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DO THE RIGHT THING
(1989)
DIRECTOR:
Spike Lee.
STARRING:
Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, John Turturro, Rosie Perez.
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*breathes in deep*
Okay, time to get all deep and shit as we discuss a film about racial tension and what I refer to as "social degeneration overcoming social co-operation".
'Do The Right Thing' is a Spike Lee film (or 'joint' - as the credits for his films would have you know) produced in the year 1989, a good year for alternative film styles, in my opinion. From the very start this film appears incredibly aged in fashion (eg. Michael Jordon clothing features on many occassions with a pair of Air Jordan's being scuffed becoming a centre point of confrontation), music, language, style -aw hell, it's aged in fucking everything, including the film's whole message. It's been two decades since 'Do' was made and it truly shows. It's quite a shame as I've been a fan of this movie for a long time and what seemes so hip so long ago now feels embarrassingly dated.
I remember watching it for the first time when I was about 10 years old, with my cousin, who happened to be a huge rap fan and desperately wanted to be black, until he grew out of it - thank fuck. At this age and during that era in time the film's message was hip, simple, punctual and still relevant. But now it feels lost. Who knows though, maybe as each year passes from the age of 10 I just become dumber? For those of you who have met me in person, you may be thinking that this is not an impossibility.
'Do' is a film with deep and, in my opinion, mixed messages which I will eventually be exploring, with great difficulty. Only because I feel during this day and age with it's global climate and social differences increasing on a grand scale it's almost as though I'm not sure which view to take on the film. My point is, the 80s and 90s were a simple time, shit isn't that simple anymore. It's not a longer a matter of "you're black, I'm white" or "the government is hard on blacks - FIGHT THE POWER!". Now it's a matter of, "we're all pretty fucking miserable and the government looks out for nobody". Anybody who takes a view in favour of any minority is simply a racist (yes, I'm aware going by my rants that means I'm a racist, "What, me worry?" - Alfred E. Neuman).
'Do The Right Thing' in a basic sense is a story based over one day during a heat wave in one street in one neighbourhood of Brookyln, New York - which has become a bubbling pot of racial tension & multi-cultural intolerance. The story is told more centrally around Mookie (Spike Lee - busy man - he wrote, produced, directed and starred in this film), a young Afrian American man who lives with his sister, Jade (Joie Lee - quite obviously Spike's real sister known simply by looking at her) works delivering pizza's for Sal's Famous Pizzeria, inbetween socialising with his "homies" and visiting his girlfriend.
Salvatore (Danny Aiello) has ran the pizzeria (which he built with his own bare hands) for twenty five years. More recently with his two arguing sons, Pino (John Turturro) & Vito (Richard Edson). Pino is a man full of hatred not only for black people but for the pizzeria itself and desperately longs to sell the place, pissing in Sal's ear constantly. Vito is a more peaceful man, loyal to his father, scared of his brother and content with their all-black customer base.
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Other characters we are witness to throughout the film (meandering about the streets - that's right - NOBODY ELSE works - coincidence?? hehe) are Da Mayor (Ossie Davis at his usual best), an old drunk man, Mother-Sister, the local "everyone's mother" type, Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), who circulates the neighbourhood blasting "Fight The Power" by Public Enemy (you will hear this song repeated at LEAST 10 fucking times throughout the movie) on his boom box, Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith), an unusual retarded man who meanders about the streets with photos of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and lastly the local radio DJ (who seems to report on almost everyone who fucking passes the window, which is really just ridiculous. Why is this man the only person this radio station? Does he not have a program schedule to follow? Does he really have time to just randomly announce the names of people who happen to pass by? *shrugs*), Mister Senor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson - in my opinion incredibly miscast).
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^^ "Buggin' Out is one seriously ugly fuck when he bugs out and Martin Lawrence... well he's just ugly/goofy all the fuckin time. |
Mookie is an inbetween guy. He's black, dresses like he's black, speaks black, is popular amongst the blacks but works for an Italian, because he need to get paid! Sal's son Pino is not fond of Mookie and both Sal & Pino also grow tired of Mookie wandering off during his pizza delivery routes. Mookie takes time out to stop at home and shower, talk to friends and to visit his girlfriend so that he can melt ice on different parts of her body. Yes, that does sound weird and incase it wasn't weird enough, his girlfriend is played by V8 motor mouth ROSIE PEREZ! AIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Fuck, I swear Rose Perez's voice makes Fran Drescher's voice sound angelic and soothing. When Rosie Perez yells paint begins to peel, people die, planes crash, chaos reigns and the gates of hell open up and arms reach up and pull young women down 'Drag Me To Hell' styles. Pure evil.
To add to this pure evil is an unbelieveably bizarre opening title sequence which consists of credits playing over footage of Rosie Perez and only Rosie Perez dancing trashily to "Fight The Power". I'm not sure why Rosie Perez in particular was isolated as the lone actress who will be doing close up dancing during the credits. Did Spike Lee feel it sent a good message to choose the ugliest Latino woman in the 80s to be focused on while she dances during the entire credits? Maybe it's because she has a big bootie to do bum cheek slaps. I don't know. It's a really stupid part of the movie and actually felt embarrasing. There's only one black pop-culture reference involving Latinos dancing that is daggier than this and that's the start of "In Living Colour". This is not a comparison to be proud of.
Props to Rosie though. She must seriously be some mythological type of god. Her mouth is so huge and her lips so grand in scale that she could literally knock fuckers out with a pout and deafen her enemies with a single yell. Do NOT fuck with Rosie Perez.
Anyway, one of the no hoper unemployed whinging people of the street is Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) and he's not happy. I bet you're assuming
he's pissed off that his name is Buggin' Out? Nah, he's pretty happy about that, I guess when you intend to be unemployed your whole life you don't really care what your name is. No, Buggin is pissed off because Sal's pizzeria doesn't have any black guys on his "Wall of Fame" which consists of all successful Italian American's. Buggin' loses his shit over the fact there's no black people on the wall yet Sal's entire clientel consists of black people. Buggin' is so consumed by his black power "integrity" that it transforms into reverse racism when a white guy accidentally bumps into him on the street and Buggin' basically confronts him, threatening to physically hurt him. Naturally, onlookers only encourage this behaviour, why? Because they're fucking animals living in a zoo and there lives aren't full of enough activity because they're UNEMPLOYED, so violence is a common and favourably looked upon occurence. I tell you, if most of these people worked they'd be too tired when they get home from work to be so volatile and violent.
Getting back to the point, Buggin' spends the entire movie trying to boycott Sal's pizzeria as he was thrown out for creating a disturbance and being a regular trouble maker on the premises. Teaming up with Radio Raheem, who is sore at Sal for daring to tell him to turn his music off inside the pizzeria, they confront Sal just as he's closing up for the night. Tensions boil, violence escalates and by the end of it all the conflict is one step away from a full blown riot. Wow, a riot in a majority black area, how odd. I know in saying this I'm seeming like a racist, but I just sat down and watched a film about black power and treating black people right. Yet out of the whole fucking film ONE black person had a job, several black people were total troublemakers, all the black people whinged and bitched and altogether it's a big cesspool of black stereotypes that do nothing to promote any pride in their race. Fuck you, I said it!
In the end, Sal's place is completely burnt down and Mookie is such a piece of shit he still demands his pay from Sal. The street goes back to normal with people sitting around doing nothing complaining that nobody does anything for them. Well, what do you expect you lazy piece's of shit. This is where the movie ends. Then we are treated to two memorable qoutes-
"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves scoeity in monologue rather tahn dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It createres bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers." - Martin Luther King Jr.
"I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block thingd that you and I need. Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation, and it doesn't mean that I advocated violence, but at the same I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't even call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence." - Malcomc X
While these speeches are remarkable and well spoken, they contradict each other. One says at no point is violence useful (which I totally agree with) and the other says violence is acceptable, when used in self defence, fair enough, but let's not go calling it intelligence. That's right, I'm telling Malcolm X he is WRONG. hehe.
That's the problem with Do The Right Thing. It feels like it has mixed signals. This movie has gone on to be labelled "culturally significant" by the US Library of Congress and has been entered into the National Film Registry for preservation. On top of that it was recently selected at the ninety-sixth GREATEST Amerian Movie in Film History. This bewilders me as I think it represents black people in the worst way and it simply displays aggressive human indifference no differently as I see it on the street. It's full of petty bickering and shows us how ridiculously situations escalate all out of pride, which is a ridiculous human trait in the first place.
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I don't really know what the point of THIS Spike Lee joint was in the first place. My guess is he's trying to show us the ugly side to racial tension and violence caused by it but it comes across as more of a black power movie that shows us nothing powerful about the black race other than their ability to resort to confrontation and violence before all other options. If you want to be treated right by the police, assist the fucking system and do something with your life. If you want to be treated with respect by society, help advance it. But no, it's all ME, ME, ME! Wah, how come I don't have this!? How come I don't get respect!? Because you're a PIECE OF USELESS SHIT, that's why. I wouldn't scoop up a pile of dried out dog defacation on the street, take it home and nurse it back to a more hydrated health, because it's a useless piece of shit that belongs in the gutter. So why would I treat the human equivelant in such a manner? This is nothing to do with race either, simply how much you contribute to society. Which you choose not to so I would assume going by your nature, that you wouldn't help me, so why should I help you?
The message, to me, becomes completely lost & almost seems to fall into the category of reverse racism. I might be looking at it the wrong way, but that's all I'm getting out of it. That and a million other fucking contradicting messages.
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Yep - nothing unusual here. Just black people rioting.^^
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Spike Lee has an enthusiastic eye for original direction and some of the cinematography is fantastically bizarre and right out of the 90s. It's a visual joy and when the movie is over you forget how much things have changed and start reminiscing about how great the early 90s were after films like this inspired it. Despite it's dark, deep, mixed messages, it's a colourful film full of great music and at times a pleasureable getto mood. It's certainly Spike Lee's passion project and it's obvious as soon as the music kicks in.
The film is filled with numerous mentionable cameos, with the funniest being a young Martin Lawrence, still with a glimmer of hope in his eyes, believing one day he's going to be somebody unlike now where he knows for certain his career is a piece of shit to match equally with his sense of humour. It also does not help that his character in this movie has some type of stupid lisp, so he looks even goofier than he normally does, which is pretty fucking goofy. As in, the goofiest mother fucker on the face of this planet. Frank Vincent appears in a short scene which gave me a smile as Frank Vincent is god. John Savage has a short time on scene as the poor white guy that gets abused by Buggin' and other familiar faces pop up that will make you go "OHW YES! I REMEMBER THEM! THEY WERE SUCCESSFUL IN THE 90S!".
Danny Aiello holds his own well as Sal (let's face it though, he'll never outdo his performance in Hudson Hawk) but apparently DeNiro was originally offered this role but turned it down. It leaves me thinking how much more DeNiro could have brought to the role? If he phoned in his performance he would've ruined the film but if he'd really taken it on board which he does every now and then as a multi-million dollar star does, he could've given Sal a little bit more. John Tuturro delivers another brilliant effort and I just don't think this guy is capable of bad acting. Unfortunately, here he is again playing an angry volatile bastard. Maybe this is the secret to his success and he's simply playing himself in every film he's made?
Actually, all the performances in the film are as good as it gets and it's a highly polished indepdendent production. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Do The Right Thing should die with the 90s. It's no longer a relevant topic, or at least it's not relevant in the way it's told. The "violence is not an answer" message seems to be there somewhere but it gets lost amongst a mix of black power messages and reverse racism. Maybe my racial views are intercepting a true interpretation of this film, so hey, do the right thing and watch it for yourself (did you see that AWESOME fucking word play I did with title of the movie just there!? Fuck yeah!), it's an entertaining and engrossing two hours.
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It's worth the loading time to check out the truly bizarre opening to 'Do The Right Thing' featuring WAY too much Rosie Pereze for this man. Observe her amazing dance routines and her ability to shuffle about like she's imitating a chicken trapped in a tight plastic bag.
My assumption is Spike Lee went through a Rosie Perez boner stage because this woman is far too unattractive to feature so prominently as a sex symbol in this film. Do the right thing, Mr. Lee, re-cut the film so there's less Rose Perez please.
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Never doing the right thing (awesome word play), I give this film: |
3 OUT OF 5 JAGER-BABIES. |
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