Actors - Do the Right Thing

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	Actors - Do the Right Thing

Do the Right Thing is a 1989 motion picture produced, written, and directed by Spike Lee and released by Universal Pictures. The film tells a tale of bigotry and racial conflict in a multi-ethnic community in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, on the hottest day of the year. It stars Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn and John Turturro. Do the Right Thing also marks the feature film debuts of both Martin Lawrence and Rosie Perez.

In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. A Criterion Collection DVD of Do the Right Thing has been released: it is no. 97 in the Criterion series.

The song "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy is a recurring aural motif in the film, as blasted from a huge boombox toted by Radio Raheem (Nunn).

Roger Ebert famously said it was "the only film to ever make me cry."

Synopsis

The film features a multitude of characters, almost all of whom are portrayed sympathetically. The main character in the film is Mookie (Lee), a young man who lives with his sister and works as a pizza delivery man for the local Sal's Pizzeria. Mookie isn't very diligent about making his deliveries with any sort of punctuality, but is obsessed with making money: "I gotta get paid". Sal (Aiello), the pizzeria’s Italian-American owner, has owned the shop for decades, even after most of the other white residents have moved out, because he respects his customers. His youngest son Vito (Edson) shares his view, but his eldest son Pino (Turturro) "detests the place like a sickness" and "hates niggers."

The Bed-Stuy street corner the characters populate is filled with distinct characters, most of whom are just trying to find a way to deal with the intense heat and go about their regular day-to-day activities. A philandering drunk called Da Mayor (Davis) is constantly trying to win both the approval and affection of the neighborhood matron, Mother-Sister (Dee). Three unemployed men on the corner constantly crack jokes on passersby, and comment on the Korean owners of the nearby convenience store. Mookie's girlfriend (Perez) is constantly nagging him about caring for their infant son. A young man named Radio Raheem (Nunn) lives for nothing else but to blast Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" on his boombox wherever he goes, and wears a "love" and "hate" four-fingered ring on either hand to symbolize the struggle between the two forces. A retarded man named Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) constantly meanders about the neighborhood, holding up hand-colored (with crayons) pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. A DJ named Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) operates a radio station nearby, acting as both a narrator and a character.

Buggin' Out (Esposito) is a wannabe Black nationalist who makes sure his points are heard by whoever is in ear shot. Upon entering Sal's shop, he notices that Sal's "Wall of Fame" is decorated with dozens of pictures of celebrity actors, athletes, etc.--all of them Italian. When Buggin' Out questions Sal about the "Wall of Fame" and demands he place some pictures of African-American celebrities on the wall (since, he explains, Sal's pizzeria is situated in a black neighborhood), Sal replies that this is his store, he is proud of his Italian heritage, and that he isn't going to put anyone but Italians on his wall. Buggin' Out attempts to start a protest over the "Wall of Fame", but no one will listen to him or take his trivial issue seriously except for Radio Raheem, who had been criticized by Sal earlier that day for playing his boombox.

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