After Hurricane Katrina hit, Spike Lee took his cameras to New Orleans to make a four-hour HBO documentary about the disaster. “Like him or not, Mr. Lee, 49, is an artist many people feel they know. People, black and white, approached him and the ‘Levees’ crew here, he said, imploring: ‘Tell the story. Tell the story.’ ‘It becomes like an obligation we have, he said. Mr. Lee’s reputation helped get his camera crew into the city’s water-soaked homes, he said. It allowed him to stretch out a complex story, with themes of race, class and politics that, he said, have too often been sensationalized or rendered in sound bites.”