Summer of Sam

 

While Italian and Italian-American auteur filmmakers, including such diverse filmmakers ranging from Alberto Cavallone and Martin Scorsese, have made endless incriminating and unflattering portrayals of their own neighborhoods and people, lifelong race-hustler and honky baiter Spike Lee (She’s Gotta Have it, Malcolm X), undoubtedly the single greatest Negro filmmaker who has ever lived, probably created what is the most epically Italio-incendiary “Wopsploitation” ever made, Summer of Sam (1999)—a work centering on a blue collar Guido community in the Bronx set around the backdrop of the so-called “Son of Sam” serial murders carried out by deranged Jewish-American serial killer David Berkowitz. As someone who has already displayed a more brazen and glaring contempt for ‘sub-white’ types like Italians, Jews, and the Irish as opposed to WASPs and Nordic types as demonstrated in his classic works of heated race-hate, including Do the Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), Clockers (1995), Bamboozled (2000), 25th Hour (2002), and Miracle at St. Anna (2008), Summer of Sam is undoubtedly the most uncompromising and unwaveringly malicious assault on the American gumbas, which is quite ironic considering, as Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote regarding the melodramatic crime-thriller, “this is the closest Lee has yet come to Scorsese territory!”, as Scorsese is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Guido American filmmaker to ever live with classic films like Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), and Goodfellas (1990). Of course, with films like Raging Bull (1980) and his classic mafia flicks, Scorsese has been known to give strikingly shuddersome portrayals of his fellow Sicilians, but it seems that Lee’s Summer of Sam is celluloid revenge of sorts for the Italian-American filmmaker's nefarious portrayal of savage-like and conspicuously criminally-inclined negroes in Taxi Driver as never have I seen such an eclectically retarded cast of garlic-eating wop retards than in Summer of Sam—a perturbing portrait of NYC’s Little Sicily as a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, except where the pervert protagonist can only ‘rise to the occasion’ for every wop whore aside from his wife. Starring Colombian-American actor John “Spic-O-Rama” Leguizamo—a man of marginal Italian ancestry but who describes himself as being of “Amerindian and Mestizo heritage”—as a flamboyant and semi-faggy heterosexual hairdresser, and the blatantly much taller and more attractive Mira Sorvino as his wife, Summer of Sam follows what happens when a bunch of deluded Guidos become paranoid because of a homicidal Hebraic serial killer is killing brunette babes around town. Offending the families of the victims of Berkowitz, as well as prideful Italian Americans, who left racially-charged and anti-Spike Lee graffiti around the production during the making of the film, Summer of Sam is the Negro filmmaker’s bitter unlove letter to the rotten Big Apple’s Sicilian community. Indeed, it is no coincidence that Spike Lee once wrote in his Do the Right Thing companion book regarding a Eddie Murphy sketch that, “The most truthful thing he said is that Italians act like niggers more than niggers do. It's true, they certainly act Black and don't even know it,” as Summer of Sam is a virtual quasi-pornographic Guido show for the American racial apocalypse.

 It is the summer of 1977 and everyone is New York City is freaking about the sensationalized Son of Sam serial killer case, which is dominating media headlines. Set around a group of half brain-dead and delinquent Dago dumbasses in the Bronx (filmed in the Throgs Neck/Country Club section of The Bronx, which is apparently more German/Irish than Italian in real-life), including protagonist Vinny (John Leguizamo), a hyper horny hairdresser who gets hard for anal sex, but falls flaccid when it comes to his beauteous wife Dionna (Mira Sorvino), Summer of Sam shows what happens when you're born Sicilian-American and never get out of the neighborhood. During the beginning of the film, Vinny, dressed in gay disco clothes, goes to a night club with his girl Dionna, but being a sexual psychopath of sorts, he offers to drive his wife’s Italian cousin back home and makes a pit stop to screw in her car. Vinny goes back to the club and picks his wife up and on the way back he runs into a crime scene where the Son of Sam has just unleaded bullets on a couple in a flashy sportscar. Dionna smells the vaginal juices of her cousin on her hubby's mouth and immediately suspects his infidelity, but being friends with a group of dumb Goombah bastards, Vinny the ginny also runs into trouble with his friends as well. Vinny’s friend Ritchie (Adrien Brody) is now a punk rocker with spikes in his hair who speaks in an absurd contrived British accent in tribute to the Sex Pistols, which baffles his vulgar archetypical wop friends who symbolically stand next to a sign that says “Dead End” as they aspire to nothing aside from dealing drugs and having an aimless identity in their own little Italian neighborhoods. Being more ambitious than his racial compatriots, Ritchie begins living a second life as a gay stripper/hustler/punk rock singer and gets another Italian girl from his neighborhood, a whore named Ruby (Jennifer Esposito), involved with prostitution and the punk lifestyle, which leads his small-minded neighbors to eventually suspect that he is the Son of Sam serial killer. Ritchie’s girl Ruby may be a moron of the major sort, but she is intelligent enough to rhetorically ask the boys of the neighborhood, “Don’t you assholes ever grow up?!” It would seem, at least according to Spike Lee, when you're Sicilian-American, you never grew up, but your childhood friends might beat the shit out of you if you get a stupid haircut as it scares their old world sensibilities.

 While Vinny cannot get over his pathological and Catholic inspired obsession with “butt-fucking, 69,” which he refuses to ask his wife Dionna to do, Ritchie dives deeper and deeper into a state of hedonistic nihilism and pawns his man-puss to buy Fender Stratocaster guitars (or as he describes it, “A fuckin’ new Fender!”). Meanwhile, after being asked by a member of the NYPD to help, a local mob boss named Luigi (Ben Gazzara), who eats at an Italian restaurant where Dionna works as a waitress and that her father owns, takes it upon himself to take crime into his own hands by trying to identify and kill the Son of Sam killer. Unfortunately, Vinny’s man-children wop friends, including their leader Joey (Michael Rispoli), also tries the same and based purely on his perverse punk lifestyle, nonsensically implicate raunchy Ritchie as the murderer after devising a list of possible suspects. Of course, the real killer, David Berkowitz, who calls himself the “Son of Sam,” is into pseudo-occult mumbo jumbo, and is partly inspired to kill from a talking dog that he thought was possessed by a demon, is certainly no punk rocker but a pudgy beta-male of the physically repulsive and swarthy sort. After temperatures reach 100°F and a mass blackout hits the five boroughs, tons of black riots break out and mob boss Luigi holds a block party to cool things down while his Mafioso muscle patrols the streets for the Son of Sam. After attempting to see Ritchie’s band play at CBGBs, Vinny and Dionna are pushed out by a group of pissed punks and they end up at an orgy instead, where vice-ridden Vin accuses his gal of being a whore after they both blow other people and snort blow up their nose, thus resulting in their separation. In Spike Lee’s mind, Dionna finds the wild black snaked of a “soul brother” in a “big black Cadillac” with a “big black dick” is more sexually appetizing than Vinny’s “linguini dick.” In the end, Ritchie is severely beaten by his friends (Brody’s Ashkenazi beak was actually broken during the fight sequence), despite the fact that the Son of Sam has already been snatched by the cops, thus acting as the climax of what is the wildly retarded and wanton Wopsploitation melodramatics that is Summer of Sam. 

 More than anything, Summer of Sam seems like Spike Lee’s greatest fantasy come to life, a deranged poor Hebrew killing a bunch of wanton wop women while a bunch of wops with dead-end lives, to quote the filmmaker, “act like niggers more than niggers do,” but as Guidos constantly say themselves, “Italians do it better.” Indeed, I am certainly not the only one that believes this as I recall talking to a less than brilliant wop dude from New Jersey who told me that he and his pothead, drug-dealing father walked out of a screening of Summer of Sam in disgust due to its less than flattering portrayal of Italian-American garlic-eaters. Despite his clearly negative opinion of ‘racist Italians,’ Spike Lee seems to have a peculiar fetish for them as demonstrated by how many naked wops—both male and female, including a number of appearances from Italio-Mestizo John Leguizamo’s bare ass—are featured in compromised sexual positions throughout Summer of Sam. Featuring a quasi-magical Scorsese-esque montage featuring the song "Baba O'Riley" by the Who and footage of wops being killed by the Son of Sam, Adrien Brody selling his ass to buy guitars as well as playing said guitar, jaded Guido junkies shooting up, retarded baseball worship, wops waxing their cars, trannie Dago potheads getting stoned, wops beating wops, and John Leguizamo pathetically praying to a Mother Mary statue, Summer of Sam is irrefutable proof that a black man, and a flagrantly racist one at that, can be rich and famous in America and make a move denigrating Italians—descendents of the old and great Europeans—into oblivion in a manner worthy of Veit Harlan's Jud Süß (1940) aka Jew Süss.  What one learns while watching Summer of Sam is that while Negroes kill people for new kicks so they can be stylin' for about a week, wops sell their willies to buy guitars, thus making the Guido seem slightly less pathetic, at least according to Mr. Lee's pseudo-moralistic celluloid pleas.  Anyway, maybe its about time some real white filmmakers should take notice of Spike Lee's films, especially Summer of Sam, and embrace racial stereotypes and entertaining race hate once again.

-Ty E