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Apple’s Beats Music Celebrates Do the Right Thing‘s 25th Anniversary
Revisiting the characters and locations of Spike Lee’s classic, Do The Right Thing 25 Year Anniversary: A Beats Music Experience is a 22-minute short documentary just released under the banner of, yes, Apple’s newly acquired Beats Music. Lee, Danny Aiello, production designer Wynn Thomas and others from the film stroll its Bed-Stuy block, recalling moments, interviewing current residents, and trying to remember just which apartment Rosie Perez lived in. Unlike Lee’s recent Old Boy, it’s an official Spike Lee Joint — spirited, not too nostalgic and capped with a block party performance by Public Enemy doing “Fight the Power.”
Sadly, of course, watching the film today it’s impossible to ignore the fact that its issues have not gone away in 25 years.
Decades later they're still asking why Mookie smashed the window at Sal's instead of why they killed radio Raheem. #Ferguson
— Ahmad Abuznaid (@DiplomatEsq) August 11, 2014
In terms of the doc itself, it’s interesting that it has come out under the Beats label. Since Apple paid $3 billion for Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre’s headphone and streaming company, Cupertino watchers have speculated on what else Apple would do with the lifestyle brand. Lee’s short suggests that Beats could more directly become a content label, with its marketing power and built-in audience being leveraged to promote not just music but film.
