9/11 tale told brilliant-Lee
Spike series goes deep into last 20 yrs.
When Spike Lee introduced a New York audience to his new film Wednesday night, he had a simple message: “Enjoy the show ... as much as you can.”
The director debuted the latest Spike Lee Joint, “NYC Epicenters 9/11 - 2021½” in front of a vaccinated outdoor crowd of several hundred people at Rockefeller Park in downtown Manhattan.
Lee’s new documentary displays the city’s heartbreak — and resilience — over the past 20 years.
The eight-part series debuts Sunday night on HBO, but Lee gave his fellow New Yorkers a first look. Those attending Wednesday evening’s event got to see Parts 1 and 6 of the project — loaded with luminaries and everyday people sharing their stories.
Lee interviewed more than 200 subjects, covering topics that’ve touched the lives of New Yorkers over the past 20 years, from the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to local politics and advances of the Black Lives Matter movement, to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the story isn’t told in a linear fashion. Episode 1 focused mostly on COVID, and generated strong emotions in the crowd.
“As a Californian who moved here two years ago, half my life here has been COVID,” said Andrea Flores, who moved from the San Francisco Bay area to Long Island City, Queens.
She said the documentary reinforced “that really heavy feeling everyone in the city had knowing that everyone’s dying. People cannot say goodbye to their families. They’re not getting a funeral. They’re not getting a proper goodbye. And as a Californian, think, well, s--t, if something happens to me or my family, I can’t say goodbye to them because we’re not even in the same state.” Stacy Giauque, of Woodside, Queens, said the COVID scenes were “very emotional,” but the 9/11 scenes resonated more with her. She was studying in Russia at the time of the terror attacks and has avoided watching video of the dark day.
“Twenty years later and that is the first prolific imagery of 9/11 I’ve seen,” she said.
The 20-year anniversary of the horror of 9/11 is weeks away and commemorations are planned from coast to coast, though the most poignant will surely be at Ground Zero, just steps from the Tribeca park where Wednesday’s screening took place.
Comedian Jon Stewart, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and actor Rosie Perez, who starred with Lee in his 1989 breakthrough flick “Do the Right Thing,” are among those who help tell the recent history of what Lee calls “The greatest city on this
God’s Earth.”
Even though Shelton Jackson Lee was born in Atlanta, he’s a true New Yorker. He moved to Brooklyn as a child and remained there until returning to the Peach State to attend college, where he shot his student film “Last Hustle in Brooklyn.”
Lee returned to New York City for graduate studies and has been a city staple ever since. His work has remained heavily New York-centric. Though frequently seen courtside at Knicks games, he’s been a cheerleader for all the city’s teams.
“There’s always been people saying, ‘New York is dead, I’m leaving. Sayonara,’ ” Lee says in the film’s trailer.
“I heard the same thing on Sept. 12, 2001,” former Gov. George Pataki said in the documentary.
Perez responds that she’s “not going to get scared off.”
It’s that New York spirit that kept
the city alive after 9/11 — as it did in 2020, when COVID-19 landed a haymaker on the greatest city in the world. New York did what New York does: get up and keep fighting.
Lee, 64, made his directorial debut with “She’s Gotta Have It” in 1986, and gained worldwide fame three years later with “Do the Right Thing.” He has since made a series of critical and commercial successes, such as “Malcolm X,” “25th Hour” and 2019’s “BlacKkKlansman,” which won him his first Oscar, for best adapted screenplay.
Many of his films are set in the city, but the HBO project is uniquely New York.
One scene from the series shows Lee interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci remotely, asking the nation’s top infectious disease expert: “What hospital were you born in?”
“Brooklyn Hospital,” Fauci replies, to which Lee starts clapping.