The title of the noir film L.I.E. stands for Long Island Expressway, but the story is about the etiology of prostitution among white male teenagers, a variation on the theme of The Ice Storm (1997) and similar critiques of the emptiness of a sterile suburbia of affluent homes. Howie Blitzer (played by Paul Franklin Dano) is a skinny fifteen-year-older whose mother died on the LIE. One week after his mother dies, his father Marty (played by Bruce Altman) brings home women for sex, but Howie is turned off as he listens to the moans and groans, since he is devastated by the loss of his mother, and his father obviously has little interest in him. Howie hangs out with Gary Terrio (played by Billy Kay), who sometimes hustles for bread at an LIE rest stop “meat rack” along with other teenage boys, presumably also from broken homes. Gary wants to have sex with Howie but instead gets him to cut school quite often in order to commit acts of petty theft by breaking and entering affluent homes when both parents are away at work; they are joined by two friends, also hustlers. During one of the escapades, they enter the basement of the home of former marine, Big John Harrigan (played by Brian Cox), whose fifty-fifth birthday celebration is in progress, revealing then and later that he is still a mama’s boy. Sexually interested in boys in their late teens, he lives as the “daddy” of post-pubescent teenage Scott (played by Tony Donnelly). His license plate BJ clearly indicates his preferred pastime. When Gary tells Big John that Howie is the thief who took two of his pistols, he sees a beautiful boy to seduce rather than punish for the misdeed. Although Gary invites Howie to leave for California, presumably to hustle together where cruising can take place in year-round sunshine, Howie remains. After his best friend leaves, a further void in friendships occurs when his father is arrested and jailed for faulty construction in a building project that caused the deaths of several residents. Big John then provides temporary room and board for Howie, doubtless hoping that Howie will ultimately initiate sex but preferring to play a paternalistic to a predatory role. However, Big John tells his existing kept boy, Scott, to move to a motel while he provides accommodation to Howie. However, on the next day, when Big John cruises the meat rack, Scott drives by and shoots a fatal bullet into his heart. At the end of the film we are left to ponder the fate of Howie, who tightropewalks on a railing on a bridge over the LIE, seemingly unconcerned whether he will plunge to his death through a simple misstep. Director Michael Cuesta does not sugarcoat the semiautobiographical story of his childhood; he humanizes a pedophile, but stops short of a tragic ending for Howie. MH