Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood are both pissed.
During Cannes 2008, the always outspoken Spike Lee – who was there to promote his African American WWII movie “Miracle At St. Anna” – called out Eastwood for his lack of portraying blacks in the ‘Iwo Jima’ films he made in 2006 (FYI, ‘Miracle’ didn’t screen, but an eight-minute trailer was played).
“Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total and there was not one Negro actor on the screen. If you reporters had any balls you’d ask him why,” Lee said clearly ingratiating himself to the same reporters who would eventually review his film.
The U.K. Times asked Eastwood about the remark on the same day at Cannes, but the filmmaker refused to acknowledge the question. But apparently he’s been asked too many time as Lee is clearly entered the director/actor’s line of fire.
“The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn’t do that,” Eastwood told the Guardian. “If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go: ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate.” Referring to Lee, he added: “A guy like him should shut his face.”
Wait, a “guy like that,” yikes. Dangerously close Clint. You pull that shit in Fort Green (where Lee’s 40 Acres & A Mule production company lives) to the wrong Huxtable and you could get yourself a stern talking to!
In the article, Eastwood notes that this isn’t the first time Lee has got up in his grill. “He was complaining when I did ‘Bird‘ (the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker starring Forrest Whitaker). Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that’s why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else.”
Eastwood said he wasn’t about to change the make-up of his films to please Lee, the NAACP or any other cracker who gets up in his business. “What are you going to do, make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player?,” he asked. “I’m not in that game. I’m playing it the way I read it historically, and that’s the way it is. When I do a movie and it’s 90% black, like Bird, then I use 90% black people.”
Eastwood’s next project is about Nelson Mandela starring Morgan Freeman and we’re sure that’s going to go over well.
[ed. does all this mean the Coens bros. are going to pick a fight too?]