Like many young urban commuting couples, Barbara and Kai are short on leisure time and long on their need for it. One of their few regular enjoyments is going to the movies and renting newly-released videos. Let’s listen in while Barbara and Kai discuss the movie they’ve just seen....

Kai: So, what did you think?

Barbara: I really didn’t know what the movie was about before, I thought it was more about the Son of Sam killings. I didn’t know that that was used merely as a backdrop for the stories it told.

When we first started watching, the first thing that came to my mind was Boogie Nights--you know, a movie that depicts that time period, the late ’70s. This was a good movie, but it’s no Boogie Nights, which I thought was exceptional, you just can’t compare the two. I’ve got to be honest, generally I’m not that crazy about Spike Lee. And I’ve had enough already with the Italian-American stereotypes.

I agree, it’s cartoonish the way they are portrayed. I thought the direction was great, the camera work was creative and innovative, and I loved the juxtaposition sequences, with the soundtrack of some ’70s pop song in the background.

Yeah, I liked the scene where Adrien Brody’s character, Ritchie, is playing his guitar along to the Who’s “Baba O’Reilly”, and the scene flips to the Son of Sam shooting a couple in a car, then back to Ritchie on the guitar, then to the shot young man, still alive, crawling along the ground....

And then in the final scene, too, with “Won’t Get Fooled Again” as the soundtrack. You have Berkowitz being brought to the police station and the cheering mob at the rally, then it cuts to Ritchie’s “friends”, a mob just the same, who are convinced they’ve cornered the Son of Sam and they haven’t heard the news that he’s already been caught.

I thought it was interesting how a large part of the message is that what you think you know and what you think you see may not always be accurate.

Right. The initial dance scene with the main couple of the movie, John Leguizamo as Vinny and Mira Sorvino and his wife Dionna, transforms into just the two of them out there on the dance floor. I was wondering what to make of that at first, whether it was communicating something about their relationship, that it was special. But then you see that it’s not that way at all. I think she even has a line at some point where she says something like, “I thought what we had was special”.

I think that’s a good example of the distinction between appearance and reality. You may look at something and it looks a certain way or it looks “normal”, but in reality right there underneath the surface, things are very different. Like a David Lynch film.

And how people react to what’s different, to the unfamiliar, they react with fear and loathing. When Dionna is sitting in the car outside of C.B.G.B.’s, she’s actually physically repulsed by the appearance of the punkers hanging around outside--so much so to the point that they have to drive away. Just because someone looks a certain way doesn’t make them a monster.

But that was a big part of the message! You can look at someone and they look ok, like Berkowitz, and you could look at someone like Ritchie, who just because of his appearance people assume he’s a certain way, that he’s a weirdo, a cult follower, a serial killer....

Yes, but he IS in fact different in some respects, and that is slowly revealed in the movie....

Well, that goes back to the other message that I liked, the idea of where personality comes from, and to what extent you’re responsible for your own actions. Remember that scene where Vinny and Ritchie are talking on the beach, discussing the two kinds of personality: the personality that you’re born with, and the personality that people give you?

And when Ritchie smashes the glass over his head, is that an example of the personality that people give you? People look at him and think he’s strange, so in turn he acts strange? The self-fulfilling prophecy at work?

Right! And that ties in to the whole message of responsibility for our own actions. You don’t blame external things for your own actions--Vinny would like to explain his cheating on the problems concerning Ritchie, or his emotional turmoil because of his seeing the bodies of those 2 victims in the car, etc. When Vinny sees those victims, you think it’s going to be an epiphany for him, a life-changing experience. But it’s the beginning of a long rollercoaster ride down into desparation for him, and he uses it as an excuse, a catalyst for being the way he is and doing what he does. It’s a close-up on the whole personality by heredity/personality by environment thing. Vinny’s lost, he knows he lost, but he doesn’t know why. He knows there’s a God out there, but even his wife tells him not to bring God into it.

Going back to the fear of what’s unfamiliar to us, and how appearances are deceiving, perhaps we all have the capacity to have a monster within us. Vinny was possessed by inner demons, of a different nature than Berkowitz, but nonetheless monsters that controlled him and dictated his behavior. His friends were controlled by fear, and suspicion and paranoia.

I thought Leguizamo’s performance as Vinny was great. I never realized he could be such a good actor. But I thought he did a terrific job portraying a young man disintegrating and being torn apart by his inner conflicts. And I thought that Adrien Bowen as Ritchie was even better. I love watching a performance that’s so natural that I don’t realize I’m watching someone acting, when I’m just totally caught up in the character and the character’s world, and going along for the ride.

I did think there was a bit too much sex and violence. And the shooting scenes, I thought were grotesquely violent, the graphic realism of it.

So would you recommend someone to see it?

If only for Leguizamo and Bowen’s performances, yes.

Summer of Sam
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: John Leguizamo as Vinny; Mira Sorvino as Dionna; Adrien Brody as Ritchie; Jennifer Esposito as Ruby; Anthony LaPaglia as Detective Lou Petrocelli; Bebe Neuwirth as Gloria; Patti LuPone as Helen; Ben Gazarra as Luigi; John Turturro as the voice of Harve the black dog; Michael Badalucco as David Berkowitz
Rated: R
Running Time: 2 hours 22 minutes

2/22/00