It's a question that has haunted film fans and director Spike Lee since June 30, 1989, when Do The Right Thing was released.

"White people still ask me why Mookie threw the can through the window," Lee said in an interview with the Associated Press. "Twenty years later, they're still asking me that. No black person ever, in 20 years, no person of color has ever asked me why."

And 20 years later, there is no answer from Lee about the climactic scene outside the Brooklyn pizza shop in the film that made him a household name. Lee wrote and directed the movie, but also played the part of Mookie.

"People were fearful of the backlash," Rosie Perez tries to explain, in her AP interview. (Perez played Mookie's Puerto Rican girlfriend, Tina, and dances to Fight The Power during the opening credits.) "A lot of things happening in the movie were happening in real life. People were afraid when the truth, although a little exaggerated, was put up on the screen for everyone to see."

Sadly, Do The Right Thing came up short at the annual award shows, though at the Oscars Danny Aiello was nominated for best supporting actor and Lee was nominated for best original screenplay. Still, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert was so moved at seeing the movie, the AP says, that he was left crying at its conclusion. (Read his full review here.)

TOP 5 MEMORABLE LINES FROM DO THE RIGHT THING:

5. "Trust you? The last time I trusted you, Mookie, I ended up with a son."

4. "You fool! You're thirty cents away from having a quarter!"

3. "One day you're gonna be nice to me. We may both be dead and buried, but you're gonna be nice."

2. "My people, my people, what can I say, say what I can. I saw it but didn't believe it, I didn't believe what I saw. Are we gonna live together, together are we gonna live?"

1. "Stay Black."