Do The Right Thing

The Voyager Company has done a great job on packaging and supplemental material included with the feature. The hour plus-long Making Of Do The Right Thing is a socially conscious documentary on the history of the production and how the film was made, followed by additional “making of” camcorder footage during production. Lee and cinematographer Ernest Dickerson and others discuss their film on the running commentary track. The single CAV Side 4 lists Lee’s film credits aided with clips and stills from each one, plus a montage of the racial incidents in New York City that inspired the film, narrated by Lee on the analog track (not identified on the jacket contents listing). Pieces of the script as well as pre-production conceptual drawings are shown in this section accompanied with analog track commentary (again not identified). Two commentary analog tracks support the CAV section on the making of the music video “Fight The Power,” the film’s opening theme sequence. A lot of material is presented in the CAV format which I found generally to be a challenge to sort through, but worth the effort.

Written, produced and directed by Spike Lee, this a controversial, yet highly regarded “black experience” film offers a look at the life in the racially mixed urban neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where there is tension among the African Americans, Italians and Koreans who live and work there. The story takes place on one very hot day in the neighborhood, where tensions eventually lead to the destruction of a pizzeria run by whites.