Twenty Years Later – Looking at “DO THE RIGHT THING” Through Today's Lens

Most things show their relevance and real nature in retrospect. Film is absolutely not an exception. This Summer I’d been thinking about “Do The Right Thing” because it’s on my top ten list and because it has been a nice round number – 20 years – since its theatrical release. I remember thinking at the time the media and public reaction was equally as bizarre at that for “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which came out just a year earlier.

The response that was most odd to me was the assertion that by just exploring the sources of racial and gender bias and misconception, you’d ignite a firestorm that could actually spill over into the physical. There seemed to be this strange consensus that if you just didn’t talk about it, didn’t confront all the messy truth, it would recede and we’d all go to bed safe that night in our conspiratorial silence.

The truth simmering just underneath it all was this: A film about inequality isn’t as likely to provoke violence and unrest as – say – actual prejudice. If there was going to be a riot or a demonstration that didn’t stay peaceful it was going to be because there were actually problems that hadn’t been solved.

So, I was absolutely struck by a statement Spike Lee made in a recent CNN.com article about this film on its twentieth anniversary (http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/20/spike.lee.right.thing/index.html?eref=rss_showbiz): "It's not like this thing has disappeared because {President Obama} is in the White House," he said. Some things have improved, particularly the atmosphere in New York itself, he said. But, "We've got a lot of work to do."

He’s basically saying we’re not living in a post-racial America now that Obama is in the President. And after reading a story about a Harvard professor who was charged with disorderly conduct after police confronted him when he was trying to get into his own house (http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/21/massachusetts.harvard.professor.arrested/index.html?eref=rss_topstories) I can only think how little – despite the election of Obama – has actually been accomplished. The same questions people asked after the first theatrical showing of DO THE RIGHT THING are still the ones we’re asking now:

How long will we deny prejudice based upon race, gender and oodles of other things still exists?

What will it take to address these problems with sensitivity and respect?

And – please, oh please - when will this film be more of historical significance that a current reflection of where we are with how we view race?

Before there was"Fear Factor" there was just Fear

One of my favorite teachers in high school was my AP Freshman English maven, Mrs. Eberly. She used to say all the time that we’d be the same people we were right then in five years except for the people we met, the books we read and the movies we went to see. I’d add that you almost never know what form the change will take until long after it’s happened.

At some point in 1978 or 1979 I went to see the Michael Crichton thriller COMA with my parents. I remember really wanting to see it because the trailers were simultaneously hypnotic and terrifying and I remember my mom and dad thinking the themes and story might be a bit much. When my ferocious pre-teen whining won out, I’m not so very sure I won in the end. I can tell you – without a doubt – the remnants left by this film, sandwiched between the folds of my cerebellum, are the main reason I was so freaky freakersoned out before having my recent surgery. My residual fears lived on like so many popcorn nubbins left in the folds of the seats at The Village.

In case you haven’t seen this movie, let me issue a huge SPOILER ALERT right now. What follows below pays creepy homage to Crichton’s delightfully macabre and wickedly imaginative storyline. In this film, oodles of perfectly healthy patients (amongst them a young Tom Selleck and Lois Chiles) come in for routine surgeries and mysteriously all fall into comas. They’re then all sent a long-term care facility where only their exterior husks are preserved so their loved ones can visit them from time to time. Unbeknownst the patients’ families, THE ORGANS OF THESE HEALTHY MEN AND WOMEN ARE HARVESTED AND SOLD (holy crap!).

At the time the idea seemed nearly impossible to me. But – because it was just likely enough to happen – my paranoia neurons fired like it was the Fourth of July. Bam! Pow! The world – and the authority figures in it – were never quite the same for me.

Besides upending trust I had in doctors, Crichton was also pretty slick in his choice of main character. The rockstar whistleblower in this film is an unconventionally foxy female doctor (Genevieve Bujold). When her own doctor boyfriend (Michael Douglas) doesn't believe her and the evil, guilty male doctors around her try to paint her concerns and suspicions as “hysterical” it makes them look, well, like the manipulative a-holes they are and in the process makes her passionate outcry look like the noble act that it is.

Wherever Michael Crichton is now I’d like to invite him to suck it for making me so afraid of my own routine surgery…and say thank you for creating a female character so dynamic she’d still be a trailblazer if her kind appeared in a film thirty years after COMA.

My Oscar Predictions...

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE - SEAN PENN
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE - HEATH LEDGER
ACTRESS IN A LEAD ROLE - KATE WINSLET
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE - VIOLA DAVIS
ANIMATED FEATURE - WALL - E
ART DIRECTION - THE DARK KNIGHT
CINEMATOGRAPHY - SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
COSTUME DESIGN - THE DUCHESS
DIRECTING - SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - TROUBLE THE WATER
DOCUMENTARY SHORT - THE CONSCIENCE OF NHEM EN
FILM EDITING - SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM - WALTZ WITH BASHIR
MAKEUP- THE DARK KNIGHT
MUSIC (SCORE) - SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
MUSIC (SONG) "Jai Ho" SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
BEST PICTURE - SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
SHORT FILM (ANIMATED) - OKTAPODI
SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION) - SPIELZEUGLAND (TOYLAND)
SOUND EDITING - IRON MAN
SOUND MIXING - THE DARK KNIGHT
VISUAL EFFECTS - THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY) - SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY) - IN BRUGES

SHOW ENDS AT 8:29 PM PST

Well, Sh*t

As it turns out - while thinking about this year's Oscars - I decided to look up the actual day Eric Stormoen sent out his top ten list near the close of the last century and it turns out it was May Freaking 6. The ten year anniversary of that date is LESS THAN 100 DAYS AWAY. Now it may sound to you like that's more than enough time to get through the second half of a top ten list but you must understand that for me this means working at a ferocious pace. I have - after all - taken roughly nine years and two hundred and sixty some odd days to get this far. I'm starting to think all those years writing on deadline make it easier to do it that way and nearly impossible to do it without one breathing down my neck. So I'll be seeing all of you *very* soon with some new posts post-haste.