Fighting The Power: “Do the Right Thing” 20 Years Later
by Anthony Kaufman (July 1, 2009)
Spike Lee (right) in a scene "Do the Right Thing".
“1989, the number, another summer,” so goes Public Enemy’s renowned rap anthem. But it wasn’t just another summer for American cinema. Twenty years ago this week, the year that “Do the Right Thing” exploded onto the screen was a pivotal one. Not only was Spike Lee’s American masterpiece about boiling racial tensions on a Brooklyn block released in U.S. theaters, but so was Steven Soderbergh’s “sex, lies and videotape,” Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me,” Gus Van Sant’s “Drugstore Cowboy,” and Jim Sheridan’s “My Left Foot”—all sophisticated, daring movies that received both significant critical and box-office success, and in a few cases, studio support. In a sense, 1989 was the year that American independent cinema first came of age. “The time was so ripe,” says John Pierson, who famously gave Spike Lee $10,000 to complete “She’s Gotta Have It” and sold “Roger and Me” to Warner Bros for $3 million. “You had these people with some degree of success and it was like let’s take it to the next level,” he says, citing directors like the Coen brothers and Spike Lee. “Some of the smarter young studio execs were forward-thinking, like this is the new wave, let’s see if they can make ‘real’ movies that still have an edge.” “Do the Right Thing” producer Jon Kilik concurs. “After Jim Jarmusch and John Sayles and the Coen brothers’ ‘Blood Simple’ and ‘She’s Gotta Have It,’ it really felt like there was a movement happening,” he says. “From ‘86 and ‘87, you could just feel that building in a special and unique way.” If Spike Lee’s second film “School Daze” was mishandled by newly installed leadership at Columbia Pictures, souring the director’s relationship with Hollywood, “Do the Right Thing,” backed by Universal Pictures, provided a model for mutually beneficent success between maverick filmmakers and major entertainment companies, according to Pierson. Remember, this was before all the studios had specialty divisions. If “Do the Right Thing” were released today, insiders suggest its backer would likely be Universal subsidiary Focus Features, rather than the big studio.
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