Fanspot
Mookie's house
“I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need.”
Malcolm X (quote used at the end of Do the Right Thing) by Spike Lee
In the film, Mookie lives in a house that is still standing today. As if time had stopped to allow this building to continue to keep alive the memory of this feature film, which was shot entirely on Stuyvesant Avenue, between Quincy Street and Lexington Avenue.
A seemingly modest shoot that upset the drug dealers operating in the area. So much so, that Spike Lee was encouraged to call on members of Fruit of Islam, a paramilitary branch of the Nation of Islam to keep them at bay.
For the purposes of the film, the team builds a real pizzeria from scratch on a vacant lot. The location has since been exploited by real estate developers, so while it’s impossible to sit down at Sal’s for a pizza, you can still immerse yourself in the remarkably preserved atmosphere of the feature film.
The city even decided in July 2015, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of its theatrical release, to rename part of Stuyvesant Avenue, Do the Right Thing Way. A memory of these eight weeks of filming that some locals are happy to tell tourists about.
It is also here that Spike Lee returns on April 22, 1989 with the rap group Public Enemy to film the video for Fight The Power, the main song of the soundtrack. The director thus shoots two versions of this video at the crossroads between the political rally and the live performance.
It was an opportunity for him to make the message of his committed book even clearer and to fuel an already heated controversy. Presented at Cannes, Do the Right Thing did not win any awards. Spike Lee, disappointed, left the festival prematurely. Only to return a few years later.
It took Spike Lee only two weeks to write the script for the film.
173 Stuyvesant Ave
A house that became a legend thanks to Spike Lee, that the city of New York has highlighted, like the rest of the street, renamed Do The Right Thing Way, for the 24th anniversary of the film.
The Fantrippers Buying Board
Fanspots Stories New York
Discover the secrets of the cult places of the greatest masterpieces of pop culture in New York!
The world capital of pop culture, New York embodies unbridled creative freedom. The city that never sleeps has been the muse of a large number of directors, actors, screenwriters, singers, musicians, cartoonists and writers…
Many have passed on their fascination for the city to the general public and made some of its places famous worldwide, making them into the legend of pop culture. These are the secrets of a hundred of them revealed in this first volume of the Fanspots Stories collection.
Did you know that?
Did you know that the filming of Rage Against The Machine’s Music Now in the Fire caused Wall Street to shut down for the first time since 1929?
Fanspots Stories New York is also
Spider-Man, Ghostbusters, Superman, Leonard Cohen, Led Zeppelin…
Directed by a team of pop culture specialists and embellished with many anecdotes, Fanspots Stories New York tells more than just a story: these are some of the most fascinating stories in pop culture.
Fanspot Stories New York
100 pop cults
a unique and new concept
224 pages of fun
a beautiful large-format book 24 x 30, round back slicefil
Content quality
Interest for fans
Value for money
Discover all the places Do the Right Thing on our map
By Damien Duarte
Passionné par la culture pop depuis son enfance, ses références vont de Donald Duck à Batman en passant par Marty McFly. Fantripper dans l'âme, voyager sur les traces de Ghostbusters, James Bond ou des héros de romans comme Cotton Malone fait partie d'un séjour idéal et réussi !