Summer
of Sam is a film full of nostalgia, especially for
director Spike Lee, who in 1977 decided to become a filmmaker.
Centered at a community in Queens where Italian working class
men hang out near the Long Island Sound, the premise of the
film is that the soaring temperatures of summer 1977 became
so unbearable for some that something weird had to happen.
Or so Spike Lee wants us to believe, using loud music to provide
a late-‘70s film score that often drowns out, thankfully,
the often ridiculous dialog. Discotheques are jammed. Punk
fashions infuriate. The New York Yankees win the World Series.
Excessive demands on air conditioners in bankrupt New York
City result in a blackout. Looters break into stores. Drug
pushers ply their trade openly. Lovers make out in parked
cars. Taking his "orders" from a neighborhood dog, David Berkowitz
(played by Michael Badalucco), becomes a serial killer who
calls himself Son of Sam, terrorizing Queens by shooting at
couples parked in lover’s lanes and women on the street, ultimately
leaving six dead and six wounded before he is apprehended
by the police. The star of the film is oversexed Vinny (played
by Colombian John Leguizamo), who is bored with his wife Dionna
(played by Mira Sorvino). When Dionna leaves Vinny due to
his excessive extramarital affairs, he is unable to beg her
to stay. Meanwhile, Ritchie, a straight heavy metal musician
(played by Adrien Brody) stops turning onto his girlfriend
Ruby (played by Jennifer Esposito). Certain members of the
Italian community, trying to play vigilantes to find the Son
of Sam, beat up Ritchie because of his punk attire and his
sideline as a stripper/prostitute at a gay club. Spike Lee,
who plays a nerdy TV newscaster in the film, interviews an
African American woman, who opines that all hell would have
broken loose if the Son of Sam were Black. Lee’s nostalgia,
in short, is not for the pristine pre-Vietnam American
Graffiti (1973) of Fresno but for a confused post-Watergate
New York in which drugs, sex, violence, and verbal disrespect
are taken for granted by mindless residents. New York Post
columnist Jimmy Breslin (playing himself) ends the film with
clichés—saying that he both loves and hates New York and quoting
the tagline from The Naked City (1948 film and
1958-1963 television series): "There are eight million stories
in the naked city—this has been one of them." In short, Spike
Lee’s emotional striptease of how a lot of New Yorkers reacted
to the long, hot summer of 1977 is his latest BigApplegate,
though a decade ago Lee turned another scorching New York
City summer into a far more profound Do the Right Thing
(1989). As for the "long hot summer" hypothesis of human behavior,
once rejected as an explanation of the race riots of the 1960s,
1999’s soaring temperatures appear to be a repeat of 1977
for New York, and thus far the only outrage in the Big Apple
appears to be Summer of Sam. MH
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