Spike Lee

Summer of Sam

Bamboozled

What’s good, my good-natured readers? I hope you’re beating the heat as best you can with a cool pool or beverage or, like myself, by only going outdoors when it is absolutely, positively, extremely necessary. These sweltering, scorching, hazy days of Summer make me think of three things: tumultuous and sweaty Texas, steamy Summer Romances, and tonight’s filmmaker of honor—Spike Lee. I’ve covered a myriad of famous filmmakers on this less-than-famous blog, I’ve even covered another filmmaker named Spike—Spike Jonze—but it was about time that I shined a light on one of the most prolific and persistently-profound Piscean directors and New Yorkers of all time. Shelton Jackson Lee, nicknamed “Spike” by his mom, was born on March 20th, 1957 in Atlanta, Georgia. He made his first film, Last Hustle in Brooklyn, in college at Morehouse, and shortly after he attended NYU Tisch where he earned his MFA. In 1985 Spike made his first feature film, She’s Gotta Have It, which was made with a low budget in under 2 weeks and to Spike’s surprise, did pretty well at the box office. Critic A.O. Scott said that this film, along with Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, “ushered in the American independent film movement of the 1980s.” It was also a revolutionary moment in Black American filmmaking and pop cultural representation. Spike boldly created more nuanced, complex, and multi-dimensional stories of people of color that would be introduced into the zeitgeist, which made a significant impact. And no film exemplified the complexities of his talent better than his most famous, seminal film: Do the Right Thing. This intense yet vibrant Brooklyn odyssey of characters and cultures and conflict really put Spike on the map, and caught the attention of movie-goers and industry-types alike. When it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture that year, everyone was shocked—to the point that Kim Bassinger brought up the unfair exclusion of the film at the Academy Awards, right before the trite Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture. Spike Lee later stated that the fact that this film—one that so obviously played with “safe stereotypes”—won Best Picture that year, hurt him more than his film not being nominated at all. Despite consistently being ignored by awards and consistently confusing some white audiences, Spike continued to make incendiary, entertaining films—as of this writing he’s made 35 feature films and about 40 music videos since 1983, which has to be some kind of record. Spike reigned supreme in the late eighties and nineties, creating films that were very of their time and yet had the potential to be timeless, and had varying degrees of lasting-power like School Daze, Mo’ Betta Blues, Clockers, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Crooklyn, and Girl 6. Ten years after the success of Do the Right Thing, Spike made tonight’s first film: Summer of Sam. Released in 1999 but set in the blistering summer of 1977, Summer of Sam transports us to some of the hottest and most dangerous days of New York City—where crime seemingly ran rampant, and paranoid media was at an all time high. While often centering his stories upon ensemble casts and multiple characters, Spike had initially planned to make this a pretty straightforward crime flick surrounding the notorious NYC serial killer David Berkowitz (otherwise known as the Son of Sam), but due to the concerns of surviving family members of his victims, Lee decided to zoom out of Berkowitz and only keep his presence as a backdrop of this film. Summer of Sam follows several people who live in an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx—a slickly-dressed hairdresser named Vinny (John Leguizamo), his wife Dionna (Mira Sorvino), his best friend Ritchie (Adrien Brody, going through a severe punk music phase), and his eventual girlfriend Ruby (Jennifer Esposito.) Vinny and Dionna frequent a nightclub called Virgo, where they both dance the night away in their respective heeled shoes and sparkly outfits, completely unaware of the madman toiling and plotting in a nearby decrepit apartment. Dionna’s cousin Chiara is visiting from Italy, and wishes to leave the club early, so Vinny drives her home—stopping along the way for a quick tryst amongst other lovers in other cars. Vinny and Chiara narrowly miss being the next victims of the Son of Sam, as David Berkowitz eyes the secret lovers from afar and later approaches a different couple in another car, who weren’t as lucky. Although this brush with death frightens Vinny, it doesn’t stop him from taking qualudes and cheating on his beautiful, devoted wife, who begins to think she’s done something wrong when Vinny doesn’t want to sleep with her. Meanwhile, Ritchie is becoming the outcast of their circle of Italian-American macho men, who all seemingly are connected in some way to the mob. Ritchie ditches a clean cut look for an edgier, punkier, more extreme British style of speaking and dressing, which includes a tight Union Jack top and a ridiculously large mohawk. Ritchie’s parents, (Mike Star and Patti LuPone) have exiled their unemployed son to the garage so they can live their lives more freely (aka so they can play poker and have sex at any time of the day, mostly) and much to my surprise we see Broadway icon and legend Patti LuPone’s titties in this? As if that weren’t wild enough to see, we begin to witness several of the Son of Sam’s murders, all occurring as Vinny, Dionna, Ritchie, and Ruby try to live normal lives. This community is terrified by this unstoppable killer, though, as brunette women begin to dye their hair blonde—since the killer seems to have a penchant for dark-haired women and their companions. Less people are showing up to nightclubs, disco is beginning to die, and the increasingly-paranoid community of Italian-Americans want to take matters in to their own hands since the police have made little progress. The chaos only intensifies as the temperatures rise, the crime rate continues to grow, and the Italians begin to suspect the suddenly-stylish Ritchie might be the Son of Sam. Imagine my panic when, during a scene reenacting the infamous NYC blackout, my own power went out. It only added to my rising anxiety as I watched this film, and yet I was still thoroughly hooked. The entirety of this film is a fairly stressful, completely out-of-control fever dream of toxic masculinity, where men everywhere begin to turn on one another for no reason other than their own paranoia—and in Vinny’s case, his own guilty conscience. Of course the fashion was fun, the music was one impeccable dance hit after another, and overall I’d say that (while I wasn’t alive then) Spike Lee really captured the tumultuous time that was 1970s New York City. Amid this frantic tapestry of tense tales, were a few instances of unnecessary unpleasantness, mostly pertaining to how Mira Sorvino’s character and a trans femme character are treated. I understand that sex, drugs, disco, and a blossoming punk scene of the late 70s made for plenty of unfortunate circumstances, but without giving too much away, I’ll say that some of these unfortunate circumstances were just depressing and didn’t necessarily add too much to this already dark narrative. One bright spot in this otherwise distressing tale were director Spike Lee’s cameos, in which he played a news reporter, on the ground in the streets interviewing people who are reacting to the blackout, the looting, and the Son of Sam. I also really enjoyed seeing Sopranos legend Michael Imperioli, playing a kinky, gay cowboy who runs a queer cabaret. (Imperioli was a producer on this film and was initially supposed to play Ritchie, but due to scheduling conflicts with The Sopranos, he played this bizarre character named Midnite instead.) Summer of Sam thankfully does have a happy ending, but the journey there is far from straightforward or peaceful. Spike Lee implemented his trademark super zooms and zoom-outs, and while most of the film is colorful and clear to look at, he shot all of the David Berkowitz scenes in a grainy, harshly-lit manner, which made for a cool but disorienting effect. It is a clear love and hate letter to New York City and its complex, violent history, and I can’t imagine a better, more authentic voice to tell this specific story. The very same could be said for tonight’s next Spike Lee joint, an infamous, controversial, highly-convoluted film that many did not appreciate when it first came out in the year 2000: Bamboozled. I can understand why audiences and critics alike were split on this film back in 2000, but at the same time, I’m not sure if it could be made or appreciated today, either. In the spirit of Mel Brooks’ 1967 film The Producers, and very much like Cord Jefferson’s recent film American Fiction, Spike Lee’s Bamboozled dared to take satire to a new, mordant level. Bamboozled even opens with its main character, Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans), giving us a definition of the word “satire”, just so there isn’t any confusion. Pierre is a highly-Harvard-educated, highly-uptight, highly-fed up television writer who tires of putting up with the garbage they feed into the nation’s idiot boxes from their network, CNS. Delacroix’s audacious boss, Mr. Dunwitty (played perfectly by the problematic Michael Rappaport), is lamenting about the low ratings on their network from his office—where famous NBA players and distinctly African art is plastered all over his walls. Mr. Dunwitty explains to Pierre how he grew up around black people, and he commonly engages in AAVE, and a liberal use of the n-word. His white boss goes on to say that he is more black than Pierre, and how Pierre should strive to be “blacker”—since, “We all know black people set the trends, set the styles.” Mr. Dunwitty wants “blacker” content to entertain the mostly white masses, so that is exactly what Pierre intends to give him. With the help of his intelligent assistant, Sloan (Jada Pinkett Smith), Pierre concocts a plan so outdated, so unbelievably racist, that he’ll have to get fired—which is the only way out of his strict contract at CNS. Pierre befriends two young, black, homeless men—one of whom, Manray (Savion Glover), happens to be an incredibly talented tap dancer—and casts them in a project that he calls “Mantan: the New Millennium Minstrel Show.” It is such an obviously offensive title and premise that Pierre confidently pitches it to Mr. Dunwitty, expecting to be promptly fired, until Mr. Dunwitty expresses how much he loves this idea. Appalled but still curious, Pierre decides to test the limits of his vicious variety show—sticking hard with the premise that Manray and Womack, two talented black men, will be appearing in blackface and embodying every racist, stereotypical mannerism and tone and facial expression that was once commonplace in American media. Manray will play Mantan, and Womack (Tommy Davidson) will play Sleep’n Eat—two horrific relics of a world that we pretended to move on from, back on stage to entertain the world’s audience. Mr. Dunwitty doesn’t just like this idea, he is positively obsessed with it, and quickly makes other creatively racist decisions for the show. Before he can say “sike”, Pierre is given a whole room of (only white) writers, a soundstage, a live studio audience, and two uncertain but desperate men who reluctantly don their faces in black paint and are ready to perform. Throughout this film there are micro and macro aggressions toward people of color, all put on loud display for the sake of unveiling our white, patriarchal world’s comfort and even reliance upon racist caricatures. You could blink and miss some of the more subtle shade being thrown in this film, as when one white writer says it would be foolish to ask Denzel Washington to appear in blackface, right before the camera cuts to a scene of Denzel playing Malcolm X, in Lee’s film Malcolm X. As ludicrous as Pierre’s tv show plans to be, he doesn’t expect many people to be interested in watching it or enjoying it, but the first taping proves him wrong once again. The only people really insulted by this show are the Mau Maus, a wannabe militant rap group who Sloan’s older brother Julius (Mos Def/Yasiin Bey) is the leader of. Things move very quickly in TV land and Mr. Dunwitty says that the top brass at CNS just love this new minstrel show, and are ordering three more episodes. We meet Pierre’s father, a stand up comedian who goes by “Junebug” (Paul Mooney), who seems content telling his jokes in his orange zoot suit on a smaller stage. Junebug is the reason why Pierre was even interested in working in television, but ironically, Pierre has little respect for the small stage his father performs on. Even though Pierre, Sloan, Manray and Womack all see this horrendous television show for what it really is, none of them can stop this runaway train from being the success that it becomes. Blackface becomes a novelty thing, a way of showing one’s love for this show, all of it being so transparently racist and yet none of it seeming to slow down. Eventually, Johnny Cochran and Reverend Al Sharpton and a crowd of protestors do make themselves known, and Pierre’s critics begin to refer to him as a “traitor, an Uncle Tom, a sellout,” and even, “the Clarence Thomas of Television.” You can feel the tension, frustration, and hatred building throughout Bamboozled, as audiences grow to love and despise this show, as his performers painfully reapply this traumatically-racist makeup show after show, as Pierre loses control of a narrative he never had much control over anyway. It is a biting, scathing, acidic commentary on racism in the media, and how much white audiences crave “black entertainment”—by any demeaning means necessary. Unsurprisingly, Bamboozled takes several dark turns, darker than the initial premise of its fictional television show, before it is all said and done. And, in the typically-clever and cutting way that Spike Lee usually creates, he ends Bamboozled with quite a bang. I shan’t give anything away, but I’ll just say that it felt reminiscent of the ending of BlacKkKlansmen, where, suddenly, the air is sucked out of the room with a heavy dose of a reality. Bamboozled is one of the most caustic and confrontational movies I’ve ever seen, and it should terrify every audience member watching it how relevant and timeless all of it is and was. It reached Jordan Peele-an levels of freaky. Every racist joke and reference was jaw-dropping, every cameo was shocking (as Jimmy Fallon’s band The Roots played the band on this fictional show), and the entire time I was watching I just wondered how Spike Lee managed to pull all of this off. Because he knew it’d be hard to get funding for this project, much of Bamboozled was filmed on digital (mini DV) camcorders. While lower-quality, these allowed the cinematographers to film with 15 cameras at a time, much more affordably—and only the Minstrel TV Show scenes were shot on film. This film is a wild fucking ride that leaves you breathless and bewildered, and while it’s likely one of the more uncomfortable watches of this blog, it is entirely necessary to see. Racism isn’t an ideology or practice of the past, it’s contemporary, it’s placed into different glossy packaging and presented in clever ways, but it is still atrociously prevalent in our culture and in our pop culture. I appreciated Bamboozled’s baffling boldness and relentless absurdity, that quite unfortunately, doesn’t feel any more or less absurd to watch in 2024. To call it a commentary feels condescending, to call it a crazy movie feels diminutive, but ultimately, Bamboozled did its job of exposing our racist American lens and racist American spirit effortlessly. Though full of obscenities and odd camera angles, Bamboozled was a pitch-black comedy that was pitch-perfect in every messed up way. Spike Lee is a filmmaker’s filmmaker, a cinephile’s cinephile whose diverse works are emblematic of his sharp wit, and his supreme understanding of the American pop cultural landscape. I hope you enjoyed reading about these complex stories as much as I enjoyed watching and learning from them, and I hope you’ll stick with me for whatever sizzlin’ Summer cinephilic adventure we go on next week. Ciao!