On the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death this year, the 'Fesser and the cinetrix found themselves on the Jersey Turnpike. Hey, it happens even to the best of us. College students had begun their annual migration back to campuses up and down the eastern seaboard, so we shared the road with many "safe" SUVs packed full of stuff and festooned with university decals.
Then we saw the kid heading back to Tulane. Now, if you know anything about Tulane, you know it traditionally attracts a fair number of students from the Tri-State area. But something about seeing this girl heading back to New Orleans, mostly likely after some serious family discussions about whether continuing in the ruined Crescent City made sense for her, just about brought me to tears.
So we dialed up our pal the Sultan down in NOLA to let him know that Jersey ["Only the Strong Survive"] was sending one of its children down to drink Hurricanes and vomit in the streets once more. We had second lined out of his wedding at the New Orleans Botantical Garden back in March of this year, so we had some idea of what this kid had chosen.
He was girding himself for the evening, when he would be joining his fellow citizens for the world premiere of Spike Lee's documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. [It airs in full on HBO tonight.] I encouraged him to tell you nice people about it here, if he wanted. What follows is his account.
Be good to one another today, people, and consider breaking bread together tonight.
High Water
I saw the premiere of Spike Lee's When The Levees Broke in the New Orleans Arena with 4,000 other people, most of whom had gone through exactly what they were about to see. As I walked in, I talked with several people and we all had the same idea: We didn't need to see this. We had been living it. The folks who need to see this are the ones living in D.C.. If Spike had guts, he'd get a big projector and screen it on the face of the White House and the Capitol for all to see. After Spike--all in white--introduced it, we settled in for the entire 4-hour ride.
And it was a rough one. Everyone in New Orleans has the most direct emotional connection to what most people watched on TV. It hurts to see folks walking through waist-deep water and the piles of debris that still haunt our nightmares. It's a physical pain and a catch in our breath. This is us to whom this happened. However, the movie let the whole story unwind in a deliberate fashion, trading newsreels from those torturous days with interviews after the fact. It is wrenching to hear from people like the man whose grandmother died at the Convention Center--and he had to LEAVE her! He put his cell phone number on a piece of paper in her hand, draped a sheet over her wheelchair, and got on the bus.
It is also sad to see grown men like heroic radio broadcaster Garland Robinette or composer and musician Terence Blanchard break down and cry on camera when recounting the ordeal. There is a sequence where Terence takes his mother back to her house--which was flooded with 8 feet of water--in Ponchartrain Park for the first time that again brings out the scope and depth (no pun intended) of this tragedy that we will be dealing with for the rest of our lives.
About three and a half hours into the film, there is a funeral for a 6-year-old boy whose body was found in the wreckage of his house six months after the flood. At that point, I couldn't take any more and walked out. I knew that point would come and was surprised I had sat there as long as I had.
Another surprising thing is that the film has many funny moments. Interviews with folks out in St. Bernard Parish who are outraged at their treatment before, during, and after the storm are laugh-out-loud funny. A recurring character is Phyllis Montana Langley (I think that is her name), who got stuck out in the East. In the way that many people in New Orleans will tell you exactly what they think in very colorful yet not necessarily obscene language, she tells you in no uncertain terms what she went through and what she thinks, and it is hilarious in its poignancy.
There have been criticisms that Spike didn't put in the white people's point of view. That's bullshit. There are plenty of white people in the interviews. He should have focused his camera on other devastated parts of the city besides the "famous" Lower 9th Ward, which is where all the shots of rubble and houses on upturned trucks come from. He also could have taken some of the black local leaders to task for their lack of preparations instead of just blaming everything on the feds (even though most of the aftereffects are and continue to be the fault of the government run by W. and Dick.) He also gives a little too much credence to and does not definitively refute the wrong rumor that "they" blew up the levee in the 9th Ward.
Those criticisms aside, When The Levees Broke is necessary viewing for everyone: to see what nature can do and what the government can't. It is a warning, because as Jello Biafra has said in this world of W., “Today, New Orleans; tomorrow, America.”
