I wanted to try to mix it up." He also had two or three teams shooting b-roll, "guerilla-style, lean and mean." "I wanted to try to have a balance," he explains. "I did all the interviews." The director went to many areas of the devastated city-Broadmoor, Lakeview, Mid-City, Metairie, the Ninth Ward, St. "I tried to speak to so-called experts in their so-called fields," says Lee. He also talked to government people, scientists, educators and historians. They were everyday people who went through hell and high water and are still struggling today." "She gave me a portfolio of people and I decided who were the interesting people to interview. "She did great detective work," says Lee. To find his interview subjects, he had help from researcher Judy Aley. The day after Thanksgiving, Lee made the first of seven trips to New Orleans, where the majority of his over 130 interviews were done. He began shooting interviews in October in New York City, where many of the evacuees had relocated. "I didn't know exactly what the story was," he says. Lee's goal was to let the individuals tell their story. "We were looking for unique positioning to enter an area where we really don't have privileged footage," says Nevins.
For a story of this scope, she felt that the documentary had to be authored by someone who was connected to it. And Nevins says she had been trying to figure out what HBO could do that wasn't already covered by all the news services. Pollard had served as producer on Lee's documentaries 4 Little Girls and Jim Brown: All American, and as editor of five of his feature films.Īt least a dozen other filmmakers had already contacted HBO Documentary about Katrina projects. Soon Lee and his longtime collaborator Sam Pollard met with Nevins to discuss the potential project, When the Levees Broke. When he got back to New York in early September, he called Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary and Family and executive producer of Lee's 1997 documentary 4 Little Girls. I was angry that the media were referring to American citizens as refugees. I was angry about the slow response of the federal government. As he watched the devastation unfold on CNN, he immediately thought about making a documentary. Spike Lee was in Italy for the 2005 Venice Film Festival when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans.
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