Spike Lee wrote the script for Do The Right Thing in two weeks, and ultimately scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for his efforts. Set on the hottest day of the year in a Brooklyn neighborhood, the searing heat is used as an allegory for the rising racial and social tensions among the residents that ultimately end in tragedy. The catalyst comes in the form of Sal's Famous Pizzeria, an Italian-American run business in a predominantly black area. Tensions rise when Sal defends why there are no people of color on his restaurant's 'Wall of Fame', and things quickly spiral out of control. A fight breaks out, watched by a crowd of spectators, and when the police arrive to contain the situation they inadvertently choke one of the residents to death. Things come to a head as the crowd turns into a mob, setting fire to the restaurant before having hoses turned on them by firefighters that have come to quell the blaze. Things are summed up by Samuel L Jackson's local radio DJ who asks; 'why can't we all just live together?' Setting the movie over the course of the day allows Spike Lee to create a more intimate portrait of race relations in 1980s New York, with the minimal locations and small cast masking the bigger issues being raised. Contradiction is also one of the movie's key themes; does Lee's Mookie throwing a trash can through the restaurant's window incite the riot, or save Sal's life by directing their anger to the property rather than the person. The ending also features two quotes from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X that depict contradictory views on violence. Stylish yet realistic, entertaining yet thought-provoking, Do The Right Thing is a movie the director is yet to better 25 years on.
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