Spike at the Tribeca Film Festival in April.Photo: Getty Images
All the death and destruction on this final season of The Sopranos is taking even Spike Lee by surprise. “It shook me up,” he said today after accepting a Peabody award for his HBO documentary about New Orleans, When the Levees Broke. “Michael Imperioli and I, we’re friends. And when he went out, I was not good for two days after that. In fact, I had to call him up. I said, ‘You still alive?’” Turns out Imperioli is just fine. Lee says the actor seemed more worried about a casting crisis at the Off Broadway theater he owns with his wife than about Christopher’s demise. Lee, meanwhile, says he’s already thinking about two new documentary projects for HBO. One would be a follow-up to Levees, which he likes to tell people is still a work-in-progress. “The misconception is, ‘Oh, they had Mardi Gras. Oh, the French Quarter’s open. Oh, women are flashing their breasts on the rails with the beads. Everything’s okay,’” he says. “But it’s not okay. Half the population is still not there, and a lot of them can’t come back because they don’t have jobs and the rents have been doubled and tripled. It’s crazy.” —Jada Yuan
