What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1989

The Year: 1989
What the Nominees Were: Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Poets Society, Driving Miss Daisy, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Do the Right Thing; Sex, Lies and Videotape

What Did Win: Driving Miss Daisy
How It’s Aged: It’s artless and treacly. Compared to our winner, it feels like a very benighted portrayal of what it means to be beneficent to black employees.

What Should’ve Won: Do the Right Thing
How Hard Was the Decision: Not at all. This is widely acknowledged as one of the great Oscar injustices. (Born on the Fourth of July and Sex, Lies and Videotape are both excellent movies, but not as great as Do the Right Thing.)

Writer and Director: Spike Lee
Stars: Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito

The Story: A conflicted black pizza delivery man working for the only white business on his block must decide what to do when a race riot breaks out

Any Nominations or Wins: Just Supporting Actor for Aiello and Original Screenplay, losing both
Why It Didn’t Win: Hollywood was terrified of this movie. Before it came out, there were articles about how it would cause rioting in the streets, and then, when the riots failed to materialize, articles saying that we’d dodged a bullet. Driving Miss Daisy was a far more comforting movie to give the award to.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson has said his number one influence was Jack Cardiff, who shot Michael Powell’s movies, such as Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, and he successfully recreates the eye-popping use of impressionistic and vibrant color. He painted the wall behind the cornermen bright red just to be more vivid. At film school, would-be cinematographers were still being told that black skin was too hard to light, so it was best to just not try. Dickerson didn’t listen.
   
2. Lee’s first two films are great, but with this third one (released just a year after his second) he exploded in importance and has remained one of the top directors ever since. Eventually, he would stop acting in his movies, but he’s fantastic here as Mookie. It’s hard for screenwriters to create sympathy for characters who try to avoid conflict, but Lee makes Mookie’s simmering, sublimated tensions utterly compelling.
   
3. The dialogue in this movie is packed with character (“If Mike Tyson dreams about whupping my ass, he’d better wake up and apologize.”) and it has monologues of blistering racism, but it’s even better when it captures the tiny dog whistles that even the nicest characters let slip into their speech, such as when Sal asks a black customer, “You paying now or on layway?”
4. After you see the movie (a few times) you must read the book of the same name where Spike captures in real time every step of the process of creating it, from snatches of idea to its chaotic release (you can’t help but wonder if the movie would have been strengthened or weakened if DeNiro had agreed to star as Sal).
5. In the book, you’ll discover all the ways in which the cast rewrote the movie while they were shooting. The ultimate example of this is Roger Guenveur Smith’s character Smiley, who isn’t in the script at all, but Lee allowed Smith to create himself a nearly-silent part who became a bigger and bigger element of the story as they went on.
   
6. Then, finally, explore the Criterion DVD. There’s a great moment where Lee is rehearsing the first boycott scene with actors Aiello and Esposito. Lee notices that, instead of saying “Only Italian-Americans on the wall”, Aiello has changed it to “Only American-Italians on the wall.” Spike instantly sees that this is better, and points out to Esposito that his mocking response should also change to mirror Aiello: “Well, I don’t see any ‘American-Italians’ eating here!” As Esposito is making the change in his script, Aiello explains that that’s the way he says it, because he visited Italy and decided that he was more proud of being American than Italian. At this point, Esposito gingerly points out that he himself is in fact, unlike Aiello, Italian-born. Aiello is of course totally embarrassed, but Esposito chuckles and says it’s no big deal. This exemplifies a piece of advice from my writing books: Always let your characters re-label themselves.
   
   
   

Ah, 1989: Found in “Weekly World News.” I was basically straight-edge, so I didn’t need it, but most of my friends would have been very interested if only they read that publication.