually his idea. He wanted his character to look. literally be bugging out. So he spent like $500 of his own money to get a pair of glasses made that would magnify his eyes like three times. And then he got fitted for contact lenses that would reduce the effect so he could wear them while he was filming. He shows up on set. Apparently no one says anything about them. He then asks Spike Lee at the end of the day, what do you think about the glasses? And Spike Lee says, quote, they're fine. I thought your eyes looked kind of big. So sad for Sean Carlova, we appreciate you.

I love the glasses. So Danny I Yellow's, you mentioned his size? Well, his enormous sons were also in the movie. One is one of the cops, right? Jack is one of the police officers, specifically the one who jokes out, Radio Rahim. And his son, Danny Jr. was Danny Sr.'s stunt double. Oh. So you actually see him get pulled over the counter by Radio Rahim at the end of the film.

Mookie's Jackie Robinson jersey was a last minute to see. from Spike Lee. He had not decided on a costume yet, and he felt that Jackie hadn't gotten his due from the black community, especially young black people. The Johnny Pump sequence, that's the fire hydrant that they release on the neighborhood kids, was scheduled to take two days, but of course it took five because the car had to be rigged to withstand the water, and then they had to dry it off between takes. Frank Vincent also had to go through a complete wardrobe change and hair and makeup change after every time he got wet so they could shoot it again. The sets for Sal's and the Korean market were so realistic that they would have to stop filming because pedestrians

would walk in trying to order pizza and order things from the market. Great, great compliment to Win Thomas, production designer. And apparently John Turturro kind of went off on the prop department for not providing enough pizzas for him to slice during one scene. So they said just fake slicing and he was like, you can tell I'm faking it. And sure enough, they watched the dailies and it looked fake. So they brought extra pizzas the next day and they re-shot it. And you have to forgive Mr. Turturro. He was very nervous that people were not going to be able to separate him as an actor from the role. In fact, apparently there's the scene where John Trituro to camera says all of the ethnic slurs about black people. And they're shooting that scene. And one of the women in craft

services started hissing at John, like during the take. And, for the first, the rest of the shoot, she apparently couldn't separate his character from the actor, and she, like, iced him out for the rest of the movie. I mean, he is, yeah, he's really good in it. Yeah, that would be a legitimate concern, yeah. My favorite story from the production, though, comes toward the end of the shoot, and it's at the end of the movie. Mookie picks up the garbage can, and he throws it through the window of Sal's Famous.

Apparently, no one of the production team decided to test the thickness of that glass window. It was quarter inch thick, and Mr. Lee, despite being of prodigious talent and intellect, is a petite man. Oh, no. Did I just bounce back? As he said later in his production notes, quote, breaking glass that thick is no easy feat. I was throwing hard, but it took four or five takes before I could get the garbage can through the window. On one take, it even bounced off back at me like a rubber ball.

I was on the spot. We were filming with a special crane that had to be sent back to the rental house the next day, and the sun was coming up. finally we got the shot. I also read unconfirmed that Danny Iiello teased him pretty relentlessly about that saying he needed to work out after that scene. Oh no. Of course, despite the hurdles faced, the film finished in just over eight weeks and came in under budget.

Damn. All right. Now, Mr. Lee in his journal entries about writing Do the Right Thing said very confidently that the movie was going to be a clean 90 minutes. and the movie is two hours long. So he did not get that right. However, it seems like it came together very well in post. He showed it actually to Jonathan Demi, like very early.

And apparently Jonathan Demi was just, all he said to him was like, welcome to the big leagues. Oh. Of course, Spike Lee's father, who's a jazz musician, provided to score for the film. That's Billy. In early December of 1988, nearly a year to the date from when he started his development, Journal on the film, Spike Lee flew to Los Angeles to show the executives at Universal a rough cut of the movie that they had bought. They watched it and were blown away. However, they still had one concern, which was the ending. Yeah, knew this was coming. Was it too ambiguous? Quote,

will blacks want to go on a rampage? Will whites feel uncomfortable? No and yes. Yeah, for sure. They came up with three alternative endings. Oh, no. To soften it. One, Mookie doesn't pick up the money that Sal throws on the ground. The implication being that Mookie

doesn't feel it's fair for him to take the extra $200, I don't know. Two, put Mr. Senior Love Daddy's We Can Live Together speech at the very end of the film, which would do the We Are the World thing that Spike Y wanted to avoid. Three, and this is actually Spike Lee's idea, shoot an epilogue with Mookie talking straight to the camera.

Spike Lee in the end didn't like any of them. Instead, he returned to the idea of Smiley's approach with the photograph of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Two black leaders, two radically different approaches to their struggles. Quote, why not end the film with an appropriate quote from each? In the end, justice will prevail one way or another. There are two paths to that the way of King or the way of Malcolm. This seemed to be sufficient for the studio, and that's where you get the final quotes at the end of the film. do the right thing premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18th, 1989.

Lizzie, how do you think it was received? I hope it got a standing ovation. It did, although I think everything does, to be fair, at Cannes. But I'm sure it was a very long one. Yeah. So it was actually very well received in Europe. But of course, all of this concern and hand-wringing began about what would happen in the United States when the movie came out. Would the film incite riots?

Was universal tempting fate with a summer release? If what the film posits is true that violence goes up with the temperature, was Spike Lee adding fuel to an already raging fire? No. As Juali later said, quote, Back at the ranch, you had white film critics fear-mongering about the violence it might incite. They weren't taking into account that art imitated life, that the film was representational of the sociopolitical and racial climate of the U.S.,

and in particular New York City, hotbed of racially motivated hate crimes. Now, to Universal's credit, despite threats and advice to shift the film's release, they held strong. Do the Right Thing was dropped in theaters on June 30th, 1989. It grossed $3.5 million its opening weekend, and then held strong, barely dropping, to $3 million. And at second, some critics raved about the film, including Siskel and Ebert, who both picked it as the best film of 1989, while others shared the absurd concerns of production executives

that the movie was dangerous, including critic David Denby and political columnist Joe Klein, both of New York Magazine. It's just like, has talking about something ever really incited more violence than repressing it?

So in what way is talking about it in an emotionally complex and insightful way going to then, you know, instigate further violence. It doesn't make sense. Well, it didn't make sense because people didn't riot and do the right thing pulled in $27 million domestically during its first theatrical run, meaning it was highly profitable against its $6 million, $6.5 million production budget.

It also quickly got some awards traction heading into the Oscars in Los Angeles. It won the LA Film Critics Association Award for Best Film, best supporting actor for Danny Aiello, best music for Bill Lee, Spike Lee's father, and best director. I believe Spike Lee was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Director for the film. I noticed you aren't saying Oscars.

Did it... Well, here we're getting to that. Oh, no. In a twist of fate, do the right thing, signaled a change in Hollywood, and went up against two very different films about the, quote, black experience at the 1990 Academy Awards.

One of those films was Edward Zwick's glory, which we've talked about. Yeah. And the other one is Bruce Barris Ford's Driving Miss Daisy. Oh, boy. For many white Americans, the watered down race relations presented in Driving Miss Daisy, which was written and directed by two white men, was much easier to stomach than Spike Lee's more confrontational film. It grossed $145 million and was nominated for nine Academy Awards.

It was an extremely popular film. Oh, man. What's really interesting is the 1989 Academy Awards had been a real dip in ratings for the Academy. And so they were desperate to turn things around. They felt that they were falling behind the times. Maybe they were getting too stodgy. So the producer spiffed them up. And the producer Gilbert Cates sent stars abroad for a telecast dubbed, quote,

around the world in three and a half hours. Jack Lemon went to Moscow, Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, hold up in London, and in some ways the show represented a changing and diversifying Hollywood. Danny Iiello and more importantly, Marlon Brando, lost the supporting actor Oscar to Denzel Washington for his turn in glory. That's right. And he was actually the only, he was only the second black actor to win in that category. Louis Gossett Jr. won in 1982 for Officer and a Gentleman, and I believe he was the third

nominated. Jessica Tandy, the British star of Driving Miss Daisy, won best. actress, which is significant because she was the oldest woman to win best actress, she was 80 years old when she won that award. And so it felt like movies were honoring folks of different ages and different colors. Except, do the right thing, despite being nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, as I mentioned, Danny Aiello, was neither nominated for Best Picture, nor was Spike Lee nominated for Best Director. Wow. The nominees for Best Picture wore, were driving Miss Daisy, born on the 4th of July, Dead Poets Society, Field of Dreams, and My Left Foot.

The nominees for Best Director were Oliver Stone for born on the 4th of July. Boo. Woody Allen for crimes and misdemeanors. That's not even that good of one. I know. Peter Weir for Dead Poets Society, Jim Sheridan for My Left Foot and Kenneth Brana for Henry the 5th. Okay. Kenneth and Jim can stay in there. Yeah. To me, it seems clear that there was room

Yeah. For do the right thing in both of those categories. And I think history has proven that. Who won? Best picture was driving Miss Daisy and best director, Oliver Stone, born on the 4th of July. All right. Well, Kim Bassenger felt similarly to you. She came out onto the podium to introduce a reel from Dead Poets Society.

And she took the time to point out what many in the academy, especially its younger and blacker members felt, which was, quote, there is one film missing from this list that deserves to be on it because ironically it might tell the biggest truth of all, and that's do the right thing. Vincent Camby of the New York Times said of the nominations, Do the Right Thing, would have seemed to be a shoe-in as a nominee for Best Picture and Director,

noting that Spike Lee was one of the most aggressively talented young filmmakers to appear in years, and Hollywood liked to groom their air as apparent early. However, unlike the rest of the films nominated, can be pointed out, Do the Right Thing Won't Play the Game, It Talks Back, Do the Right Thing, doesn't call attention to progress, it asks for more. Now, in the end, Driving Miss Daisy won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Spike Lee lost the original screenplay Oscar to Tom Schulman for Dead Poets Society.

All right, do the right thing may have lost out on Oscar Glory, but its staying power has proved potent, As Mr. Lee is quick to point out, do the right thing as taught in film schools around the world to this day, driving Miss Daisy is not. Yes. Do the Right Thing was, of course, inducted into the Library of Congress, National Film Registry, a list of films culturally, historically,

are aesthetically significant that are earmarked for preservation by the Library of Congress. However, there are aspects of this film that haven't aged as well and that were called out at the time. 11 years after the film was released, Rosie Perez participated in a roundtable on nudity in film and spoke disparagingly of her experience working with Spike Lee on Do the Right Thing. Oh, wow. And I'd like to read her full quote. My first experience, doing nudity, of course, 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's 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 is because I'm crying. I was like, I don't want to do this. I felt like Irene, Kara, and fame. I was like, wait a minute, I feel so wimpy. This is not who I am. So that was my first experience and it was horrible. But then I went and took my clothes off again for white men can't jump. But that was because it was totally my decision. I felt totally comfortable. The director was so cool. And Woody Harrelson was like, well, whatever you want is cool with me.

So there I felt empowered by it. But with do the right thing, it was like, Now I'm the object. Here's the shot. And the reason why I cried was not so much because I felt violated as because I was angry at myself because I wanted to say, say something, get up. So that's how I felt violated. I felt like I violated myself. Oh, man. Now years later, Ms. Perez said that Spike Lee apologized to her for the experience and that they are on good terms. Good.

It doesn't change what she said or how she feels about her experience on the project. However, there was like a brief moment, I think, to online to try to cancel Spike Lee during the Me Too movement. And she kind of put that to bed saying, you know, he made it right with me. It doesn't make right what happened. Sure. But we're okay. And I'd like to call out, too, that Spike Lee was criticized at the time of the film's release for its depiction of women, specifically women of color, as well. The late Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name, Bell Hook.

wrote extensively on the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and she published an essay on Do the Right Thing titled Counter-Hegemonic Art. In her writing, she asserts that Mr. Lee's film is not radical at all, but rather conservative in its telling, offering something for everyone to feel smug about, from bourgeois, black viewers who can be reassured that they've made it to white viewers who are not pressed to believe that Radio Rahim's death was a brutal murder, instead allowing them to feel that it was justified

due to his character being unsympathetic, and, like all of the characters outside of Mookie, she asserts lacking any real complexity. Quote, conservative folks do not leave this film with the idea deconstructed or challenged that young black men are a menace and a threat, end quote. She continues to lament that Mr. Lee's film echoes that strand of black nationalism,

promoting the exclusion of black women in their role in the liberation struggle. Of Tina's character, she writes, quote, she is powerless, completely objectified, and victimized by Mookie, tricked by him into performing a sex object, acting out his fantasies. She is ultimately seduced in a manner that recalls the sadomasochistic sex scene in the movie nine and a half weeks. Tina is unable to negotiate her relationship with Mookie, manipulating in an attempt to fulfill her desires.

She is consistently outmaneuvered. The somnolent child who lies between them, looking like an advertisement for undernourishment, is indeed emotionally deprived, a symbol of their ineffectual bonding." End quote. I'd highly recommend you guys read her piece on the film. It provides the perspective not seen in the contemporaneous reviews that I read of the movie. And I found it really illuminating, even if I didn't have the same reaction. She's an amazing writer.

And you can find that online. And it's also part of a larger essay collection that you can buy on Amazon of hers. Now, as we round out toward the end of this, Lizzie, I think that it's because of all these different reactions to the movie. that's what I like about the film the most. To me, this movie is very much a Rorschach test. It doesn't, to me, feel like it has a super clear or easy to grasp message at the end of the movie. No. I'm not sure if you agree or disagree.

I totally do. I think calling this a Rorschach test is accurate. You can kind of, and I think, you know, I think that's what she's getting at a bit as well, is that there is room to take from this what you want to take from this. I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing. And I think that's kind of one of the most remarkable things that this does is that it is, yeah, it ends on a question. Like the burning question of the whole thing is what is the right thing? If you're supposed to do the right thing, what is it?

And it doesn't really answer that by the end. And I think if it had it would have been worse for it. Yeah. Tellingly, at the end of his production journals on the film, Spike Lee writes of the decision to use the contrasting quotes from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to end the film. Quote, yep, we have a choice, he wrote, Malcolm or King, I know who I'm down with, end quote. He then signs off without telling the reader which one. Spike Lee's do the right thing poses more questions than answers, but I think its very existence provides more answers than questions.

When he first met Spike Lee, Danny Aiello reportedly told him, quote, you may be a little to the left of the leftist guy I know, and I'm 150 miles to the right of Ronald Reagan. Can we work together? End quote. Wow. And the answer was that they did. Interesting. And that is what went wrong on Spike Lee's do the right thing.

That was great. Thank you. Thank you for making me watch this and going through everything. I really, really loved this. And I was in a grumpy mood. I did not want to watch a movie for this point. podcast, you know, sometimes it's like... Cancel her now.

Well, it feels like a homework assignment sometimes. And I started, I was like, I guess I have to watch this. I turn it on and I just was completely absorbed for two hours and I loved it. If you guys haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. And the Criterion Blu-ray is awesome. Comes with tons of goodies, really cool box. And plus, if you rent or buy through Amazon, they can take that away at any times. Yeah, we're officially team Blu-ray.

Yeah, you don't actually own it when you buy it on a digital platform. All right, Lizzie, let's get to our favorite segment. What went right? Oh, my gosh. I'll say sticking to his decision to film on location in Brooklyn, this just looked and felt like exactly what it was. And there was no ring of inauthenticity to it. So I would say that.

I think so. I think that's a great point. I'm going to say, for mine, tie between Rosie Perez and Danny Iiello, who I feel like their characters, I totally get where Bell Hooks is coming from about Rosie Perez's character. I do think her character is underwritten relative to the other characters, but I think she's such a fiery performer. She's great. That she really brings her to life. And she, this was her first film, which actually, I think I skipped over that, by the way. do you know how Spike Lee found her for this movie?

Did you say she's in the video for Debutt? Is that how he found her? I think you said that at the beginning. No, she's not. I think, okay, I skipped this. So I'm, no, no, no, she's not. He had shot that music video. So Spike Lee had just shot the music video for DeBut,

and it was his birthday, and he was in L.A., so he's like, let's go to a club, and they go to this club called Funky Reggae, and they are at the club, and he looks up, and Rosie Perez is dancing, on top of a speaker. Quote, there was a girl dancing like Matt on a speaker. I said, will you please get down before you break your neck and I get sued? She cursed me out. I never heard

a voice like that. I said, what's your name? She said Rosie Perez. That's where I got the idea that Mookie should have a Puerto Rican girlfriend. It was her first acting job and her sister lived four blocks from the production. And actually, originally, the intro wasn't going to have any dancing. But when he saw that she could dance and she power pops to fight the power, obviously, by Public Enemy, he shot the intro with her to include her dancing. So, anywho, so I'm going to go with Rosie Perez and Danny Aiello. I'm glad that Mr. De Niro passed on the movie. I think it's a stronger film for that.

And I'll just hand it to the whole ensemble cast. There are so many great actors here. I really like to Bill Nunn. Obviously, is Radio Rahim. And my Carmela, my wife's favorite character, bugging out. Yeah. I think Giancarlo Esposito is so good. And he's so funny in this movie.

And like, the scene where he's, sneakers get snuffed by the guy in the Larry Bird jersey. And, like, you can tell he wants to intimidate him, but he's not actually comfortable trying to beat him up. It's really such a good machismo, like, sort of moment. Yeah, I loved him in this. It's very fun. All right.

Well, thank you so much, Chris. That was great. Yeah. Thanks, everybody for tuning in to another episode of what went wrong. As always, we need to give a shout out to our full stop members, Chris Leal, Matthew Pelton, Tom Christen, So Much Inani, Michael McGrath, you crazy. sons of bitches are just keeping us alive on Patreon. We deeply appreciate it.

Guys, if you're interested in bonus content and fun little extras, including videos of our made for podcast faces, you can sign up for that with our Patreon, www.com. What Went Wrong Podcast. As always, if there are any films you would like us to cover, please shoot us an email at What Went Wrong Pod at gmail.com or on Instagram, send us. a DM. Lizzie, is there anything I'm forgetting before we let these lovely listeners go? Well, if you all would like to get ahead of the next movie, then set aside some time to watch Mad Max Fury Road. And if, you know, you've got two weeks between these episodes.

That's right. So you could go ahead and watch all of the Mad Max movies. If you would like, if you really want to go above and beyond and do extra homework, you can also throw in, babe, Pig in the City and, sorry, Babe 2, Pig in the City and Happy Feet. And you'll find out why when we get to the episode on Mad Max Fury Road. And until then, bye. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support What Went Wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

Editing music by David Bowman with cover art from Uthana UOS.