SPIKE LEE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT KATRINA AND
NEW ORLEANS PREMIERES ON HBO AUGUST 21st

From the Kansas City Star:

‘When the Levees Broke’

Spike Lee was in Venice, of all places, when the levees broke. Sitting in his hotel room in the submerged Italian city, where he was attending a film festival, Lee flipped back and forth between BBC and CNN, riding the roller coaster of emotions over what man and nature had wrought in New Orleans.

“I was really mad and sad,” Lee told TV critics during a session to promote “When the Levees Broke,” his upcoming HBO documentary. “I wanted to do something about it.”

Sad because, despite being a New York homeboy, Lee considers New Orleans America’s most distinctive city. Seeing it underwater broke his heart.

Mostly, though, Lee was, and is, angry at a country that let this happen, at a government that reacted indifferently to the suffering of black people in the Crescent City and at a short-attention-span culture that has already consigned Hurricane Katrina to the history files.

That’s how the celebrated director, who is not known for making nonfiction films about current events, decided to undertake what became a four-hour docu-opera, subtitled “A Requiem in Four Acts.” It airs in two parts, Aug. 21 and 22, repeating in full Aug. 29, the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans.

Click here for the rest.

This is going to be great. It's probably also going to be hard to watch. I still get angry or sad, or both, if I think too much about it even today, nearly a year later, and I was only watching from the sidelines here in Baton Rouge. But I'm definitely going to watch it. Spike Lee is directing.

I don't think I've mentioned it here, but years ago my buddy Brian sat me down and made me watch Spike's Do the Right Thing. I've never looked back. Spike is on my short list for greatest American film director: in addition to the sense of social conscience he brings to virtually every film he directs, which makes him a Real Artist, he's also a great storyteller, creating engaging and complex characters and situations. His movies work the intellect as well as the emotions--they both teach and entertain. Really, Malcolm X is one of my favorite films, for all those reasons.

I think it's safe to say that nobody in the world is more qualified to tell the story of what happened to New Orleans than Spike Lee. Maybe I'll head down to the Big Easy to catch the sneak-premiere at the New Orleans Arena on the 16th. Tickets are free, apparently.

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