Jack Bradley
Professor Young
ENGW 1101
5 February 2018
Thoughts on the film so far
In class we have been watching Do the Right Thing, and I really like it so far. I’m not a big fan of reading, but I kind of enjoyed reading the script of Do the Right Thing; I really got dragged into it. Even though I enjoyed reading it, I found it hard at times to keep track of where the story was and what characters were in and out of each scene because the setting changed pretty often in the film. Another thing that you can do while reading is try to figure out what type of personality a character has, and then you can attempt to visualize how they act, how they say things, and how they look; however, everyone could visualize each character differently. The film is very helpful to me because it puts a name to a face, attitude, etc, and it even helps you understand each scene better by knowing exactly how the characters act. An example of this for me would be Radio Raheem. Through reading the script I thought Radio Raheem was going to be more of a punk, he doesn’t talk as much as some of the characters, but I started to get that sense through his actions. These actions included walking into Sal’s while blasting his boombox, when he was in the “standoff” with Stevie and the Puerto Ricans when they both kept turning up their music, etc. While I read these things in the script I started to visualize Radio Raheem as a punk who wore older clothes, maybe pants sagging, someone who didn’t have respect for anyone or anything, etc, but as I found out in the film, Radio Raheem seems to be kind of laid back, pretty friendly, and dresses pretty nicely. Furthermore, there were some scenes for me that were either hard to visualize in my mind or details that I didn’t pick up on while reading, but that are very well presented in the film. An example of this would be the scene when they open up the fire hydrant and start playing and splashing around in the water to cool off. I could actually visualize this scene pretty well while reading the script, but what confused me was how they got the water to spray upwards. The detail that I didn’t pick up on while I was reading the script was that Cee and Punchy scraped cans against the sidewalk which they then used to put over the open fire hydrant to direct the water into giant streams. Ultimately, I’m really enjoying the film so far because I enjoyed reading the script and just the different stories and scenes that take place and it helps give me a better understanding of the characters and what is happening.
