UNLOCKED: Summer of Sam feat. Matt Belenky

Hit Factory

In honor of its upcoming 25th anniversary (as well as a chance meeting between the director and guest Matt Belenky), we're unlocking our episode on Spike Lee's 'Summer of Sam'.

Here's what we had to say about this monumental work back in the summer of 2022:

Writer Matt Belenky joins us from New York in the midst of a heat wave to discuss Spike Lee's 'Summer of Sam', an exuberant survey of Outer Boroughs New York in the late 1970s as well as a chilling study of working class anxiety, paranoia, and scapegoating of the Other.

We discuss the many controversies surrounding the film's release (a common through line with Lee's films), the impeccable performances of the oft-undersung leads - including career-best work from John Leguizamo and Mira Sorvino, and the textured analysis of a politically tumultuos era that bears more than a few similarities to the Summer of 1999 in which the film was released.

Follow Matt Belenky on Twitter.

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish