While Isiah Thomas has reportedly been nudging Eddy Curry to act more manly (prompting Curry’s suggestion of acting lessons), he’s also been trying to get his charges in touch with their feelings, as noted from Zeke’s earlier screening of Spike Lee’s Hurricane Katrina doc, “When The Levees Broke”.
The New York Times’ George Vescey follows up with the half pint auteur (link courtesy of True Hoop)
The Knicks remember the sound when the lights came up ” five minutes of silence, broken only by one man crying: the filmmaker himself.
Spike Lee recalls it differently. He had chosen the segment about a mother recounting the death of her 5-year-old daughter in the flood after Hurricane Katrina. To view it again, in a room with his beloved basketball team, induced tears and even sobs, but Spike Lee wants to set the record straight. œEverybody was crying, he said.
Lee said he hoped the film would stay with the Knicks. œLet™s be honest about this, these are young brothers, Lee said. œThey™re millionaires. It™s moronic the way some of them are going around with guns, he said, referring to players in general, not necessarily the Knicks.
œThis is macho bull that you™ve got to be 100 percent gangster, Lee continued. œThese young brothers have got to learn to show their vulnerability. They think that if you cry you™re a punk.
With all due respect, if Spike wants to see a room full of grown men bawling, a presentation of “Girl 6” (with the door locked) would do the trick. And while the director’s point about macho b.s. is well taken, perhaps he could cut Jerome James a little more slack? “Fast Food Nation” opens in less than a month and no one should be expected to do that much sobbing in public.