So here’s the deal: 1991 was something of a watershed for black cinema. To fail to acknowledge and pay tribute to this fact would be a massive betrayal of my responsibilities as a human being. I would love to sit here to tell you all about it. Problem is: I’m white. So there’s that. I mean...if you really want to get technical--my paternal grandmother WAS born in Panama...and I have second, third, and fourth cousins all over Miami and Puerto Rico for whom English is a second language. But yeah...no...I’m pretty friggin’ white, folks. The Catholic School I force-attended until I was 12 wasn’t just white...it was translucent! My high school had, what, six non-caucasian students across four grades? Approximate number of black students: one. African American history wasn’t in the curriculum and it certainly wasn’t in my household, where by born-at-the-turn-of-the-century great-grandparents openly lamented the fact that “colored men” were allowed to play professional basketball. What happened was: I accidentally watched Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing when I was 10 years-old and it completely changed my life. I know that probably sounds like hyperbole...but...I don’t know what to tell you...it isn’t! It continues to change my life and to open my eyes every time I watch it, which is at least once a summer, usually on the first day the temperature creeps north of 90 degrees. As I’m sure you’re all well aware, on Memorial Day of 2020, a Minneapolis police officer knelt on the neck of a black man named George Floyd for almost nine minutes in broad daylight. While horrified onlookers screamed and pressed “record” on their cell phones and pleaded with the officer to stop, life slowly drained from Floyd’s body. A few months later, after weeks of nationwide protests the scale of which hadn’t been seen in half a century, my girlfriend and I sat down, cranked the AC, and settled in for our annual viewing of Do the Right Thing. But this time it was too much to take. If you haven’t seen the film, well, you are not living the right kind of life! I’ll spare you the play-by-play and jump straight to the spoiler--DTRT takes place in Brooklyn on the hottest day of the summer. When night falls, long-simmering racial tensions reach a boil at the Italian-American owned Sal’s Famous Pizza. A violent skirmish erupts and the NYPD inexplicably choke Radio Raheem to death out in the street. Radio Raheem, the benevolent, Public Enemy-bumping giant who’s this film’s secret center of gravity. Dead. And for what? The onlookers scream at the police. They scream the names of people...real people….who’d been recently murdered by the police. And there we were watching this movie...this THIRTY ONE YEAR OLD MOVIE...and thinking about how we haven’t gone anywhere but backwards. That if they shot this scene today and had characters shout the names of the real life black and brown bodies who have died at the hands of the police, the scene could go on for hours. As the police try to stuff Radio Raheem’s lifeless body into the back of a cruiser, one of the all day drinkers from across the way calmly approaches, his voice quaking with resigned sorrow and anger, and says “you didn’t have to kill the boy.” No…..you didn’t.
Oooof...anyway--in addition to teaching me things I was completely ignorant about, DTRT also made me a Spike Lee diehard for life. I’ve seen all of his movies, even though a strong handful of them are profoundly unwatchable. In the last paragraph I mentioned how a lot of black directors, some barely old enough to legally purchase alcohol, made huge impressions on the big screen in 1991. Since we’re focusing on the summer of ‘91, that leaves us with 19 year-old Matty Rich’s Straight out of Brooklyn, John Singleton’s audacious debut Boyz n the Hood, and Spike Lee’s follow up to his follow up to Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever. I saw all of these films when I was still just 12 years-old...which is some fucking heavy lifiting for a 12 year-old! In an earlier review, I mentioned that I hosted a sleepover party where my fellow 8th graders begged me to watch Problem Child 2 but I made them watch Jungle Fever instead. And sure--they complained and cried and called their moms to ask what crack was and why someone would want to perform fellatio for it. But I bet they’re all looking back now and thanking me! Or..you know...maybe not. Problem Child was like 71 minutes long and had at least two jokes to Jungle Fever’s zero. As much as I love all of these films, I recognize that none of them are VHS of the Week-able. Does anyone really want to listen to Danny Tebo from Grafton, MA (population: vanilla whiteout) tell jokes about Boyz in the Hood for 8 pages?? Especially since ALL of these movies end harrowingly! (“Ricky is so excited he’s going to be leaving the hood to play football OPE!! Ricky got smoked! Balls.). Shit, does anyone want to read me telling 8 pages worth of jokes about any movie?? Why do I keep doing this??
I guess I should say a few words about Jungle Fever since it’s what I’ve chosen to name this article. I won’t give you a beat-by-beat on it ‘cuz that would take forever and be super awkward. There’s really nothing funny about it at all. Or...I guess the lead character’s name is Flipper Purify. That’s unintentionally hilarious. And he’s played by man who would rather go to jail for a long ass time than pay taxes, Wesley Snipes, which is actually hilarious. Flipper is a medium happily married architect who works at a firm that’s run by Tim Robbins and the Voice of Chucky. Flipper’s bosses hire an I-Talian lady named Angie (natch) to be his secretary. Flipper wants a black secretary until he sees that Angie is played by the lady who threw an entire filet mignon at Tony Soprano’s head Annabella Sciorra. Then he wants sex. They ball. Problem is--he’s black and she’s white. And also--like a billion other problems that lead to a billion tiny subplots. If there’s a movie that has more subplots than actual plot...it’s this one. Angie is already dating John Turturro...and y’all know that nobody fucks with the Jesus! Actually, Turturro is a huge pushover. He lives with his domineering, racist father, played by the legendary Anthony Quinn. True story--in 1997 I went to see Anthony Quinn speak at my college. His son was a student there and I guess the old man wanted to do him a solid. I remember leaving after about 10 minutes upon realizing that I did not really care what Anthony Quinn had to say about anything. Speaking of racist, domineering fathers---Angie’s dad is Frank Leotardo from The Sopranos! As in the late Frank Vincent! As is “go home and get your fuckin’ SHINE BOX!” And Angie’s brother? None other than Christopher Moltisanti! If Spike Lee directed a Soprano’s episode...it would be this film. Anyway, everyone is unhappy about Flipper and Angie’s affair…’cuz they’re all racist like a motherfucker. Well...not Flipper’s wife really. She just doesn’t like her husband fucking other woman and kicks him out. Fair shakes. Flipper goes to visit his buddy Spike Lee, who introduces him/us to that weird hovering tracking shot that he’ll go on to use in every move he has made since this one. Spike tells Flipper that he has jungle fever, which is also the name of the movie we’re watching (tears off shirt...runs through the neighborhood banging pots and pans). It’s also the name of the film’s title track, which was sung by Stevie Wonder. Ever notice how everyone is way too polite to draw attention to the fact that Stevie Wonder hasn’t written a good song since Reagan’s first term? I’m totally fine with that. While Flipper is hanging at a basketball court talking about life and love with Spike Lee, he runs afoul of his older brother Gator. Gator is an unrepentant crackhead played by recently repented real life crackhead Samuel L Jackson in what is still his best performance. And yes...I have seen all of his other movies. Things between Flipper and Angie go from shitty to quite shitty. There’s really not much chemistry between them...prolly ‘cuz according to Spike Lee’s biography...Wesley Snipes was a creepy dickhead on set. John Turturro falls in love with a black woman...which makes his racist father even racist-er. Flipper, along with his parents, played by the indispensable icons Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, try to help Gator, but he’s beyond salvation. At the film’s conclusion, Gator comes around his parents' place begging for cash for another fix. Ossie Davis draws a pistol and, like Marvin Gaye Sr, murders his own son. It’s fucking beyond devastating. Flipper attempts to reunite with his wife but is shown the door yet again. One morning, whilst walking through his neighborhood, a teenage prostitute approaches him and offers to suck his dick for two dollars. He grabs her, screams “NOOOOOOO!!!!”...and the movie ends. My 12 year-old friends vow never to speak to me again.
It’s not a flawless film, Jungle Fever--maybe not even in Lee’s top five. But it definitely evokes nostalgia for the era when Spike Lee was swinging for the fucking fences every time out. Just leaving it all on the screen. Directing every flick like it might be his last because...let’s be honest...ANY of these flicks could have been his last! Earlier I said that 1991 was a watershed moment for black cinema….which means that all of these young gun hotshot directors who burned up the screen got huge budgets and carte blanche for their big follow ups, right? Dudes...please. Matty Rich made one more film and never worked again. Spike Lee was 34 when Jungle Fever came out and already an elder statesman at 34. With 5 critically acclaimed, money-making films under his belt, he was finally given the green light to direct an adaptation of Alex Haley’s Malcolm X. And how much money was Warner Bros willing to pony up for a sprawling, 3 hour epic with a bravura leading performance from Denzel Washington and scenes shot all over the world and all across the early 1940’s and 50’s? Ten million dollars LESS than they spent on Robin Williams’ Toys….that’s how much! A few million more than they spent on Al Pacino’s Scent of a Woman...in which fucking NOTHING HAPPENS!!
Fortunately, Spike Lee persisted and is once again at the top of his game. Last summer, in the middle of all the bullshit, he dropped Da 5 Bloods on us, a knockout masterpiece that easily recalled the hungry young Spike of the early 90’s. It’s the kind of flick few expect from someone 22 features films deep into their career. Delroy Lindo would win the Oscar for best actor,...that was a foregone conclusion. The only other question was how many other categories would Da 5 Bloods be nominated in? Best Picture? Best Director? Maybe a supporting actor nod for Chadewick Boseman, who looked like a chiseled young specimen and who was secretly dying of a cancer that would kill him just weeks after this movie came out. Maybe if you're the guy who made Do the Right Thing only to watch Driving Miss Daisy win Best Picture THE SAME YEAR you learn not to get your hopes up about these things. But man….Da 5 Bloods was nominated for exactly fucking nothing! NOTHING! At least everyone and their great granny annie had Chadewick Boseman locked in to pick up a posthumous Oscar for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. A little poetic justice there at least, right? WRONG! They gave the goddamn award to an 83 year old white man who already has like 20 Oscars and who DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO SHOW UP! Because of course they did...of course they did...