No stranger to controversy, the provocative American filmmaker Spike Lee has now taken on the US censorship board because of its treatment of his new movie, Summer of Sam. That self-regulatory film industry body, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), operates "a double standard when it comes to violence and sex in movies", Lee commented at the recent Cannes Film Festival where his new film had its world premiere.
Summer of Sam is set during a heatwave in New York in the summer of 1977, when the serial killer, David Berkowitz, who operated under the alias of Son of Sam, terrorised the city through a succession of random murders. The film is introduced by the veteran New York columnist, Jimmy Breslin, to whom Berkowitz wrote several times. Echoing a classic US television series, Breslin presents the movie with the line, "There are eight million stories in the naked city, and this was one of them."
However, the Berkowitz story is employed, not always persuasively, as the recurring backdrop to the fictional story of two fiery young Italian-Americans in the Bronx. Vinny, played by John Leguizamo on terrific form, is a sexually insatiable hairdresser who regularly cheats on his wife, Donna (Mira Sorvino); while Ritchie (Adrien Brody) is volatile, bisexual, an early convert to the new punk movement, and a performer on and off stage at gay sex clubs.
One particularly eventful evening takes Vinny and Donna through three key clubs of the era - CBGB, Studio 54 and the hedonistic Plato's Retreat - in this vibrant, ambitious exercise. Spike Lee pops up in an overplayed minor role as an over-the-top television journalist reporting on - and hyping up - the heatwave and the serial killer.
To avoid getting an NC-17 (no children under 17) rating, which would have discouraged a great many US cinemas from showing Summer of Sam, Lee had to tone down the film's sexual content to qualify for the more acceptable R (for Restricted) rating. "The MPAA didn't say one thing about the violence in the film," Lee says. "All they cared about was the sex."
In fact, the sex scenes in the movie are relatively discreet, despite Vinny's prolific couplings when and wherever any opportunity arises, and the orgy at Plato's Retreat is shot under such low-key lighting that it's difficult to tell clearly who's doing what to whom. Apparently, it was not always thus, and Spike Lee came under pressure from Disney, which backed the movie and contractually insisted that it qualify for an R rating.
However, even before the film opens in the US next month, its violent content is coming under fire from other quarters and there have been allegations that Lee's inclusion of the recurring sub-plot involving the serial killer, David Berkowitz, is gratuitous. The father of one young woman killed by Berkowitz has claimed that the film exploits his daughter's death.
"I feel very sorry for these people who were taken off this Earth and I feel sorry for their loved ones," Lee says in response. "But I'm an artist and I was determined to make this film. If the film didn't happen, it wouldn't bring back any of the victims. And the film does not glorify David Berkowitz.
"Our film is not just about Son of Sam. But at the same time this is something that happened. It's a great story. The event captivated not only New York City, but the whole world. The film doesn't try to explain why he did what he did, but it shows the reverberations of what he did on the greatest city in the world. I think that we also examine in this film the role of the media. This is one of the first times where the media was involved in a search for a serial killer. In fact, the term, `serial killer' was coined during this time of Son of Sam."
Lee insists that his movie deals with much more than the Berkowitz case. "The film is also about the summer of 1977. It was one of the hottest summers on record, and consequently you had the blackout with all sorts of people looting. I remember that summer very clearly. It was the summer I decided to become a film-maker. I bought a Super 8 camera and went around shooting things. I shot a lot of the looting."
A famously confrontational film-maker, Spike Lee has attracted controversy in the past for his tackling of racial issues in films such as Jungle Fever, Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X. Asked if controversy follows him or he follows it, he replies: "When I choose a story to make a film I don't even think if there will be a controversy. I make films I want to make and that I hope people will want to see."
At Cannes Summer of Sam was shown in the sidebar section, the Directors' Fortnight. Asked for his reaction to his film being turned down for the official competition at Cannes, Lee offers no comment beyond, "Sometimes your film is selected for the big house, and sometimes not."
Lee goes on to take exception to commentators who applied double standards to wealthy black Americans, as against their white counterparts: "The first thing a successful black is asked after he gets some money is what he's going to do for his people. The Rolling Stones make tons of money, and nobody asks Mick Jagger what he's going to do for his people."
Asked if, during the course of his career, he has observed any progress for black people in the Hollywood executive ranks, Spike Lee replies firmly, "No. They don't want them."
Summer of Sam opens in Ireland in the autumn