Do the Right Thing
On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone’s hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.
- Director: Spike Lee
- Genre:Comedy / Drama
- Runtime:120 minutes
Cast
Danny Aiello : Salvatore ‘Sal’ Fragione
Ossie Davis : Da Mayor
Ruby Dee : Mother Sister
Richard Edson : Vito
Giancarlo Esposito: Buggin Out
Do the Right Thing is set on a single street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The street is populated primarily by African Americans and Puerto Ricans.
The main character in the film is Mookie (Spike Lee), a young man who lives with his sister Jade (Joie Lee, Spike Lee’s real life sister) and works as a pizza delivery man for the local pizzeria. Salvatore “Sal” Frangione (Danny Aiello), the pizzeria’s Italian-American owner, has owned the shop for twenty-five years. His older son Giuseppe, better known as Pino (John Turturro), “detests the place like a sickness” and holds racial contempt for the neighborhood blacks. Sal’s younger son Vito (Richard Edson) is friends with Mookie, who is black, which Pino feels undermines their fraternal bond.
The street corner which the characters populate is filled with distinct personalities, 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 (Ossie Davis) is constantly trying to win both the approval and affection of the neighborhood matron, Mother-Sister (Ruby Dee). A young man named Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) lives for nothing else but to blast Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” on his boombox wherever he goes. He wears a “love” and “hate” four-fingered ring on either hand which he explains in one scene to symbolize the struggle between the two forces, a scene directly lifted from Charles Laughton’s 1955 film The Night of the Hunter[citation needed]. A mentally disabled man named Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) constantly meanders about the neighborhood, holding up hand-colored (with marking pens) pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.. The local radio disc jockey, “Mister Señor Love Daddy” (Samuel L. Jackson) rounds out the cast of characters.
Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) makes sure his points are heard by whoever is in ear shot. Upon entering Sal’s shop, Buggin’ Out questions Sal about the “Wall of Fame” and demands he place some pictures of black celebrities on the wall (since, he explains, Sal’s pizzeria is situated in a black neighborhood and sells pizza to black people). Sal replies that it is his store, he is proud of his Italian heritage, and that he doesn’t have to name anyone but Italians on his wall. Buggin’ Out attempts to start a protest over the “Wall of Fame”, but no one will support his protest except Radio Raheem, who got into an argument with Sal about playing his boombox loudly in the store. Read more
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