1. Breaking of Conventions (risks)
There are expectations of films from moviegoers
We expect the films to be moralistic (or at least the central characters tend to be good)
All of the boring moments have to be cut out

2. Spike Lee (Bio) Communications Major
Studied Film at New York University (Tish School of the Arts) like Scorsese, Seidelman, Jarmusch
She’s Gotta Have It, 1986
Most Commercially Successful film Inside Man was released in the last decade (Critical Success as well)
Pioneer filmmakers (Charles Burnett and Gordon Parks are the only African American Filmmakers that precede him--many followed)

3. The central characters do not end up alone at the end
A central character’s will meets clear obstacle and the goal is met before the conclusion
Clear exposition
Clear causality (every scene has clear motivation that moves the plot forward)
The apparatus is hidden

4. How did the script for Do the Right Thing come together?
I had the title of it before I had anything else. Then it was bits and pieces--it was going to take place on the hottest day of the summer on one block in Bed-Stuy.
Then I added the whole Italian-American/African-American conflict

5. Representation Race Issues
How are white people usually portrayed in films about race?
Racists
Progressive non-racists
Usually there isn’t a lot of middle ground
Feel good films about racism?
In many cases conventional films about racism make white people feel better about how they feel about black people

6. Hashtag: #IfTheyGunnedMeDown

12. Emmarr Butler, 26, depicted with his friend Roderick Morrison:

14. "They say never judge a book by its cover," said Darien Williams
"They say never judge a book by its cover," said Darien Williams. "For me I'm both of those. I left an impoverished environment to do something better for my life. Now when I return to that environment, I'm what people look up to."

15. "The true purpose of placing the two pictures together juxtaposed," said C.J. Lawrence, "was to show that [neither] our appearance nor class nor academic achievement should be the determining factors for whether we live or die.”
These images also show a dialectic commonly seen in film. Black characters tend to be portrayed as either kindly, heroic, or very bad. There isn’t room for normal flawed characters.
The character Mookie in Do the Right Thing, is a fairly normal, immature, flawed human being.

16. Good, Bad, and Hegemony
What happens if a black character is portrayed as not completely good and not completely bad?
Does that defy conventions?

17. Funding of Spike Lee films
His first two films She’s Gotta Have it(1986) and School Daze(1988) were independently funded and financially successful
This allowed for Spike Lee to receive more funding for Do the Right Thing
At the time Indie films weren’t coopted by the studios
Rare to have so much creative control over a project with mainstream backing

18. Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing 1989
Exceeded Lee’s earlier efforts thematically and artistically
energy and craftsmanship
realistic portrayal of African American neighborhood in Brooklyn
Mise en Scene, music, and dialogue rich with allusions to African American culture
Open ending, two divergent points of view

19. Modern Greek Tragedy: Do the Right Thing obeys the three unities.
The story takes place in one setting, Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuy, on the hottest summer day
And there is also continuity of time, which spans about two days
Unity of Action (central story and all secondary plots should be linked to it.)

20. Spike Lee Controversial Sometimes he is portrayed poorly in the press
Do the Right Thing was rumored as a threat in movie theaters even before it was released.

21. David Denby and Joe Klein (critics) said that black people were going to riot after seeing this film
Lee found this problematic, because he felt that the critics were saying that black people weren’t intelligent enough to make the distinction between what’s happening on screen and what happens in real life

22. Controversial for Studio Funding
MOOKIE THREW THE GARBAGE CAN through the window in the penultimate scene “In reaction to seeing his best friend murdered by New York City’s finest. People have a breaking point and that was Mookie’s.”
THE ENDING OF THE MOVIE was not hopeless. “It was a realistic portrayal and that’s why the film was made at Universal Pictures, not at Paramount, ’cause the powers that be didn’t like the ending. They wanted Mookie and Sal hugging, singing, “We Are the World.”

23. Points out similarities to this film with the death of Eric Garner
Lee does not answer questions about whether or not riots are the “right” thing to do
The film was created in a realistic way allowing the audience to determine what they think is right
He does concede that black people never ask him whether he thinks the riot in Do the Right Thing was “right”
The film also deliberately causes the viewer to think about their own value systems. Does the viewer value property can over human life?
Also, many viewers find it necessary to see Mookie as a hero, and claim that he was attempting to save Sal’s life

24. Lee believed the central character “Sal” was racist
The actor Danny Aiello, who portrayed “Sal” did not believe his character was racist
Lee allowed for those disagreements and varying viewpoints to be part of the film

25. Do the Right Thing Spike Lee’s first Union Film Studio Funding
Diverse cast and crew

26. One of many questions at the end of the film is whether Mookie "does the right thing" when he throws the garbage can through the window, thus inciting the riot that destroys Sal's pizzeria. Critics have seen Mookie's action both as an action that saves Sal's life, by redirecting the crowd's anger away from Sal to his property, and as an "irresponsible encouragement to enact violence".[16]

27. The question is directly raised by the contradictory quotations that end the film, one advocating non-violence, the other advocating violent self-defense in response to oppression.[16]

28. Spike Lee has remarked that he himself has only ever been asked by white viewers whether Mookie did the right thing; black viewers do not ask the question.[17] Lee believes the key point is that Mookie was angry at the death of Radio Raheem, and that viewers who question the riot's justification are implicitly valuing white property over the life of a black man