Most Rewatchable Scene
Rosie Perez opening dance; final sequence
In the discussion (17)
Approx. transcript time · 00:34:12Read transcript
- The opening sequence of Rosie Perez dancing to Public Enemy is the first scene on the list.
- Perez was choreographing the Fly Girls at the time, and five years of dance are visible in the sequence.
- Lee reportedly met Perez in a Brooklyn club and told her she was in his movie even though she said she was not an actress; the film is described as full of accidents like this.
- Jennifer Lopez was one of the Fly Girls Perez worked with and was not yet famous.
- Buggin' Out's Wall of Fame argument with Sal is a complicated scene; Lee has said both sides have good points: it is Sal's shop, but only black people eat there.
- The Wall of Fame argument is called a proto-internet conversation with no subtlety or compromise about how many and which black figures go up.
- Buggin' Out represents an emotional, ahistorical form of activism whose confrontation can only make Sal feel aggrieved.
- Frank Vincent driving through the open fire hydrant is one of the funniest parts of the movie and recognizable to anyone who played in hydrants as a city kid.
- A childhood memory: opening the corner hydrant and using a can with no top or bottom to spray passing cars, because there was no pool to go to.
- Pino and Sal's debate about selling the pizzeria plays in one long shot interrupted by Smiley.
- That conversation is necessary but not essential and creates a false sense of trust in Sal, coming right after his moment with Jade, as he says he is proud to have fed the neighborhood.
- Sal also hates rap and being confronted and smashes the boombox; like the Martin and Malcolm pairing, Sal and everyone in the film carry both love and hate, with Jade possibly the only purely good character.
- The final extended sequence is the last pick, painful and hard to watch rather than comforting, with the camera tumbling in and out of the pizzeria and the trash-can jump cut repeated three times.
- That final sequence is thought possibly to be the only one Lee ever storyboarded, with Ernest Dickerson, from the moment Smiley, Buggin' Out and Radio Raheem enter the pizzeria.
- The racial slur montage is added to the list; later Lee versions such as the 25th Hour mirror speech have made the device less effective, but here it establishes the factions.
- A Turturro story: after watching dailies of his rant he asked Lee to get on the cover of Ebony with his arm around him so he would be safe on the subway; his rant is called the best of the sequence and extremely rewatchable.
- After the list is recapped, one participant goes with Rosie Perez; the ending is chosen by a participant who calls Rosie a close second.
