Summer of Spike.

Lee's fictionalized Son of Sam movie preaches tolerance for all--except maybe gays

Not unlike the teen murderers in Littleton, Colo., the Son of Sam -- whose yearlong killing spree encompassed New York City's working-class neighborhoods -- raged against his outcast status by eliminating those who ranked above him. In the case of Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz, who was caught in August 1977, that meant young women on the street and couples necking in parked cars.

A biopic about the psychopath would have been easy. But Spike Lee hasn't taken that path in Summer of Sam. Berkowitz's nighttime rampages are disturbingly graphic, but they are infrequent, appearing as mere punctuation for a broader story, a fictionalized sociologic overview of New York City life during one unbearably hot summer. For the most part Lee's strategy works; the film addresses broader issues, such as the intolerance of difference and the actions that result from that intolerance. Indeed, the violence committed by the invented characters almost as irrational and shocking as that perpetrated by Berkowitz. And some of it is directed against characters thought to be gay.

Lee's hero is a philandering Italian-American hairdresser, Vinny (John Leguizamo), and most of the film is set in Vinny's Bronx "nabe." It's a real "guy" place, where the restless fellas hanging out don't like anything foreign to their limited world.

For Vinny's best friend, Ritchie (Adrien Brody), a local boy who goes punk, this is a problem. The local bigots-cum-vigilantes decide that Ritchie is so weird he must in fact be the Son of Sam. And their suspicion is heightened when they discover that Ritchie, despite dating the neighborhood tramp (Jennifer Esposito), secretly dances for tips and sells his favors in a gay porn theater.

Unfortunately, Lee seems to forget his message of tolerance when it comes to his gay story line, falling into some over-the-top cliches about both gay people and Italian-Americans. It's not that Ritchie gets paid to be serviced without reciprocation; it's not that the buyers are fawning old men. But does Lee really have to show -- several times -- Ritchie leading his pathetic clients behind the door of the theater's ladies' room, then locking it?

It gets worse: There's a whiny neighborhood homo, whom the tough guys call "Bob the Fairy" (Brian Tarantina). Lee makes Bob so desperate for acceptance by these Neanderthals that he rats out Ritchie's secret. "He also does porn flicks," he tells them eagerly. For these guys it's an easy leap from homosexuality to serial killing.

Lee's failure to redeem any gay character (at a time eight years after Stonewall) is particularly disappointing in light of his accurate rendering of the heterosexual milieu of the period: the "good" and "bad" women, the club culture, the pornography. It's a portrait that jibes with Berkowitz's choice of lovers' lanes, the sexual life from which he was excluded. And all the while, on the sound track, songs like "Everybody Dance" and "Don't Leave Me This Way" reek of hormones and sweat. Lee makes you believe that it's just a hop, skip, and jump from that sexual heat to Berkowitz's kind of crime. And that's scary.

Feinstein contributes to Detour and London's The Guardian.