Latest / MUBI Podcast / DO THE RIGHT THING — Spike Lee and Ruth E. Carter find color in the dark

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DO THE RIGHT THING — Spike Lee and Ruth E. Carter find color in the dark · MUBI Podcast

• 0:00
  Heads up, this episode includes adult themes and language, disturbing violence, racial slurs said only by fictional characters and spoilers.
• 0:12
  Why don't I have you first introduce yourself, your name and what you do?
• 0:15
  Hi, my name is Ruth Carter.
• 0:15
  I'm a costume designer.
• 0:19
  That's very humble of you.
• 0:22
  Where does your...
• 0:23
  Hi, I'm Ruth Carter. I'm a two time Oscar winning costume designer, four times nominated.
• 0:30
  I have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
• 0:33
  How's that?
• 0:34
  How's that for humble?
• 0:36
  So that's Ruth Carter today.
• 0:37
  The only African American woman with multiple Oscars under a belt, if you're counting.
• 0:41
  But back in 1986 a life in movies was not on her radar.
• 0:46
  After graduating from college, I moved out to Los Angeles to pursue a career in theater.
• 0:55
  And uh it's kind of an oxymoron, right? But...
• 0:58
  Yeah, my dad's a playwright.
• 0:58
  So I know why you laughed just now.
• 1:01
  So, I was a costume designer in a little dance studio in south central Los Angeles.
• 1:08
  Very small, but it had a wonderful performance called A Night for Dancing.
• 1:14
  It was to the music of Stevie Wonder and people from all over Los Angeles were coming to see A Night for Dancing And my friend Robi Reed brought Spike Lee.
• 1:28
  At the time that wasn't such a big deal.
• 1:31
  Spike Lee was only a couple years out of film school.
• 1:34
  His biggest claim to fame was winning a student Oscar with his thesis flick.
• 1:37
  And that had been two years ago.
• 1:39
  His debut feature had just started blowing minds at film festivals...
• 1:42
  But to us in Los Angeles, he was little known and he saw the performance and, you know, as a designer, you have to do it all.
• 1:52
  I was the designer, I was the wardrobe person, I was doing the laundry.
• 1:57
  I was doing the fast changes in the back and the wings, you know.
• 2:01
  And I guess he saw that.
• 2:07
  And we all hung out after the show, we went to a dance club and Spike was sitting at a cafe table talking to me about getting experience in film.
• 2:19
  And even as we were dancing, he was, you know,"Go to UCLA to the senior film department and sign up to volunteer on a student film." I can so totally imagine that you're grooving and he's like, listen, I'm still giving you a pitch right now.
• 2:33
  I kept thinking, you know, is this his rap, is this his approach?
• 2:35
  You know, I wasn't sure.
• 2:44
  Turns out it was not a come on.
• 2:47
  In fact, it was the start of what was going to be a 10 film partnership, and just three years later, Ruth Carter was designing costumes for a Spike Lee joint that would embody the street style and the politics of the late eighties, and beyond.
• 3:12
  I'm Rico Galiano, welcome back to the MUBI Podcast.
• 3:15
  MUBI's the streaming service the champions great cinema.
• 3:18
  On this show, we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
• 3:21
  This is season five, we're calling it 'Tailor Made' because every week we're diving into a movie that captured the fashion look of an era.
• 3:27
  And then we're going to decode that look, figure out where it came from, what it meant to the filmmakers and what it meant to audiences once it hit theaters.
• 3:34
  And if there was ever a movie that meant a lot to people, it is Do the Right Thing.
• 3:39
  When it came out it was celebrated for tackling issues of racial tension and police brutality head on and also feared for exactly the same thing.
• 3:47
  They were saying we were gonna cause all kinds of riots and everything and you know, we thought it was just total bullshit.
• 3:53
  That is Do the Right Thing cinematographer Ernest Dickerson and I talked to him, Ruth Carter and many others about something that was kind of missed in the furore.
• 4:01
  The beauty and the politics, they and Spike Lee had the characters almost literally wear on their sleeves.
• 4:07
  So polish the scuffs off your Jordans and turn up the AC as we rip open the seams of Do the Right Thing.
• 4:22
  To figure out where this movie's fashions came from I'm going to start at the beginning.
• 4:26
  When Ernest Dickerson met Spike Lee on their very first day of graduate film school, NYU 1980.
• 4:32
  There weren't too many other African Americans in the group found out that Spike had gone to Morehouse College for his undergraduate work and I had gone to Howard University for my undergraduate work.
• 4:44
  And Morehouse and Howard are notorious homecoming football rivals, Howard University had a tendency to always kick Morehouse's butt.
• 4:53
  So we started teasing each other about our schools and ragging on our schools.
• 4:57
  They got over it.
• 4:57
  Dickerson went on to shoot all Spike's films for the next 10 years.
• 5:01
  But the point is, it seems like a lot of people's first impression of Spike Lee in the eighties had to do with sports.
• 5:08
  Like I asked Ruth Carter, what he was wearing when they met in '86.
• 5:11
  It was probably a Knicks cap and a Knicks jacket, a Knicks T-shirt, a pair of blue and orange shorts...
• 5:21
  Those would be the team colors of the Knicks.
• 5:23
  ...and some Air Jordans.
• 5:25
  So aside from movies, everyone knew these were Lee's obsessions, his teams and wearing their gear.
• 5:31
  But what no one could have known was that his first micro-budget film outta grad school would make him a sports gear icon.
• 5:38
  And set the stage for the look of Do the Right Thing.
• 5:42
  I want you to know if the only reason I'm consentingto this is because I wish to clear my name.Not that I care what people think, but enough is enough. The film was 1986'sShe's Gotta Have It.
• 5:52
  It's about the sex life of a young black woman named Nola.
• 5:55
  Some people call me a freak.I hate that word. But the character everyone loved is one of her boyfriends.
• 6:01
  Mars Blackmon played by Spike Lee.
• 6:04
  Spike was not originally supposed to play Mars Blackmon.
• 6:07
  There was a quote/unquote real actor that was supposed to play that role.
• 6:11
  But the actor got a quote/unquote real movie, two weeks before we were supposed to start shooting She's Gotta Have It.
• 6:18
  So he figured, well, nobody knows the character better than I do, so I'll play it.
• 6:22
  Yeah, because Mars basically was an exaggerated version of Spike and he's introduced before he even speaks with shots of his outfit.
• 6:30
  Giant gold pendant that says Mars, chunky gold belt buckle that says Mars.
• 6:35
  And finally...
• 6:38
  a shot of his Air Jordans.
• 6:39
  What about Nola Darling?
• 6:39
  What do you want to know?I thought she was a freak.
• 6:41
  You know, freaky deaky? Mars is never without his Jordans.
• 6:46
  During sex he's naked except for his Jordans.
• 6:49
  And one of the film's most iconic scenes there's Mars with a familiar image looming behind him.
• 6:54
  He had that great Michael Jordan poster on the wall.
• 6:57
  You know where, where Jordan is airborne when he's on the phone.
• 7:00
  - Nola.
• 7:00
  - What?- Nola.
• 7:02
  - What?- Nola.
• 7:03
  - What?- Just let me smell it.
• 7:05
  - You are ill!Please, baby. Please, baby.
• 7:09
  Please, baby. Baby, baby, please.Good night! That's supposed to be in Mars Blackmon's apartment and this big Nike poster on the wall.
• 7:19
  She's Gotta Have It was a sleeper hit right off the bat.
• 7:22
  I had no idea until Spike called me.
• 7:25
  I think he had gone to San Francisco where it premiered at a festival.
• 7:29
  And he woke me up telling me that at several minutes into the movie, there was like a citywide blackout.
• 7:36
  The film just stopped.
• 7:37
  And he said, people just sat in the dark and after about 15-20 minutes, the lights came back up and he said, nobody had left.
• 7:46
  You know, that's when we first realized we had something special there.
• 7:49
  Shot in twelve days for $175'000 it ended up grossing a crazy $7'000'000.
• 7:55
  And among the folks who bought tickets were a couple of Honchos from the ad agency that repped yes, Air Jordans.
• 8:01
  Yeah, next thing I knew, you know, Nike just had us wanting to do these commercials.
• 8:05
  Do you know who the best player in the game is? Me? Mars Blackmon. The first one aired in February 88 featuring Spike as Mars literally standing on Michael Jordan's shoulders.
• 8:16
  That's right.
• 8:16
  Air Jordan, Air Jordan, Air Jordan. Lots more followed.
• 8:20
  Nike co-founder Phil Knight later said Air Jordan sales had actually slumped the previous year.
• 8:25
  He said the Mars ads "revived the brand." I got it.
• 8:29
  Spike Lee and Nike were now a thing.
• 8:32
  And though nobody knew it yet that was going to be pivotal in defining the fashion style of a movie he was just finishing up writing.
• 8:44
  Well, I remember first hearing about it, Spike and I were on a plane and Spike was, you know, he was writing a script.
• 8:51
  He always wrote his scripts in a yellow legal pad.
• 8:55
  And at that point, it was called Heat Wave.
• 8:58
  And he just said to me, he said, "Hey man, you know,"I'm writing the next film, it's gonna take place on the"the hottest day of the summer." He said"That's when the murder rate goes up." Yeah, this was gonna be a different kind of Spike Lee joint.
• 9:09
  She's Gotta Have It, and his sophomore flick School Daze were about African Americans interacting with each other.
• 9:15
  But Heat Wave later retitled,Do the Right Thing was about people of different colors trying to get along.
• 9:21
  The New York City version of a racial lynching,a mob of whites attacking three Black men. Because in New York in the late eighties, it wasn't going well.
• 9:30
  In sorrow and angerdozens of Blacks massed in the white middle class neighborhoodof Howard Beach to mourn the death of Michael Griffith,a 23 year old construction worker. In December 86 Michael Griffiths car broke down in Howard Beach.
• 9:42
  He and his two pals decided to grab some food at a local pizza joint and got accosted by white kids wielding bats.
• 9:49
  And make a long story short, they chased him out of the pizza parlor.
• 9:53
  He wound up running into a street, wound up getting hit by a car and killed.
• 9:58
  This was going on in New York and Brooklyn.
• 10:01
  To have it happen in New York City.
• 10:04
  Unbelievable.
• 10:06
  So, in Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee just moved the white owned pizza parlor to a block in the mainly Black neighborhood of Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, turned up the heat and set a bunch of characters in fateful motion.
• 10:17
  I have today's forecast for you.Hot! To me, the first two thirds of this movie doesn't really tell a story so much as introduce you to some neighbors who are cool, hilarious, weird, loving, annoying, sometimes awful, sometimes all that at once.
• 10:33
  Sal the pizza man and his racist son Pino, Buggin Out, a self styled activist who's outraged by Sal's Italian American wall of fame.
• 10:41
  Hey, Sal, how come you got no brothers up on the wall here?You want brothers on the wall?
• 10:43
  Get your own place.You can do what you wanna do. There's Radio Raheem, a mythically huge dude with a mythically huge boombox and attitude.
• 10:52
  If I love you, I love you.But if I hate you...There it is, love and hate. And that was Spike Lee as Mookie, Sal's delivery man who has the world's most foul mouthed baby mama.
• 11:05
  Mookie, I already told you it's too fuckin' hot to make love.- It's too fuckin' hot.
• 11:09
  - Yeah.- Why are you always cursing?
• 11:10
  - I don't fuckin' curse that much."I don't fuckin' curse that much." your mileage may vary, but I sort of love all these people.
• 11:17
  As the heat rises and tension simmer it's admirable how they manage to give each other just enough slack to avoid a meltdown.
• 11:24
  Which only makes it more heartbreaking when night falls...
• 11:27
  Fight the power!Fight the power! And everything comes apart over Sal's white photos and Raheem's big boombox.
• 11:36
  What'd I tell you you about that noise?
• 11:37
  - What about them pictures?
• 11:37
  - What the fuck? Are you deaf?
• 11:40
  No! Are you?
• 11:40
  Fuck you! We want some Black people on that motherfucking wall of fame now! Fight breaks out, the cops arrive, a Black kid is murdered.
• 11:52
  Sal's shop is burned to the studs.
• 11:54
  And in the end, the question is, did any of these people do the right thing?
• 12:00
  What even is the right thing?
• 12:05
  It's a movie that goes to dark places.
• 12:08
  But if you picture it in your head, the images that come to mind are full of color.
• 12:13
  Which for Ernest Dickerson had been the plan from the second Spike showed him the script on that plane.
• 12:17
  He said I want, you know, so we got to figure out a way to really get the audience to feel the heat of the hottest day of the summer.
• 12:24
  He basically asked me to figure out ways of portraying heat on camera.
• 12:28
  How-- how did you decide to do that?
• 12:31
  I felt that the best way to do it was to use color.
• 12:34
  I've always been interested in the psychological effects of color.
• 12:37
  And you know, one of the things that I had learned is the colors in the interior of the submarines are usually kept very, you know, cool colors, kind of like blues, calming colors because they don't want you to get agitated when you're, you know, in this tin can, you know, hundreds of feet under the water.
• 12:54
  But reds and yellows, especially red, red has a tendency to actually increase the heart rate when you look at it.
• 13:00
  The yellows and the reds and oranges and earth tones, that part of the spectrum to me portrays heat better.
• 13:07
  And then to invoke an endless bright summer day, he blasted his sets red hot colors with light.
• 13:13
  So when Ruth Carter came on the scene in mid 1988 she knew her costumes were going to have to play well with that, and with another source of blinding light courtesy of Spike's Air Jordan buddies.
• 13:23
  Putting together the costumes for Do the Right Thing, you know, was a challenge because we had a lot of product placement from Nike, and most of the colors were very saturated. Team colors very bright.
• 13:37
  See I told you, Nike was gonna show up again.
• 13:39
  The good news?
• 13:39
  The way Spike told his story was pretty colorful too.
• 13:44
  You dago, wop, guinea, garlic-breath, pizza-slinging,spaghetti-bending, Vic Damone, Perry Como,Luciano Pavarotti, solo mio, non-singing motherfucker. Like for instance, the montage where half the characters take turn ranting slurs about each other's race directly into the camera.
• 13:59
  The script was heightened realism where you see the Korean grocer standing in the middle of the street spewing off you know, things about, you know, Koch, Mayor Koch...
• 14:09
  I got good price for you, Mayor Koch, "How I'm doing?"Chocolate-egg-cream drinking... There was already a poetry to the film that I was able to use as far as giving myself permission to enheighten the realism.
• 14:26
  We were able to paint our story like a fantasy, like a story book.
• 14:32
  The end result for the movie's young characters, a clean, brightly colored sports look mashed up with elements of a hip street style that was just bubbling in 1988.
• 14:41
  One that exactly aligned with the movie's politics.
• 14:46
  So at that time, from a hip hop music perspective, there's a lot of things going on.
• 14:52
  That is Elena Romero.
• 14:54
  She teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology
• 14:56
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>how hip hop changed the fashion industry.
• 15:00
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But one of the main themes within hip hop music culture, we're talking about late eighties is this narrative around black pride, Afro-Centricity, knowledge of self.
• 15:14
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And with that comes Afrocentric style.
• 15:17
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>It's a look that's kind of always been around, but Elena says in the late eighties, it caught on as a reaction against the gold chain wearing materialism of mainstream rap.
• 15:26
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And against the mainstream African American look of the day, a kind of neo preppy style.
• 15:31
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And all it represented.
• 15:33
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So the preppy movement is symbolic of caucasian success and wealth and education, right?
• 15:41
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And then on the their side is being kings and queens and the history of Africa and the motherland and the pride behind that.
• 15:50
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And so you had leather medallions, you had a lot of kente cloth, a lot of the colors that you see, let's say in the Pan African flag, Egyptian medallions.
• 16:01
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Yeah, look close at the young characters and Do the Right Thing and you'll see it constantly.
• 16:05
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Athletic wear with nods to African identity sometimes literally sewn into the fabric.
• 16:10
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>An afrocentric refraction of actual Brooklyn style.
• 16:14
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Brooklyn was somewhat of a melting pot where you would see an African woman walking in a colorful gele, an African head wrap.
• 16:23
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>You would see Ankara fabric. So we had leather necklaces with Africa on it.
• 16:29
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>We balanced those sporty colors with the African fabrics.
• 16:34
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>We made a lot of African print shorts you see Buggin Out with Kente cloth shorts and a shirt with a Kente stripe on it.
• 16:42
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And Brooklyn was also the source for what was going to become the movie's most iconic item.
• 16:46
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>A shirt bearing the slogan,"Bed Stuy, Do or Die." You see Radio Raheem wearing a hand painted T-shirt from an artist named NaSha who actually had a shop in Brooklyn.
• 17:00
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I really love what she was doing in there.
• 17:02
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>It was actually hard to pick a shirt.
• 17:04
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Even harder though was explaining they'd need a bunch of them for continuity's sake.
• 17:08
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>She was told she had to make, you know, at least 10 of them all exactly the same.
• 17:13
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And that was really hard for me to get her to see that they can't change at all.
• 17:18
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>They cannot be different in any way.
• 17:21
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>They all have to be exactly the same.
• 17:24
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>She was, I mean, as an artist, her nature was to make them all just like a little bit...
• 17:28
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>A little bit different.
• 17:28
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Yeah.
• 17:30
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And the first shirt she made, we spelled Bed Stuy wrong.
• 17:33
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And we actually shot it and then I looked and realized it was spelled wrong and had to go to the editing bay to see how much of it we saw that day.
• 17:42
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And luckily we didn't see much.
• 17:45
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So I was able to get her to paint another set of shirts all exactly the same with Bed Stuy spelled properly.
• 17:51
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Was Stuy misspelled S-T-Y?
• 17:53
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>- Yes.
• 17:53
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>- Oh no...
• 17:54
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>That's not good. That's the opposite of what you want to convey.
• 17:57
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I mean, she was from Brooklyn.
• 17:57
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>She had no excuse. I wasn't from Brooklyn anyway, of course, there's also plenty of unadorned athletic wear in Do the Right Thing.
• 18:08
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>The kind of stuff Spike himself would wear on a summer day in Brooklyn.
• 18:11
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But that was also chosen with care, particularly when it came to the shoes.
• 18:16
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I knew that there were things that were very, how should I say it, important to Spike.
• 18:23
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And that would be that you are wearing the appropriate sneakers, you know, he had a sneaker game always which I had no idea which ones would be the most appropriate.
• 18:33
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So he always picked the sneakers for characters in his movies.
• 18:36
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And in this movie, those kicks work as social statements, as much as fashion statements.
• 18:41
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Yo! Here's exhibit a one of Do the Right Thing, most famous and funny scenes when an oblivious white gentrifier accidentally makes the egregious mistake of scuffing Buggin out's pristine Air Jordan Fours.
• 18:53
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>...you stepped on my brand-new white Air Jordans I just bought.And that's all you can say is,"Excuse me?"- What, you're serious?
• 18:59
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>- Yeah, I'm serious.- I'll fuck you up quick two times!- Two times! Buggin Out, he would be dressed like a stereotype of a nationalist, a black nationalist.
• 19:09
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>That is Mark A Reid he's a film professor at the University of Florida and editor of a book of essays on the movie called Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.
• 19:17
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>He has dreads. He has Kente cloth but Buggin Out although he's political, he's also a materialist.
• 19:26
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>He puts more of his energy into getting into an argument based on something material that he has on.
• 19:34
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>It's nothing to do with his Africanism.
• 19:34
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>It's to do with a commercial product.
• 19:40
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But Spike Lee was doing ads for Nike.
• 19:42
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>He got tons of product placement from Nike for this movie. He still wears Nike.
• 19:46
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So he loves it. There's a part of him that is in Buggin Out.
• 19:50
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So what is, is this really the critique, you know, being, caring about your Air Jordans is a bad thing?
• 19:55
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Spike Lee is not an anti-capitalist.
• 19:58
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I mean, he's part of it.
• 19:59
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But the thing is, I don't think that he would react like Buggin Out.
• 20:05
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I think in fact, he's offhandedly criticizing those people who would dress as he is and put so much faith in their Jordan.
• 20:15
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So it's like this is a guy who should have his eye on bigger issues.
• 20:19
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But he's investing all his energy and his identity in this object.
• 20:22
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Yeah, it's a marker. It's a marker like the Kente cloth, but the Kente cloth means much more.
• 20:30
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And Reid says that message might have carried extra weight at the time'cause of a phenomenon that had just started making headlines in the media.
• 20:36
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Black kids jumping each other for their sneakers.
• 20:39
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>It was something that people would be robbed for. They would be robbed for their tennis shoes.
• 20:50
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Of course, later in the movie, you could argue, Spike Lee uses sneakers to allude to that exact issue again this time aiming ire in the opposite direction.
• 21:02
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>It's during the climactic melee at Sal's pizza shop.
• 21:05
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>When the cops arrive and lift Radio Raheem off his feet with a choke hold.
• 21:10
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Gary, that's enough!Gary, that's enough, man! As he dies the last image is of his shoes kicking in mid air.
• 21:18
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Radio Raheem! It feels to me like a statement.
• 21:23
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>You're worried about kids getting attacked over sneakers.
• 21:26
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Where's your outrage over this?
• 21:28
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Let's get him out of here.I'm a Black man, goddamn it! I'm a Black man! It might not be an accident that Raheem wears Nike Air Revolutions.
• 21:43
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Shooting on Do the Right Thing wrapped in September 1988.
• 21:47
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And what they had in the can was a movie full of life, humor, rage and this kind of intense complexity.
• 21:53
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Ernest Dickerson still wasn't sure what to expect.
• 21:56
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>You make a movie, you just try to make the best movie you can.
• 21:58
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>It's best not to like, hope that it's going to be a massive hit.
• 22:01
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>You know, you just hope that you do connect with your audience.
• 22:04
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And this one definitely seemed to fill a void. You know, it was uh...
• 22:09
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>there was no other film out there like it.
• 22:11
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And viewers definitely agreed on that.
• 22:13
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Though, not on much else about it.
• 22:16
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Do the Right Thing hits the screen coming up in just a minute, stay with us.
• 22:23
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>All right, everybody MUBI is the curated streaming service that champions great cinema, wherever we find it from any country by legendary auteurs or brilliant first timers we have always got something new for you to discover.
• 22:35
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And my dearest hope is this podcast might actually turn you on to something new, either the movies we're diving into or the ones we mention along the way.
• 22:42
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And to help you out with that, we have helpfully put together a collection for you called,'Featured on the MUBI Podcast.' It includes all the movies we have available on the platform that we've ever even noted on the show.
• 22:52
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And let me direct you to one that I think is just criminally underseen.
• 22:55
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>That would be Cow, a documentary by Oscar winner Andrea Arnold.
• 22:59
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>You might have seen her movieAmerican Honey with Shia LaBeouf.
• 23:02
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But this is a very different kind of film.
• 23:04
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>She spent years shooting the life of a single cow on a UK dairy farm.
• 23:10
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And I know it sounds unlikely, but for me, it was the most heartbreaking and emotional experience I had at a movie the year it came out, 2021.
• 23:18
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So much so that last year when I was polled for Sight and Sounds critics poll of the best films ever made this made my top 10.
• 23:25
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>For me there's never been a movie like it, it really feels like you're seeing the world through nonhuman eyes.
• 23:31
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And it is not a pretty picture, not at all an easy watch, but I think it's essential.
• 23:36
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So go back and listen to my MUBI Podcast interview with Arnold about Cow to judge if it's for you, then head over to mubi.com and find the collection called,'Featured on the MUBI Podcast' to start watching.
• 23:47
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>We have all the info you need about how to subscribe in the show notes of this episode.
• 23:51
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Speaking of which, let's get back to it.
• 23:59
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So picture this, it's summer 1989.
• 24:02
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Racial tension is still at a boil.
• 24:05
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>In Brooklyn a teen named Yusef Hawkins becomes the third Black New Yorker killed by a white mob in the 1980s.
• 24:12
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And around that time, a white college kid goes to see a new movie called Do the Right Thing.
• 24:19
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Having no idea what he's in for.
• 24:21
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>This was the time when you did this, I didn't know going to the cinema, what film I was gonna see. And I saw, this one looked good.
• 24:27
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And I just saw it.
• 24:28
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>That is Todd McGowan today.
• 24:30
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>He's a film professor at the University of Vermont and author of a book, analyzing Spike Lee's movies calledSpike Lee. I was stunned by it like how great it was actually when I stumbled into it with my girlfriend at the time.
• 24:43
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>What stunned you about it? What first grabbed you?
• 24:45
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Well, I thought that it was so formally interesting and inventive and I hadn't seen that and also, of course, with this, the content of it I thought was that...
• 24:55
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I couldn't believe I was seeing it at a multiplex.
• 24:57
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I guess that was one of the things that really, really shocked me.
• 25:00
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Why was that?
• 25:01
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Well I mean, there weren't films that were really about racism, there weren't films that were, I mean, they were, but they were usually white savior films and there weren't films that really dove into that kind of situation and, and that racist violence.
• 25:15
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And I thought that was really amazing.
• 25:17
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Do you remember the general reaction? Like the people at large?
• 25:20
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I do, I remember it pretty well actually.
• 25:20
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So it was, there was a widespread among a lot of people, appreciation for the film.
• 25:27
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But then there was this incredible, not just conservative but, but mainstream backlash against the film as well.
• 25:37
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>- How you doing?
• 25:37
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>- Very well.
• 25:39
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>That's me interviewing Spike Lee on my old radio show back in 2011, he just put out a coffee table book about the making of the movie.
• 25:47
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But it's this backlash from 20 years earlier, he really wanted to talk about right off the bat.
• 25:53
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>If you could uh give us a synopsis for the few people who don't know this movie.
• 25:58
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Well, I don't want to really give a synopsis, but I think more important is that people forget when this film came out many top critics predicted that this film will cause race riots.
• 26:08
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I think it was David Denby was one of the big critics.
• 26:11
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Joe... I forgot the other guy's name.
• 26:13
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>- Joe Klein.
• 26:13
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>- Joe Klein Newsweek, I believe.
• 26:16
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Yeah, them guys have never owned up to it ever.
• 26:19
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I remember, I remember the David Denby quote"Pray to God this film does not play in your neighborhood." So consequently, there was a significant part of the white audience who was scared to see the film.
• 26:32
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Ernest Dickerson remembers too.
• 26:33
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>You know, we thought it was just total bullshit.
• 26:36
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Just hearing people's reaction to the movie saying that the film was gonna be destructive.
• 26:45
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And it's amazing how people wound up changing their tune as the year went on.
• 26:52
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Especially when Do the Right Thing hit home video in January 1990.
• 26:57
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Even if the tune might have changed for seriously problematic reasons.
• 27:01
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Do the Right Thing is one of those films where people identify the threat in it with the theater experience itself because there was this, what I think is racist fear that it would provoke like riots in the cinema.
• 27:14
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So it was a real fear, I think of Black collectivity.
• 27:18
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And that's why when it's on VHS, it's not a collective experience, right?
• 27:21
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>It no longer seemed threatening.
• 27:23
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So it was immediately-- There was a more respect given to the film immediately after it was released on VHS.
• 27:32
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Yeah, Do the Right Thing did pretty well in theaters and actually ended up on a lot of critics best of the year lists.
• 27:37
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Roger Ebert put it at number one.
• 27:39
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But it does feel like home video helped make it a defining film of the new decade and its fairy tale fashion fit the zeitgeist like a glove.
• 27:49
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Like storybook, bright colors were all the rage in 1990 as seen and Do the Right Thing.
• 27:53
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And then a few months later on this new sitcom called the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, when Will Smith started wearing outfits from the aptly named brand Cross Colors, and then there was athletic wear or as it would later be called athleisure wear.
• 28:05
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So I've always kind of dressed like Spike Lee in the sports way and in the eighties, it was in the late eighties and early nineties when that trajectory kind of turned.
• 28:15
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And that, like the garb that he wears, the garb that a lot of the characters wear became much more fashionable.
• 28:21
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And I think the film you wouldn't say that it was the driving force, but I think it certainly had an aesthetic to it.
• 28:27
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And that aesthetic, I think it helped along that notion of I can wear this thing, even I can go to work with my jersey on and that's a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
• 28:35
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Of course, Radio Raheem's Bed Stuy shirt went the 1990s equivalent of viral.
• 28:40
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I mean, that put Bed Stuy right on the map.
• 28:43
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I mean, before that did though the world know what Bed Stuy was and I can't think of too many neighborhoods that have that same power and impact.
• 28:52
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Listen, I'm from Sunset Park, Brooklyn and there was a movie called Sunset Park.
• 28:57
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And there were great jerseys that were attached to it because it was around a basketball theme, I remember if you said Sunset Park around the world, nobody knows it.
• 29:06
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But when you say "Do or die Bed Stuy", I mean, that is respect right there and then, And that's thanks to Do the Right Thing.
• 29:14
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And finally, in the year and a half between the movie getting shot and then showing up on video store shelves came a flood of debut music from Afrocentric hip hop acts.
• 29:22
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>The Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest.
• 29:27
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I was in college radio at the time and you would see Dashikis, Pan African colors and leather medallions on the covers of half the rap records coming into the station.
• 29:35
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And also on some of my fellow DJs.
• 29:37
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Ruth Carter's Afro conscious style and its message was right on trend.
• 29:42
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I think she had a great eye for what was happening and what was to come.
• 29:48
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>You know, she nailed it.
• 29:52
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Today, of course, the movie many thought would cause riots in the streets is pretty much universally accepted as a classic.
• 29:57
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And in the world of street style, it's so fondly remembered that 27 years after its release, Nike courted influencers by sending them replica Buggin Out Air Jordan Fours, complete with a scuff.
• 30:09
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Todd McGowan isn't surprised.
• 30:10
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Everything that's politically or formally or aesthetically radical always creates a immediate blowback I think.
• 30:19
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But then it's a very fascinating process because there's a certain point at which we find ways to domesticate the radicality of the work.
• 30:28
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And then we, we say, oh, it's a classic and I think calling so-- I don't mind calling something a classic, but I think calling something a classic is a way to take away the threat that that would exist in it.
• 30:40
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I wonder if another way that that's done in a way is by incorporating it into fashion afterwards.
• 30:47
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Absolutely.
• 30:48
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Making something fashionable is also a way of bringing it into the, bringing it into the mainstream.
• 30:52
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>So yeah, I think that's definitely going on.
• 30:55
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But the thing is every time it feels like you can enjoy Do The Right Thing as just part of the cinema canon or as a touch point for style, the world makes it feel radical again.
• 31:06
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I'm minding my business officer.I'm minding my business. This is Three Brothers, a 92 second short Spike Lee put together in 2020.
• 31:16
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>In the wake of the protests over the killing of George Floyd.
• 31:22
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>It cuts between actual footage of police choking Floyd and police choking another Black man, Eric Garner and then Spikes footage of police choking Radio Raheem.
• 31:32
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>I can't breath! There's no narration.
• 31:37
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Only a title card.
• 31:40
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Will history stop repeating itself?
• 31:42
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Get up...Get off him now!What the f[***]. Just like Do the Right Thing it asks a question, hopes we come up with a good answer and meanwhile leaves you seeing red.
• 32:09
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>And that's the MUBI Podcast for this week.
• 32:11
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Follow us this season for more stories about the power of film and fashion.
• 32:15
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Next time, a look at the work of another director who's been using clothes to send a message since day one, Sofia Coppola.
• 32:21
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>You can't control a lot of things. You can't control men, you can't control patriarchal society, you can't control capitalism.
• 32:29
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>But maybe the one specific thing you can control is how you look.
• 32:33
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Guests include Coppola's costume designers, her cinematographer and herself.
• 32:37
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Follow us so you don't miss it.
• 32:39
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Meanwhile, this episode of the MUBI Podcast was written hosted and edited by me, Rico Galiano.
• 32:44
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Ciara McEniff is our producer.
• 32:45
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Beth Schiff is our booking producer.
• 32:47
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Stephen Colon mastered it.
• 32:48
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Our original music was composed by Martin Austwick.
• 32:51
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Extra thanks this week to Matthew Abramson, Michael Gino, David Púchovský and as always, Karina Lesser.
• 32:57
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>This show is executive produced by me along with Jon Barrenechea, Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca.
• 33:03
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>If you love the show, tell the world by leaving a five star review wherever you listen, let them know we're something special.
• 33:08
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Also, if you've got questions, comments or photos of you in your best nineties gear, email us at podcast@mubi.com And of course to stream the best in cinema, including some of the films we talk about on this very podcast Just head over to mubi.com to start watching.
• 33:24
  and she's the author of <i: Freestyling>Thanks for listening, be safe and may all your movies be worth dressing up for.