Posted on 08/20/2006 8:08:20 AM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Bush the villain of Katrina film Bob Dart August 21, 2006
Tears marked his 70-year-old cheeks as Arthur Brown, leaning on a walking stick, walked from the film that sought to tell his story.
"I think it's a great movie," said Brown, on Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.
"I'm mad," he said. "We lost everything. I've worked all my life - minimum-wage jobs - and raised eight children. Now I've got nothing. My wife is 65. What little savings we had is gone. FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] hasn't been any help. It's just not right."
Brown was among thousands of survivors of Hurricane Katrina at the world premiere of the four-hour film at the New Orleans Arena on Wednesday night.
One was Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, whose profane and sometimes profound commentary is a highlight of the film. "This was unnecessary," she said of the tragedy. "I hope everyone watches [the movie] and learns from it."
The documentary will be shown in two-hour slots on the American cable network HBO tonight and tomorrow. It will air the entire four hours on August 29, the first anniversary of the disaster.
Lee said his work was aimed at the forgetfulness of a nation. "People are still in dire straits," he said. "We want to put the focus back here."
Lee has chronicled America's racial divisions since his 1989 film Do the Right Thing. But it's more people in poverty than people of colour whose suffering is depicted in When the Levees Broke. Corpses with all shades of skin are shown in the fetid floodwaters.
The Government is the villain in Lee's lens, and the audience of about 8000 booed when President George Bush and Michael Brown, the former director of FEMA, were on screen. Chuckles and jeers erupted at three rapidly repeated shots of Bush saying "Brownie, you did a heck of a job."
While the film shows the raw power of the storm, it blames much of the tragedy on the failure of man-made levees and a negligent government response.
"What happened here was a criminal act, " Lee said.
A review in New Orleans' Times-Picayune criticised the film for focusing on the African-American experience and giving short shrift to white folks.
Lee said any reviewer who didn't see white faces must have slept through the film. Indeed, from a weeping disc jockey to an angry homeowner who said "Go f--- yourself, Mr Cheney" when waylaid by a vice-presidential photo op, white people in the film drew applause from the mostly black viewers.
Some NOLA folks are terminally stuck on stupid. Too bad there is no press on the other side of the state that was just as devastated by a similar sized storm. Hell, things are moving and growing so fast here my head is spinning. The difference is people are self sufficient and extremely resourseful.
MUST use spell check... resourseful = resourceful...
That is the best looter guy photo yet!
baloney. everyone knows it was Karl Rove.
Too bad Spike wasn't in NO during Katrina. We'd be spared his horrible films.
Yeah it all is Bushes fault,even the looters they were hungry and had to loot to stay alive...
Houston absorbed almost 100,000 freeloaders. Murder, rape, robberies and gang violence spiked for 6 months poat Katrina.
should be "post"
Ask Baton Rouge how their crime rates are doing. I know some people who wish these 'wonderful people' would go home!
Stupid people still depend on the government for everything. When you are raised thinking like that nothing is ever going to change. They aren't going to wake up one day and suddenly realize they must take care of themselves.
For these idiots to blame Katrina on President Bush makes them no better.
Spike Lee is doing this for MONEY, nothing else. If he was so concerned about New Orleans he would have been down there helping to REBUILD IT, not making a film about it.
It's a Spike Lee movie, of COURSE Bush is the villian!
What a bunch of nonsense. The majority of the people of New Orlean who experienced Katrina, including those who have lost their houses, say that it was a case of too many unexpected factors converging. They don't blame anyone.
Total horse hockey. I'd venture to guess that the majority of the black residents of New Orleans who were displaced didn't even OWN their homes, so what did they lose except their personal possessions and a place to lay their heads? If they were on any sort of welfare, they came out ahead of everyone else because they can still get that welfare check no matter where they live.
I feel sorry for the black and white people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, poor, middle class and rich, who lost the homes they OWNED and had absolutely NOTHING left. Their net worth was likely mostly tied up in that property, so they had nothing with which to start over. Many have not been able to start re-building their lives because they've been waiting for their insurance companies to determine what, if any, money they would receive for the destruction of their homes. Many folks will come out of it owing tens of thousands on mortgages for homes that simply are not there, and they have to replace them from their own pockets. Many are doing so, slowly, but the other major holdup has been that many businesses have not yet re-opened, so these folks still have no jobs.
Spike Lee is such an opportunist, he disgusts me.
Oh, I remember this woman. No surprise at all that she'd be featured so prominently. IIRC, they actually let her speak before Congress, regardless of the fact that she's completely Nucking Futs.
Yeah, that'll help the Katrina recovery immensely. Attaboy, Spike.
You nailed it !!!
It takes time to pho..uh direct a documentary.
Gotta keep black voters on the plantation.
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