do the right thing location?

on Ossie and Ruby

So powerful is the symbolic presence of Dee and Davis in Do the Right Thing that their performances almost demand to be read allegorically. And they have been, since the film’s 1989 release: reviewing in The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote that Dee and Davis “preside over it, as if ushering in a new era of black filmmaking.” When their shared archive was acquired by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture last year, Jennifer Schuessler implicitly cast the film as the culmination of their lives’ work as the first couple of African- American acting, tracing their paths from Harlem theater in the 1940s, through many years of lauded performances and political activism, to the crowning cinematic moment of Do the Right Thing.

Lee’s film directly invites this reading, but the focus on this one particular allegory—the generational allegory—has obscured something important about the way these performances function in the film. Dee and Davis are not there simply to stand in for their generation; they are, more specifically, representatives of a performance culture that was directly connected to the politics of a historical moment. Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, actors, writers, organizers, and activists widely referred to as the “first couple of the Civil Rights Movement,” and credited by Oprah Winfrey as forerunners to her own “crossover” success as an African-American public figure, were everywhere in the 1960s. Already famous for their theater work, particularly their performances in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun in 1959 (Dee originated the role of Ruth; Davis took over the role of Walter Lee from Sidney Poitier), and for their support of blacklistee Paul Robeson (for which they were subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee), they boast a dual biography that reads like a timeline of progressive politics: in 1963, they were emcees at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and formed the Association of Artists for Freedom with James Baldwin, Odetta, and others; in 1965, Davis gave the eulogy for Malcolm X; in 1966, they both participated in the Read-In for Peace in Vietnam; in 1967, Davis spoke at the famous meeting of the Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam, where Martin Luther King Jr. came out against the war; in 1968, Davis spoke at his memorial. In between, they campaigned, wrote letters, made speeches, published articles and responses—and performed, wrote, and produced theater and film. As a couple who frequently worked together, they are among the rare successful married artists who have become iconic as paragons of marriage itself; as performers equal in stature and lauded as both artists and public figures, they remain unmatched in American culture.

Today, in 2019, 30 years after Do the Right Thing’s release, as more and more mid-century icons recede through natural or unnatural attrition (people die; histories get rewritten), it’s a good time to reassess the film vis-à-vis Dee and Davis, and think more deeply about what it means that Lee presents these two as ancestors and antecedents. It also feels important, as mid-century performance styles themselves recede, to reassess how the film’s questioning of the politics of representation extends to acting. If the question at the heart of Do the Right Thing is how to conceive post–“Martin and Malcolm” black political action, what does the film present as post–“Ruby and Ossie” black political *acting*?

https://www.filmcomment.com/article/feel-the-love/

For a few shots in the film, cinematographer Ernest Dickerson created the look of the hottest day of the summer by lighting a can of Sterno and holding it underneath the camera lens. The heat waves drifted up and acted as a filter between the lens and the action.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6525-10-things-i-learned-do-the-right-thing

the Korean fruit and veg shop across from Sal's is labelled as being 159 Stuvesant. the ice cream truck that Da Mayor save the Da Butt kid from turns from Lexington onto Stuyvesant.

and that's the double truth, Ruth

I just watched this again on DVD and the transfer was straight garbage. fuzzy, soft, a yellow cast to everything. really shocking!

still one of the greatest films ever made. it feels so directionless yet it's so watchable and you never notice all the threads pulling tighter.

i had forgotten that this movie is like 75% people arguing with each other

which is perfect for a movie that turns on the X/King dialectic. what is the right thing? let's argue about it

turturro is low-key hilarious in this movie, like very very high-level comic chops

"anyone know which block this bitch was filmed on?"

it's lovingly rooted in a particular time and place obviously - bed-stuy, public enemy, magic johnson - but it also doesn't seem that dated?? some of this is a strange coincidence of retro fashion - jordans, sports jerseys, high waist tights etc - but i don't think that's all of it. we haven't moved on from this moment in a lot of ways. and that includes the jordans. the death of radio raheem is as current as it gets. the internet 'changed everything' but not really. we're sort of stuck here where this movie is, the same problems bedevilling us (and now a lot of new ones)

Criterion print is pretty delicious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDkpXPOqWws

.. also relevant FYI, the full Making Of doc which came with the Criterion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED9p5cvoKdU

we haven't moved on from this moment in a lot of ways.

Watched it with my kids tonight, they were both a.) shook by it and b.) legit amazed that something made 33 years ago felt so immediate and relevant. My oldest son asked me what exactly the moral was supposed to be, which led to a whole good discussion about how complicated all these things are.

Also of course they loved the neighborhood and all the characters in the community, the way it gives you the whole life of this block. And the colors, so many great images and compositions, it’s a great piece of filmmaking.

I’m not sure it has a moral. I think it’s a bit fatalistic in a way. But idk been a while since I watched it.

Incidentally, one of the minor weird things I remember noticing last time I saw it was that you could make out Brooklyn Lager in the convenience store. I had always assumed that came later, but apparently the brewery opened in 1988. Not sure if it’s presence had any intended significance.

Actually this viewing was the first time I noticed the Brooklyn lager, it surprised me.

Yeah, I agree there's not a moral per se, the film doesn't resolve the MLK/Malcolm tension, it ends with somewhat contradictory quotes from the two of them. But the thing that struck me this time was the last few minutes, the day-after scenes. It would have been easy and dramatically powerful to end with Smiley tacking up the photo in the burning pizzeria, but instead it gives us the aftermath — Sister Mother saying, "We're still standing," Mookie's inconclusive final exchange with Sal, and life on the block resuming its normal rhythms. The sense that we've been here before, we'll be here again. My younger son said, "It's like it predicted the future," and I said no, it just reflected its own present. But he's also right.