'I said, 'Hell, no f–ing way.'' Spike Lee reveals that Paramount – where DoTheRightThing was originally set up before moving to Universal – wanted Mookie and Sal to hug at the end of the movie
"Everybody worked in unison," says Spike Lee about the making of 1989's 'Do The Right Thing.'"I told them in preproduction, 'When people watch this film, even if they are sitting in a fucking air-conditioned theater, they have to be sweating.'"
But 30 years ago this month, Universal was being pressured not to release the film, or at least push the pic back out of the summer months for fear of racial unrest. “Tom Pollock, the president of Universal Pictures, was 100 percent behind the film,” director Spike Lee recalls. “Universal was not afraid.”Last Temptation of Christ
Joie, the filmmaker’s younger sister, who plays the sibling of Spike’s character Mookie, agrees with her brother. She knew the film was special when it was screened in May 1989 at the Cannes Film Festival. “We all went, and it blew my mind,” she says. “The reception, the ovation.” Lee’s Mookie is a delivery man from the local pizza joint, Sal’s, owned by the Italian-American Sal . John Turturro plays Sal's volatile racist older son, Pino, and Edson is his younger son, Vito, who is friends with Mookie. The neighborhood is filled with distinct personalities, including the alcoholic Da Mayor and Mother Sister , who watches the world from her window.
Park recalls two moments he improved in the film during the riot sequence. "I was grateful to Spike for keeping them in the movie,” he says. “‘You and I are same!’ was a line I improvised after yelling, ‘I not white! I not white!’ And when the cops are driving away with the dead body of Radio Raheem in the back seat, you see my character come up from behind the squad car."
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