Twenty-five years ago today I saw the second showing of Do The Right Thing over on 8th Avenue in a theater that no longer exists. I’d just graduated high school and I went with two classmates to see Spike’s new movie on opening day. A few few years earlier we’d seen School Daze on its opening day in Times Square. On both occasions we were the only white people in the theater. I remember the cheers at the end of Do The Right Thing when a passage from Malcolm X was shown on the screen.
One of the strongest movie-going memories I have. I saw it that first Friday, too, on Long Island. Not entirely sure where, but I want to say Westbury. It was a packed house and my friends and I couldn't sit together. I'm not sure if we were the only white people in the crowd, but we were certainly among the very few. Can you remember the controversy in the press before it opened? People were predicting riots!
[1] Same here. I was 15 that summer, PE hit me and my friends like a bomb, couldn't get enough of that tune.
Riots..that had to be the NY Post, right? Such idiocy..
[2] It wasn't just the Post - I remember it was talked about at Cannes that year.