![]() "It took us a little time to get to know each other, especially for me to feel comfortable to say all the things I had to say," Turturro recalls. In the film, Turturro played Pino, Sal's (Oscar-nominated actor Danny Aiello) opinionated and racist son. The presence of real people on the set also kept actor John Turturro on his toes. He paid tribute to Brooklyn streets similar to Scorsese's Little Italy in Mean Streets," she adds. "And I think Spike learned from his predecessors - Martin Scorsese and Sidney Lumet. What other films were shooting on location there? I don't know of any. "It was a win-win situation and a lot of folks appreciated the presence.on a pre-gentrified block in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. "Some of the residents were employed on the production," Joie Lee says. In addition to being Lee's real-life sister, she played Jade, his character Mookie's sister in Do The Right Thing. Instead of trailers, the crew used homes in the neighborhood to film scenes in the movie and as dressing rooms for the cast, says Joie Lee. "So when you see us sweating up there, that's not makeup. "It truly was, up until that point, the hottest summer in New York history," says Smith, who was the only cast member who actually lived in Bed-Stuy at the time. The shoot took place from July to September when the heat index reached record heights, recalls actor Roger Guenveur Smith, who co-starred as Smiley in the film. Weather, however, was a very real element that summer. And to convey that the film's action took place on the hottest day of the summer, he had production designer Wynn Thomas paint surfaces with lots of warm reds, yellows, and oranges. His crew constructed Sal's Famous Pizzeria on an empty lot because it didn't exist. "I mean there's just something about reality that you can't mess with."īut Lee did fiddle with reality a tad. Clair Bourne's documentary, Making Do the Right Thing. "I would've been crucified to do a film about Bedford-Stuyvesant and not shoot in Bed-Stuy," Lee explained in St. Lee was so aware of the tenuous relationship between the community and police, at the time he hired the Fruit of Islam to run security on the set of Do the Right Thing because residents respected and preferred the Nation of Islam subgroup to the NYPD. Shooting on location in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood mattered for the sake of the film's authenticity and community investment. Most recently he played the role of "Isaiah" in the 2016 film The Birth of a Nation, a film about the life of Nat Turner.I would've been crucified to do a film about Bedford-Stuyvesant and not shoot in Bed-Stuy. Smith was in the 2007 film American Gangster with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, in which he played the role of "Nate", Frank Lucas's army connection in Vietnam. In 2006, he played the main villain in the straight-to-video actioner Mercenary for Justice, opposite Steven Seagal. In 2000, he portrayed Agent Screck in the first installment of the Final Destination horror films. He also played a villain in All About the Benjamins (2002) with Ice Cube. Smith starred with Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum in the 1992 film Deep Cover. He portrayed a corrupt detective in the martial arts/crime film Fist of the Warrior, alongside Ho-Sung Pak and Sherilyn Fenn. Smith was also the voice of Bao-Dur in the video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II The Sith Lords. ![]() Also in 2003, Smith read in the HBO documentary, Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives the film, based on interviews conducted by the WPA in the 1930s with formerly enslaved African Americans, is a compilation of slave narratives with actors emulating the original conversation with the interviewer. In 2003, he had a starring role in the Steven Soderbergh/George Clooney TV series K-Street on HBO. In addition to his performances in major studio productions, Smith continues to work in and support independent film projects.
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