The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [124]
What about attacking Sal?
I think he likes Sal too much. For Mookie, in my mind, Sal’s Pizzeria represents everything—and that’s why he lashed out against it. It was Mayor Koch, it was the cops—everything.
That’s “the power” to him?
It’s the power at the moment. But when it’s burnt down, he’s back to square one, even worse. Look at all those riots: Black people weren’t burning down downtown; they were burning down their own neighborhoods.
You end up with no place to have pizza; that’s the net effect of the whole action. You haven’t stopped the police, you—
That’s the irony. Because that’s the only way they can really fight. They felt very powerful at that moment, but it was fleeting.
Now Malcolm X said that whether you’re using ballots or bullets, your aim has to be true, and you don’t aim for the puppet, you aim for the puppeteer. Isn’t everybody on the corner there in ‘Do the Right Thing’ aiming for just a puppet, and not a very powerful puppet at that?
That’s true. But Mayor Koch is not in front of them. Rarely do you get a chance to actively engage the enemy, and the closest there was, was Sal’s Pizzeria.
One of the disturbing things to me about the reaction to that film is that people focused on the burning of the pizzeria and not the death of Radio Raheem, and that there might be a reason for that other than just hog-calling racism.
The thing I liked about Do the Right Thing, especially for critics, is that it was a litmus test. I think you could really tell how people thought and who they were. And if I read a review and all it talked about was the stupidity of burning the pizzeria, the stupidity of the violence, the looting, the burning, and not one mention of the murder of Radio Raheem, I knew exactly where they were coming from. Because people that think like that do not put any value on black life, especially the life of young black males. They put more importance on property, white-owned property.
I’m going to assume that that’s true, that those people don’t put a value on black life. But let me suggest another reason why the burning of the pizzeria becomes the centerpiece of the picture and not the death of Raheem. I think there are aesthetic, as opposed to racial, reasons. Two reasons: One, Radio Raheem is not a fully drawn character—he’s a caricature. He’s a type, albeit a new type for many people. But the audience doesn’t really develop an empathy for him.
I don’t know if I agree with that. I think a life is a life.
It is, but Mookie’s life would have meant more to the audience, because they knew Mookie better. The second reason is that the burning reads as the climax of the film in terms of the way it’s shot and structured.
What you’re saying are both good points. But I’m talking about people that don’t even think about the death of Radio Raheem. What’s important to them is that the pizzeria was burnt. For them, Sal is the cavalry. Fort Apache among savages. That’s who their interest is with.
One of Malcolm X’s favorite quotes was by Goethe: “Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.” If Malcolm was watching that scene go down, would he have felt fear because it was ignorance in action?
[Pause] He might. But he would have perfectly understood why they were doing what they did. See, Malcolm never condemned the victim. And the people who were burning down the pizzeria were the victims.
Let’s talk more about black film. You said, in the documentary on the making of ‘Do the Right Thing’: “The No. 1 concern is to try to be the best filmmaker