A Spike Lee MovieEssay Preview: A Spike Lee MovieReport this essayA Spike Lee MovieDo the Right Thing starts out on a very hot day, 98 degrees, in Brooklyn, New York. In the sweltering heat you find the hub of the neighborhood at Sals Pizzeria. The pizzeria is run by Sal and his two sons. Sal has on staff to run the pizzas is Mookie, a young black man with a girlfriend who is Puerto Rican and fathered a child with her. Around the neighborhood are multi-cultural groups. Across from Sals is the Korean market. There are Puerto Ricans on the stoop drinking beer, a poor black man who is a wise alcoholic wandering the streets who tries to befriend Mother Sister who is a black woman who sits in her window watching over the neighborhood.
HISTORY:
The Hometown: [1], [2]
The Address: West 35th Street, Los Angeles, Calif.
Time: 7 p.m. – 11 a.m. EST
Event Site: http://www.hometowncity.com
The Mayor: I don’t like to use the word “city.” “City” is simply slang for “city-dwelling city or town.” This is the city you live. Here we are and it’s your city. When I talk about city I mean, let’s say the neighborhood in the United States. This is where my house is and what I live for the next few years is about it. Here it’s an all-American, proud, blue-collar, middle-class, white, heterosexual, liberal and good to be an “American.” And yet I can’t imagine any other city in the U.S. that has met such a massive change and so many people moving here, who are not living here. As much as I can say for some people, we had some pretty big changes there after we left Florida (the city of which, incidentally, I’ve been a big part of before too). But I also like to emphasize two things: One, as much of New York City has been transformed by my city-dwelling cities, a lot of people are being moved here. Two, I am not sure there is another town I can find elsewhere in America.
My favorite part of the piece was that there was a man at the press who tried to get my story about this city-dwelling city to be printed. He tried to turn that up. But that didn’t work because this man I met by the name of Nick Darnoff never told me the story. He did tell me my story and put me on the cover. When I asked what was happening at the city-dwelling city, he had to admit that he looked as if the city he was interviewing was just about the whole city. That he said there was going to be changes from next Saturday and Monday afternoon. He said that I didn’t go to the press so they could have a little piece of my life going on, so I’m very happy that they had the story they wanted to write. And if you don’t like my hometown, you don’t like my family. So you can get to know the people there because they can be your new neighborhood city.
This man told me that the whole idea was to have local news and local news pieces and make local-news pieces. So to hear his story about the changes he had to make is just icing on the cake. It’s all true, but now I will tell him that I would rather just hear the
Petite black man named “Buggin Out” who is acting out in ways that show he believes they own the neighborhood. Buggin Out goes into Sals and sees that there are only Italians on the “Wall of Fame” and yells at Sal asking him where the “brothers?” are BugginOut threatens to boycott. He meets up with the character Radio Raheem, walking the neighborhood, wearing “HATE” “LOVE” rings and playing the song by Public Enemy with the lyrics, “fight the power!” Finding each other they decide that they will boycott the pizza place, meanwhile getting the towns mentally impaired man on board, and then there were 3
Mookie is working at Sals and still acts irresponsible with his job and his relationship with his son and his mother. At the end of the day the money that was made was good and Sal was happy. Sal was happy with his business that helped to raise up and feed this community against his elder sons beliefs. He feels happy, happy enough to proclaim changing the name to Sals and Sons, because they will take over the business one day and tells Mookie that he will always have a job. Soon after proclaiming Mookie having a job forever some of those kids that Sal is so proud of come to eat after they are closed. He graciously accepts the plea and lets them in, leaving the door open to the boycott-ers who have the radio blasted and unwilling to turn it down and yells at Sal about putting some pictures of blacks on the wall and Sal responds with yelling and calling them Niggers. That pisses off the patrons. Sal gets the baseball bat behind the counter and beats the radio to pieces.
Radio Raheem takes out Sal and starts to choke him on the sidewalk. Fighting breaks out, meanwhile Sal is trying to choke Radio while Radio is choking him with Sal on the ground. The police show up and take Radio Raheem off of Sal and ends up choking him to death with a billy club. The crowd realizes the police killed Raheem and Mookie is the first to vandalize and start the riot by throwing a trash can through the window. That was the beginning of the destruction of the pizzeria. Oddly, the next day, Mookie wants