“Listening to Lee at the HBO press conference reminded me of an afternoon I once spent with an elderly aunt….”At a press conference for Spike Lee’s new documentary, Catherine Seipp wonders if he is a brilliant filmmaker, a deft promoter of himself, a conspiracy nut, or perhaps all three.

I was standing around with a French journalist friend of mine after HBO’s press conference this summer for Spike Lee, whose new film is “When the Levees Broke,” an HBO documentary about the Katrina devastation that premieres in two parts Aug 21 and 22, then runs as a single four-hour movie Aug. 29, Katrina’s anniversary. Another French journalist at this press conference, who writes for Le Monde, ran up to tell my friend about a “scoop” she’d just gotten from the director.