BY MATT DAVIS

Academy Award nominated director Spike Lee is in New Orleans for the premiere of his new HBO documentary, If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise, tonight at the Mahalia Jackson Theater. Gambit caught up with Lee over his second Arnold Palmer cocktail as he enjoyed some corn and crab soup in the French Quarter before the screening.

The following are excerpts from our interview, which will appear in the next issue of Gambit.

GAMBIT: How did it feel, asking Ray Nagin how he thinks he’ll be judged by history?

SPIKE LEE: Ray was kinda on edge, that interview, and it was really, we had Ray and we were supposed to interview Landrieu, and the only time Mitch could do it was right after Nagin, so were trying to keep them from seeing each other. We’d finished with Nagin, we were trying to get him to leave and he was staying in front! Someone must have told him that [Mitch] Landrieu was coming.

But for me that wasn’t the hardest question. The hardest question to ask him was to ask what he thinks about the most. And I think it was his best, when he talked about the eight hour window to call the mandatory evacuation, and he waited until the eighth hour, and I know…well, he didn’t talk about it, I didn’t ask him, I think that’s something that’s going to haunt him the rest of his life. It would haunt anybody. Because he knows, we all know that by waiting til the eighth hour, people are no longer here. That decision meant the difference between living and dying, and I give him, you know I respect, because he didn’t have to answer that, but he did.

When he got elected, he didn’t know the city was going to be 80% under water, there was no playbook, but I feel people’s problem with Nagin was really what he did in his second term, or what he didn’t do in the second term versus something that happens that he had nothing to do with.

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Someone you’ve been critical of in the past was Larry Bird. Now Mitch is the first white mayor of New Orleans since his father, Moon Landrieu left office in 1978. Is Mitch Landrieu the Larry Bird of New Orleans mayors?

He can’t shoot like Larry. Or I’ve never seen him. I don’t know if he even plays basketball. But look, I like Mitch, I like his sister, but as he says in the film, he’s got a hard job. Right now New Orleans is on pace to have 203 murders this year, which by use of the population makes it the murder capital of the United States of America. Think about this: Greater New Orleans has 700,000, New York has eight million people. Eight million. They’re going to have more murders than New York City here, and New York City has eight million people! That’s, you’re talking about like, Iraq odds, I mean, crazy.

I know you interviewed [Tulane University homicide expert] Peter Scharf for the film.

Yes. He was very very informative. He’s the go-to guy for homicide. His figures he has are chilling, and it’s young black men killing young black men, and it’s not something that’s just owned by New Orleans. It happens everywhere.

SPIKE LEE, PHOTOGRAPHED FOR GAMBIT BY CHERYL GERBER

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CNN will air Soledad O’Brien’s documentary New Orleans Rising at 7 p.m. Aug. 21. O’Brien is in New Orleans to attend a preview screening at 6:30 p.m. tonight at SUNO (in the gymnasium at 6400 Press Drive). It chronicles efforts to rebuild Pontchartrain Park, and it focuses on actor Wendell Pierce (The Wire, Treme), who assumed leadership of the Pontchartrain Park Community Development Corporation (PPCDC).

O’Brien and CNN deserve credit for continuing to report on the rebuilding of New Orleans. But this show has both its merits and its awkward moments. Some comparisons with the BP disaster seem forced — perhaps motivated by an attempt to make the show seem more timely. But more odd is the treatment of race as an underlying issue. After questioning why neighborhood residents were left to their own devices to recover (could it be racism?), O’Brien gets an interview with former mayor Ray Nagin and asks him about the race issue, but she doesn’t ask him about his administration’s position or efforts regarding Pontchartrain Park. It seems like a grand omission.

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Off the bat, I’ll have to apologize for the lame pun in the headline, but it was just too easy. And, since we’re dealing with disgraced technology chief Greg Meffert and the forfeiture of his Bayou St. John home, I think a little levity can’t hurt things.

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Last we heard, the Mefferts were facing a 63-count grand jury indictment courtesy of U.S. Attorney Jim Letten seeking forfeiture of the Meffert’s home on Park Island. This after the home was put up for sale for $749,000. Just around the corner from City Park, this beauty has a pool, a jacuzzi tub and a backyard featuring the lounge chairs from a Cialis commercial (or so it seems). Now you could own this beautiful piece of property and pay around $3,000 a month. Or you could check out craigslist and rent it for $2990 a month.

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Just be sure to save your e-mail correspondence. Just in case.

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/hat tip to Greg Rhoades for pointing out the ads.

Gambit’s Clancy DuBos thanking Mayor Nagin? And in a press release from the Mayor’s Office of Communications, no less?

In an unlikely year that’s seen pigs fly, hell freeze over and America join the commies, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the mayor’s spinners dug deep for this one:

“All of [sic] just said, ‘Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor,’” said Clancy DuBos, editor of Gambit Weekly. “That was his defining moment right after Katrina because he expressed very bluntly the frustrations of everybody — black, white, Democratic, Republican — all New Orleanians who were fed up with the lack of federal response.”

It’s taken from a CNN profile on Nagin and is part of the network’s series “Revealed,” which the press release reminds us is, “a program that gets under the skin of the world’s brilliant thinkers, creative champions and inspirational leaders.”

Not that many would disagree with DuBos’s assessment of Nagin’s “Now get off your asses and do something” September 2005 radio interview calling for federal aid for our drowning city.

But that was 2005, and the DuBos quote seems a little stale for cherry picking. While the mayor’s press office isn’t Fox News, the press release needs a little balance. How about DuBos’s take on the end of Nagin’s term?

“What measure of relief he’s feeling pales in comparison to the relief that the citizens are feeling.”

That’s better. Now we can focus on the important stuff.

… and surely New Orleans will be talking about Mayor Nagin talking to CNN. An excerpt:

CNN: The ratings show that people are frustrated with you, how does that make you and your colleagues feel?

RN: We feel it’s unfair, but we know the truth and how far we’ve come. We have this kind of idealism that at some point people are going to understand what we’ve been doing, it’s almost like an underground movement. We’ve been working underground to make sure that this city can fully recover with the hope that at some point people will recognize the good work that we have done.

CNN: How often do you wonder how different would your tenure have been had it not been for Katrina?

RN: I don’t think about that a lot. To be honest, I don’t really have time to do that, I spend every day, every moment, thinking about how to get this recovery moving faster, better and how to rebuild this city.

His first priority upon leaving office, Hizzoner tells CNN, is a “long vacation,” because “the Katrina experience was just something that I need a break for.”