Lee was persuaded to scale back his budget from $10 million to $6.5 million with Universal's guarantee of noninterference. The filmmaker had wanted Robert De Niro for the pivotal role of Sal, the white owner of a pizzeria in the black and Hispanic Brooklyn community of Bedford-Stuyvesant. De Niro passed and suggested character actor Clem Caserta but Lee went instead with Danny Aiello. A native New Yorker with early credits in John D. Hancock's Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather: Part II (1974), Aiello had experienced a significant boost in his marquee value as Cher's fiancé in Norman Jewison's Moonstruck (1987) and as pop star Madonna's disapproving father in her "Papa, Don't Preach" music video, directed by James Foley. As conservative in his politics as Lee was progressive, Aiello initially turned down what he considered to be the racist depiction of Italian-Americans but was persuaded to reconsider when he was given the freedom to interpret his character in his own way. Matt Dillon was approached to play the role of Sal's reactionary son Pino but opted out on the advice of his agent; stepping into the role was Brooklyn native John Turturro, who had impressed Lee with his villainous turn in Tony Bill's Bronx-set Five Corners (1987). Fellow New York filmmaker Jim Jarmush suggested Richard Edson for the role of Sal's younger son Vito while Lee cast himself as the pizzeria's sole black employee, Mookie, whose clashes with Sal and his sons set the tone for Do the Right Thing's literally incendiary conclusion.
As Lee and casting director Robi Reed filled their large roster of speaking parts, many actors cast in one role wound up playing another. Lee had wanted Laurence Fishburne, the star of his earlier School Daze (1988), to play Radio Raheem, an oracular figure sporting an Ozymandian ghetto blaster whose death at the hands of overzealous NYPD officers sparks a fully-loaded third act race riot; when Fishburne demurred (claiming Do the Right Thing was a movie for white people rather than black), Lee replaced him with relative newcomer Bill Nunn, whose vacated role of community deejay Senor Love Daddy went to Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson had originally been picked to play one of the film's "Corner Men," a trio of sidewalk kibitzers who serve as a prescient Greek chorus throughout Do the Right Thing and provide much-needed comic relief.
Lee's vision for the production was to provide inroads for black actors and technicians; in addition to creating opportunities for people of color within the largely Caucasian trade unions servicing Do the Right Thing behind-the-scenes, Lee cast up-and-coming talents Martin Lawrence, Robin Harris and Rosie Perez in supporting roles opposite veteran actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. The role of Smiley (played by New York stage actor Roger Guenveur Smith) did not exist even as late as the shooting script and was improvised on location during principal photography through July and August 1988. Do the Right Thing was another family affair for Lee, whose father Bill composed the original score, brother David served as still photographer and sister Joie played Mookie's sister, Jade.
While Universal preferred having Do the Right Thing shot in climate-controlled Los Angeles, Lee insisted on Brooklyn for authenticity. The production took up residence in an area of Bed-Stuy devastated by the crack trade, on a blighted stretch of Stuyvesant Avenue between Lexington Avenue and Quincy Street. The preponderance of vacant lots allowed Lee to construct Sal's Famous Pizzeria and a Korean grocery down to the minutest detail. (Photographs of Italian celebrities adorning the restaurant's walls were copied from the private collection of John Turturro.) Because of the modest budget, actors went without standard Hollywood amenities; there were no trailers and the cast bivouacked in the gymnasium of a local school. Because Lee wanted his principal players to appear in background shots, many of the actors remained on the set even when they had no speaking scenes, which forged a fraternity among a film crew divided by race and gender. Visitors to the set included heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson and recording artist Stevie Wonder; midway through shooting, Lee brought his cast and crew to a lavish pool party and barbecue at the New Jersey estate of Eddie Murphy. The getaway proved to be a respite from the tensions mounting as production progressed towards the film's climactic riot scene, which stretched through the night into the dawn of the following day and left several of the actors with real injuries. Filming inside the burning structure of the ersatz pizzeria, and protected only by a blanket, cinematographer Ernest Dickerson was nearly crushed by a falling cash register as the walls came down around him.
Upon its release in June of 1989 (after a strong showing at Cannes, where the film lost the coveted Palm d'Or to Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape), Do the Right Thing polarized film critics who identified in its controversial ending both unflinchingly acute social criticism and artistic naiveté bordering on reckless disregard . While Roger Ebert was a vocal champion, others (among them New York magazine writers David Denby and Joe Klein) theorized that the film would set off actual race riots. That didn't happen but nonetheless Do the Right Thing was given the cold shoulder at Oscar® time the following year. Nominated only for "Best Actor in a Supporting Role [Danny Aiello]" (the statue went to Denzel Washington in Edward Zwick's Glory) and Best Writing (Tom Schulman won for Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society), the film has the cold comfort of being better-regarded than either sex, lies and videotape or the 1990 Oscar®-winning "Best Picture," Bruce Beresford's Driving Miss Daisy (1989). At the 62nd Academy Awards presentation in March 1990, actress Kim Basinger used her brief on-camera time as a presenter to chastise the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for not recognizing Do the Right Thing as a "Best Picture" contender while The New York Times opined that the film's loss of a "Best Original Screenplay" statue represented "Oscar® voting at its most irrational." In 1999, the film was included by the US Library of Congress in the National Film Registry for its designation as a "culturally significant" work. In 1996, Entertainment Weekly listed it among the "25 Most Controversial Movies Ever." In 2007, the American Film Institute included Do the Right Thing among its roster of the 100 great films of all time.
Producer: Spike Lee
Director: Spike Lee
Screenplay: Spike Lee
Cinematography: Ernest Dickerson
Music: Bill Lee
Film Editing: Barry Alexander Brown
Cast: Danny Aiello (Salvatore 'Sal' Fragione), Ossie Davis (Da Mayor), Ruby Dee (Mother Sister), Richard Edson (Vito), Giancarlo Esposito (Buggin Out), Spike Lee (Mookie), Bill Nunn (Radio Raheem), John Turturro (Pino), Paul Benjamin (ML), Frankie Faison (Coconut Sid).
C-120m. Letterboxed. Closed Captioning. Descriptive Video.
by Richard Harland Smith
Sources:
Spike Lee: Do the Right Thing by Spike Lee and Jason Matloff, edited by Steve Crist (Ammo Books, 2010)
Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It by Spike Lee, as told to Kaleem Aftab (W.W. Norton & Company, 2006)
Spike Lee: Interviews, edited by Cynthia Fuchs (University Press of Mississippi, 2002)
