Ah, 1989.
I remember being a wide-eyed teenager who didn’t really have friends and sought comfort at the local library. As a wannabe bon vivant, I would regularly check out the New Yorker. I’d flip past all the boring short stories and news items — pausing at some of the chuckle-worthy cartoons — and go straight to the movie reviews. I remember one well-written article bemoaning the state of cinema and how the box office was fat with sequels. Thanks to the movie that was cited, this editorial has staked a room in my mind these past thirty years.
Tim Burton’s Batman was the second highest grossing movie of 1989. The highest grossing movie domestically: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
It wasn’t the only sequel doing great that year.
Also arriving in theaters: Ghostbusters II, The Karate Kid Part III, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, License to Kill, Police Academy 6, Lethal Weapon 2, and a host of sequels from smaller franchises.
Lampooning this trend was yet another sequel. Back to the Future II took a bite out of Papa Spielberg’s Jaws franchise. A lot of those 1989 sequels have sequels and remakes in production today. (On streaming, in the case of The Karate Kid.) Perhaps that’s what that New Yorker writer was bemoaning: even in 1989, audiences sought out the familiar.
Which may be why Do the Right Thing was such a shock to the system. At the time, Hollywood was trying to make films that dealt with civil rights, especially pertaining to race. What it was leery of, though, was having a non-white lead. Hence, Driving Miss Daisy (winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture) and Glory. Spike Lee, in his typical fashion, has railed against the first movie quite vocally. The second is a more interesting case to me, though.
Glory does a great service by acknowledging the bravery and the tribulations of an African American unit, even among fellow soldiers. It features fantastic performances from Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and Andre Braugher.. And yet the movie centers around Matthew Broderick’s character (a detail that Ebert notes in his review of the film). I think it works though, especially since Broderick seems to be intentionally underplaying his role. The result was one of the best war movies ever made in my opinion.
It does point to a trend with director Edward Zwick, though, who would also direct The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond. I guess writing from a viewpoint from someone other than a white guy when you are a white guy yourself opens its own can of worms, though.
Do the Right Thing makes no concessions in hiding the rage and anger. Its power remains undimmed. Is burning down an Italian restaurant the right thing? It’s a question that many people today would struggle to answer. I don’t know how many filmmakers would go as far as Spike Lee in reaching the same conclusion. If the movie were made in 2019 and not 1989, it would be even more controversial today.
It’s frightening how realistic everything gets out of control. Prescient, too. It’s easy to forget that this movie came out three years before the 1992 LA riots. The building resentment was there on film for all to see.
Lee mentions that, in 20 years, the only people who had ever asked him why Mookie threw the trash can through the window of Sal’s Pizzeria at the end of the film, have been non-black people; and that no black person, apparently, had ever asked him that question.
An addendum to Mr. Lee’s comments: there are a non-zero number of African-American writers online who do not think Mookie did the right thing (including the site where I found the reference to that Spike Lee quote).
Of course, there was a lot of fun to be had in 1989, too. Joe Johnston would get his directorial debut with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and Look Who’s Talking had talking babies. That last one was directed by Amy Heckerling, who also directed generation-defining films Fast Times at Rigdemont High and Clueless. These were both among the highest grossing movies of 1989.
A land of contrasts, this 1989.
Today’s prompt: What is your favorite movie from 1989? (h/t MrSplendiferous)
Also, what movies have you seen lately?
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