Summer of Sam (1999)

[Winston T. Boogie]

Title: Summer of Sam (1999)

Tagline: No one is safe from son of sam

Genre: Thriller, Drama, Crime, Romance

Director: Spike Lee

Cast: John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, Mira Sorvino, Jennifer Esposito, Michael Rispoli, Saverio Guerra, Brian Tarantina, Al Palagonia, Ken Garito, Bebe Neuwirth, Patti LuPone, Mike Starr, Anthony LaPaglia, Roger Guenveur Smith, Ben Gazzara, Joe Lisi, James Reno, Arthur J. Nascarella, John Savage, Jimmy Breslin, Michael Badalucco, Spike Lee, Lucia Grillo, Nelson Vasquez, Darielle Gilad, Michael Harper, Jessica Galbreath, Evan Cohen, George Tabb, Michael Imperioli, Victor Colicchio, Peter Maloney, Christopher Wynkoop, John Turturro, Ernie Anastos, Jim Jensen, Melba Tolliver, Phil Rizzuto, Reggie Jackson, Danielle Burgio, Lisa France, Peter Epstein, Jill Stokesberry, Joseph Lyle Taylor, Kim Director, Bill Raymond, Mildred Clinton, Emelise Aleandri, Michael Sorvino, Phil Campanella, William H. Burns, Ernest Mingione, Frank Fortunato, Danny Zappin, Murielle Arden, Christina Klobe, Charlotte Colavin, Clayton J. Barber, Joie Lee, Rome Neal, Mark Breland, Susan Batson, Evander Holyfield, Toneda Laiwan, Janet Paparazzo, Jodi Michelle Pynn, Jennifer Badger, Jeff DeRocker, Nick Oddo, Damian Achilles, Joanne Lamstein, Gabriel Barre, Tara McNamee, John Michael Brown, Damian Branica, Lorne Behrman, Curtis Gove, James Baggs, Rozie Bacchi, Grace DeSena, Zoe Bournelis, Ashleigh Closs, Frank Cadillac, Daniel J. Courtenay, Michael Prozzo, Kathryn Hud, Antonio Torres, Pamela Wehner, Dionna Colicchio, Victoria Galasso, Danielle Tutelian, John Martucci, Mario Macaluso, Andrew Lasky, Richard Paul, Ray Carlson, Alexander J. Vega, Steven Croft, Mary Jo Todaro, Jacqueline Margolis, Iris Braydon, Valerie Mazzonelli, Hal Sherman, Nicholas Brown, Jennifer Badger

Release: 1999-07-02

Runtime: 142

Plot: Spike Lee's take on the "Son of Sam" murders in New York City during the summer of 1977 centering on the residents of an Italian-American South Bronx neighborhood who live in fear and distrust of one another.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I have brought this up here because this was a Spike Lee picture I had not seen and just recently watched. There is a Netflix documentary series that is pretty recent that is basically about potential ties to a satanic cult and multiple people taking part in the Son of Sam killings. It is well worth checking out and reminded me to go back and watch this picture which I had skipped seeing when it came out.

I will admit that the reason I did not see this is because I find John Leguizamo to be an incredibly annoying actor that specializes in over baked in the extreme. However, due to this being a Spike Lee film and the subject matter being interesting to me I finally watched it.

I nearly programed this into my October viewings for Halloween and then was going to talk about it in the Noirvember thread but the truth is this picture is not horror and not noir.

This is a slice of life film that basically follows the lives of a group of Italian Americans during the Summer of Sam period and their sort of soap opera ups and downs. In fact David Berkowitz, the man arrested for the Son of Sam killings, is portrayed in a comic fashion that resembles something from a Seinfeld episode and has barely anything at all to do with the story. Do not watch this thinking it is going to get into the Son of Sam killings, it doesn't.

This is about the lives of a group of seriously obnoxious people whose lives are so screwed up that the killings going on around them barely register. Sure the killings are an annoyance in their lives that mildly hinders things for them but on the whole they are so self involved and...well...stupid, that the murders are barely as impactful as a regular season Yankees game.

Leguizamo stars in his most obnoxious over the top and annoying form. His acting is atrocious, spastic, and silly. He has all the dramatic impact of a pinball. He is not at all believable and you (or I) sit there hoping Berkowitz shows up to kill him because the acting and the character are just so awful. Miro Sorvino plays his wife and you have to wonder how she took an interest in this clown or how her father let her marry such a piece of garbage.

I guess what this picture is supposed to be is some sort of love letter to 1970s New York. When it had an "edge" and where you could dance the night away or go to a club where there was a running all night orgy happening. OK, well, they should have just made a movie about that and came up with some more interesting characters to populate it.

There is not a single character in this film that is interesting, funny, likable, or even nasty enough to be even mildly watchable. It is like the Dumb and Dumber cast goes to New York. Spike does not even spare himself and appears in the film either as a TV news reporter or as Spike Lee riffing on pretending to be a news reporter in a bad film. His performance seems like a joke we are supposed to get a laugh out of. It wasn't that funny and only helped remind me I was watching a bad film, with bad acting, bad writing, and a goo director taking on what could have been great subject matter for a film.

The entire inclusion of the Summer of Sam killings really only is there to serve as a reason for a bunch of guys in an Italian neighborhood to act like clowns and blame one of their own for the killings...not in a dramatic way...just as another example of what buffoons they are.

I kept waiting for the picture to pick up steam or steer towards some sort of dramatic outcome. Spoiler alert, it never does. Berkowitz is a minor character that is comic relief and so ridiculously portrayed you wonder who thought this was a good idea. We even get a scene or scenes with a talking dog...and yes, the dog talks in an SNL fashion only it is stunningly dumb.

All we do here is follow around Leguizamo's loser as he sleeps around, gets angry and guilt trips himself about sleeping around, screws up his life in pretty much every way possible, and lets down everybody that cares about him. The movie ends on a totally flat note, nothing interesting happens, and everybody just walks away.

The end. Oh, yeah, Spike decides to both open and close the film with a real person that lived through the Summer of Sam telling us that there are thousands of stories that take place in the city and this is one of them. In the case of the story the picture chooses to tell, well, it was one that was not worth telling about people that were not even mildly interesting.

This is one of those pictures that you wonder with all of the interesting aspects of what they could have delved into and calling the film Summer of Sam, why did they instead tell the story of an idiotic clown that is an asshole to his wife and friends because he appears to just be selfish and stupid. How is that where they went with this?

 

[TravisR]

I love this movie and think it's one of Spike's best. Sure, nearly everyone is unlikeable but that doesn't really bother me. The movie was basically ignored back in 1999 but it has gotten a reappraisal and gained some fans in recent years.

I'm not nominating John Leguizamo's performance for an Oscar or anything but I appreciate it more than you. More than anything, this thing is a snapshot of late 90's New York actors and about half of them would be on The Sopranos in the next five years (including one of the screenwriters who also had a small role in this).

I've always thought that the talking dog was supposed to look off the wall since it's from the perspective of a crazy person. That being said, I can see it not working for a viewer.

Also, Adrien Brody and Jennifer Esposito's band- Late Term Abortion- is the greatest punk band name in history. Between that and using a Son of Sam letter as the basis for the lyrics of a song, they would have been 70's punk legends if they had recorded an album (and if they were real).

I mean Ritchie's a fuckin' poser (that faux British accent? C'mon, no self respecting NYC 70's punk would do that ) but I'm buying Jennifer Esposito looking and singing like that back in CBGB's in 1977.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I love this movie and think it's one of Spike's best. Sure, nearly everyone is unlikeable but that doesn't really bother me. The movie was basically ignored back in 1999 but it has gotten a reappraisal and gained some fans in recent years.

I'm not nominating John Leguizamo's performance for an Oscar or anything but I appreciate it more than you. More than anything, this thing is a snapshot of late 90's New York actors and about half of them would be on The Sopranos in the next five years (including one of the screenwriters who also had a small role in this).

I've always thought that the talking dog was supposed to look off the wall since it's from the perspective of a crazy person. That being said, I can see it not working for a viewer.

Also, Adrien Brody and Jennifer Esposito's band- Late Term Abortion- is the greatest punk band name in history. Between that and using a Son of Sam letter as the basis for the lyrics of a song, they would have been 70's punk legends if they had recorded an album (and if they were real).

I mean Ritchie's a fuckin' poser (that faux British accent? C'mon, no self respecting NYC 70's punk would do that ) but I'm buying Jennifer Esposito looking and singing like that back in CBGB's in 1977.

Interesting. I mean, I love Spike's work but this just fell totally flat for me. Maybe I need to see it again. I came into it having recently watched the Netflix series on the Son of Sam killings, which I found really well done. So, it was in my head that Spike's film was going to be about the killings with what I figured would be some sort of dramatization of how it was impacting the people in the neighborhoods that had to live through it.

What makes it one of Spike's best for you? It did not enter that category at all for me. I know I came into it expecting something like Fincher's Zodiac so I had no idea it would be a "hangout" movie where we are not following the Son of Sam stuff we are just getting a snapshot of these characters and their lives.

It was a frustrating film for me and I had issues with a bunch of stuff in it. Just simple things like the film introduces LaPaglia's detective, he sits down with Gazzara's mob boss to ask him for help...and then just disappears from the movie.

Gazzara's mob boss at one point suspects a guy, asks for the guy to be brought to him and then that never happens. Like it was cut or never shot, I don't know.

Obviously Leguizamo is the featured actor here so the focus seems mainly him, with Brody's character being the side character and the story seems mainly concerned with their sex lives. Which frankly were not interesting and while Brody's character is a better person than Leguizamo's he is really only in the story so Leguizamo can betray him as well.

I mean a movie about the punk band or about New York's wild nightlife in the late 1970s would have been cool. This gives us little bits of that but the real focus just seems to be how Leguizamo's character destroys his marriage and betrays his friend. Which obviously has nothing to do with the Son of Sam.

I know I went in with expectations that screwed up my viewing of the picture.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

A funny aside, Leguizamo's character reminded me of an Italian guy I grew up with. His attitudes on sex were spot on. This guy would preach that you only have straight sex with your wife, missionary position only. His famous saying back then was "She's your wife. She's going to kiss your kids with that mouth so you do not stick anything in it."

The difference was he had none of Leguizamo's guilt complex about sleeping around. He truly believed you had other women on the side so you could do all the "dirty stuff" with them. He did not feel guilt over it he thought it was the way that you kept your relationship with your wife "clean" by not asking her to do things like this. So, to him doing all this cheating with other women was a way to "respect" your wife.

I should add the hilarious kicker to that tale. So this guy gets married, has a child, and lives by his standard of never doing "dirty stuff' with his wife. He has some women on the side he does all that with. His wife ends up cheating on him with the godfather of their child because she "wanted to do dirty stuff" and he would not do it with her so she found a guy that would.

The details of their divorce were hilarious and never fail to make people laugh when he tells the story.