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| Do the Right Thing: Rosie Perez & Spike Lee |
Nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar (with a script penned by Lee),
Do the Right Thing was the break-out hit that sealed Lee's reputation as a socially engaged filmmaker with a bravura visual style.
Simmering tensions explode at the end of a sweltering summer's day in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood when one of the locals Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) agitates for a boycott of Sal's Pizzeria because he resents the absence of black sports stars and actors on Sal's 'Wall of Fame'. Samuel L. Jackson appears as smooth-talking DJ Senor Love Daddy whose on-air invocations to 'chill' fail to quell the escalating tension.
The film's unofficial anthem,
Fight the Power, catapaulted Public Enemy to the forefront of the late eighties hip hop explosion (explore the power in our special
Freaky Fridays screening of the Public Enemy documentary,
Welcome to the Terrodome, screening Friday 5 and Friday 12 Dec, at 10pm).
Imported print.
"Funky, entertaining and political in the best sense" Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Chicago Reader
