Two treats for fans of Spike Lee’s seminal film: an hour-long making-of from 1989, and a “20 years later” look back with cast & crew.
This is, as writer-director Spike Lee promises, “not one of those regular bullshit EPK things” – director St. Clair Bourne‘s documentary takes us inside the community in which the film was set, in which it was shot, and which it transformed:
This one-hour behind-the-scenes from 1989 is such a time capsule of the production:
The impact of Do The Right Thing, as discussed by cast and crew:
Cinematographer Ernest R. Dickerson on his use of colour psychology, dutch camera angles, and lighting techniques to make eight weeks of shots cut together to look like a single, hot summer’s day:
Bonus: deleted scenes!
Spike Lee at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025, on the film’s reception at Cannes in 1989, when it lost the Palme D’Or to Steven Soderbergh‘s feature debut, Sex, Lies, And Videotape (via Variety):
Further Viewing
In Depth Cine looks at ways cinematographers, such as Marcel Rev in Euphoria (2019), Vittorio Storaro in Apocalypse Now (1979), and Ernest R. Dickerson in Do The Right Thing (1989), use colour theory, create a colour palette, and use colour to tell a story:
In the years following its release, the prolific Spike Lee followed Do The Right Thing with Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), and then Malcolm X (1992):