Can you believe it’s been 20 years since Do the Right Thing was released?

I remember when I saw the film for the first time. I couldn’t get anyone to see the movie with me. It was more of a timing issue than anything else. I worked in the University City / La Jolla area of San Diego, which translates into rich and white. The big mall in the area was showing the movie, but in the weeks before the movie came out, there was talk of the film causing riots and for people to beware of the movie.

To an extent, I believed it. I thought about seeing the movie in an ‘urban’ area, but my thinking was there would be far less black people in University City and if there was to be violence, the police would respond faster to UC than in Southeast San Diego.

You kind of have to understand the tone of race relations at that time to understand the impact of this movie. This film was before Rodney King, but San Diego had its own Rodney King moment in the 80s. Somewhat similar in parts to Rodney King and OJ Simpson, the Saigon Penn incident in San Diego had some white cops pull over a black driver. Something happened and a fight broke out, where Saigon Penn injured one or two of the officers. He turned himself in a few hours later and it took two trials before he was found guilty. There was a lot of mistrust between the police and minority communities.

There were racial tensions in many cities because race, while talked about in some circles, was kind of a taboo topic.

So I got off work late in the afternoon and I got tickets for the 7:30pm showing of the movie. Do the Right Thing didn’t have the lines of a blockbuster movie, so when it was getting close to time for the movie to start I walked right in and went into the theater. I was still pretty early and I had my pick of seats. It might have been my paranoia but when I saw people coming in I would swear they would look at me, make sure they were in the right theater, then made sure not to sit near me.

I had a few good rows, like three in either direction that was between me any anyone else sitting near me. The only person to get close to me was, oh you could have guessed this, another black guy. Even he didn’t get too close. It was like we didn’t want to make the white people scared.

When the movie started, oh my, just the opening credits going gave some interesting reactions to the audience. It reminded me of the scene from the original Producers with Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel, when the curtain rises and they start the musical Springtime for Hitler. The faces on many in the theater, with the opening credits, was just like that.

As the movie went on the mood of the audience changed and everything was good until Mookie threw the trashcan into Sal’s window. It was like a lot of critics said about the film, which was they didn’t see why Spike Lee had that happen, which led to the climax of the film. I did hear people debate the ending and when some of my friends saw the film we debated it also. Ironically, that scene gave people a chance to discuss race, which was an important thing.

It’s just amazing how times have changed, yet stayed the same, in 20 years. No one would have imagined we would have a black President. Hell, thinking of a black President on TV was earth shattering, which didn’t become a possibility until the show 24. The same comes when we have Sotomayor being a Supreme Court nominee and the talk is less about her qualifications and more about how she will somehow give lenience to minorities. We progress but some are still stuck in the old ways, but Do the Right Thing is a testament in show where we were and how far we’ve come.

 

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Do the Right Thing - 20 Years Later - June 3, 2009
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