This film looks at life in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn on a hot summer Sunday. As he does everyday, Sal Fragione opens the pizza parlor he's owned for 25 years. The neighborhood has changed considerably in the time he's been there and is now composed primarily of African-Americans and Hispanics. His son Pino hates it there and would like nothing better than to relocate the eatery to their own neighborhood. For Sal however, the restaurant represents something that is part of his life and sees it as a part of the community. What begins as a simple complaint by one of his customers, Buggin Out - who wonders why he has only pictures of famous Italian-Americans on the wall when most of his customers are black - eventually disintegrates into violence as frustration seemingly brings out the worst in everyone.

This movie, based on the cult Broadway musical of the 60s, tells a story about Claude, a young man from Oklahoma who comes to New York City. There he strikes up a friendship with a group of hippies, led by Berger, and falls in love with Sheila, a girl from a rich family. However, their happiness is short because Claude must go to the Vietnam war.

Living in the rural Texas panhandle is a dysfunctional family: Ray, an abusive dad, a Vietnam vet with a war wound that's left him impotent; Kate, a compliant wife and Jimmy, a 19-year-old son, who have an incestuous relationship at the insistence of the dad; and, two small sons who look a lot like their brother. Ray harbors a secret, and he goes to murderous lengths to keep it hidden. Jimmy sleeps out in the shed, has suspicions, but little comes out until Doris, a Yankee woman of middle age comes to town looking for a dead private eye. And why does dad keep calling Jimmy, "little boy blue"?