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HBO: Can you talk a little about the title, and its
significance?
Spike Lee: Well, titles are always important for all my
films. That's the first thing the audience
hears. Even before I had written the script
for Do the Right Thing I had the title. I can't
remember exactly when we came up with
the title for When the Levees Broke but it
was early on.
HBO: It's very open-ended, and almost leaves the
viewer to finish the sentence themselves.
Spike Lee: I've tried to progress past the point with my
films where I'm giving a five-word
description. One of the significant things
about the title is that most people think that
it was Katrina that brought about the
devastation to New Orleans. But it was a
breaching of the levees that put 80 percent
of the city under water. It was not the
hurricane. And last week the United States
Army Corps of Generals went on record and
finally 'fessed up, and said that we fucked
up.
HBO: What was the thing that devastated you
more than anything, about what happened
in New Orleans?
Spike Lee: The thing that's very hard for me, and I
think'll be hard for any filmmaker who has
to ask difficult questions, especially when
you're asking people who've lost loved ones,
is that, as a filmmaker and as a storyteller,
it was my job, it was my duty to ask some
difficult questions that I knew would stir up
feelings...that would make people break
down. Now, that was not my intention. But
we have people talk about how their whole
life has been changed.
So it's very important that the audience, not
just here in the United States but all over
the world, hear these stories from these
individuals, these witnesses, who saw the
horror of what happened in New Orleans.
HBO: There were so many stories, and I'm sure
even today you still hear stories that you
haven't heard that just horrify you. How did
you decide which you were gonna go with?
Spike Lee: Well, when you choose the stories a lot of it
depends who's telling the story and who can
convey that story. Everything you shoot
cannot make it into the final film. So, myself
along with my editor and producing partner
Sam Pollock, we thought long and hard
about what goes, and what stays.
HBO: When did you know you had to do a film
about this?
Spike Lee: When Hurricane Katrina went through New
Orleans or around it, I was in Venice, Italy
at a film festival. It was a very painful
experience to see my fellow American
citizens, the majority of them African-
Americans, in the dire situation they were
in. And I was outraged with the slow
response of the federal government. And
every time I'm in Europe, any time
something happens in the world involving
African-Americans, journalists jump on me,
like I'm the spokesperson for 45 million
African-Americans, which I'm not. But
many of them expressed their outrage too.
And one interesting thing is that these
European journalists were saying the images
they were seeing looked like they were from
a third world country, not the almighty
United States of America.
It was around that time that I decided that I
would like to do this. And as soon as I got
back to New York, I called up (HBO's) Sheila
Nevins, and we met, and she agreed to go
forward.
What many people say in this film is that
what happened in New Orleans is
unprecedented. Never before in the history
of the United States has the federal
government turned its back on its own
citizens in the manner that they did, with
the slow response to people who needed
help.
Recently, there was another horrific
earthquake, a national disaster in Indonesia.
And, once again, the United States
government was there within two days. Now
it's great that we were in Indonesia in two
days. But...let's get a globe [LAUGHS], and
see what the distance between the United
States and Indonesia, and to New Orleans,
and the people in the whole Gulf region.
HBO: When you first set foot on the ground, was it
what you expected? Were you prepared for
what you saw?
Spike Lee: Anyone who has been to New Orleans will
automatically tell you that what you saw on
television, the pictures, they can't really
describe the scale of the devastation. When
you go to the Lower Ninth Ward, it looks-
Hiroshima must have look like that.
Nagasaki. Beirut. Berlin after it was
bombed in World War II. That's the way the
Lower Ninth Ward looks like, and a lotta
other places in New Orleans.
People in New Orleans are up in arms about
progress. People wanna move back. New
Orleans was a predominantly African-
American city, and its black citizens were
dispersed to 46 other states. People wanna
come home, but there's nowhere for them to
live. They wanna work. The thing is just all
messed up. I would not wanna be Mayor
Ray Nagin. That has the next hardest job in
this country besides the President of the
United States, being the mayor of New
Orleans.
HBO: Why do you think the response was what it
was?
Spike Lee: Well, I would just say, what Kanye West
expressed, that George Bush doesn't care
about black people. Many people think it
had nothing to do with race, it had more to
do with class. You have a large population
who happened to be poor, and if they did
vote they didn't vote Republican anyway.
Everybody was on vacation. Ms. Rice was
buying Ferrigamo shoes on Madison Avenue
while people were drowning, then went to
see Spamalot. Cheney was on vacation.
Bush was on vacation, and even when the
President cut short his vacation, he did not
fly directly to New Orleans. He did not fly
directly to the Gulf region. He had the pilot
of Air Force One do a fly-over.
Politicians do many things that are
symbolic. And people might say well, what's
the good if it's just symbolic? Sometimes
there's a lotta good in symbolism. In 1965
with Hurricane Betsy, then President
Lyndon B. Johnson flew to New Orleans,
and went to the Lower Ninth Ward. He
shined a flashlight in his face in the dark
and said, I'm Lyndon B. Johnson, I'm the
President of the United States and we care
about you.
George Bush did not feel he had to do that.
He showed up late, and the damage had
been done already.
One of the things I hope this documentary
does is remind Americans that New Orleans
is not over with, it's not done. Americans
responded in record numbers to help the
people of the Gulf Coast, but let's be honest.
Americans have very, very short attention
spans. And, I'll admit there was eventually
a thing called Katrina fatigue. But if you go
to New Orleans, only one-fourth of the
population is there. People are still not
home. So hopefully, this documentary will
bring this fiasco, this travesty, back to the
attention of the American people. And
maybe the public can get some politicians'
ass in the government to move quicker, and
be more efficient in helping our fellow
American citizens in the Gulf region.
HBO: Has this forever changed the way people
think about New Orleans?
Spike Lee: I think when we look back on this many
years from now, I'm confident that people
are gonna see what happened in New
Orleans as a defining moment in American
history. Whether that's pro or con is yet to
be determined. And that's one of the
reasons why I wanted to do this film.
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