Clint Eastwood said that a guy like Spike Lee should "shut his face." Eastwood told the UK's Guardian just that in an interview last Friday.
While Spike Lee was on hand at the Cannes Film Festival to promote his new movie "Miracle at St. Anna", a film about the all-black 92nd Buffalo Division, he criticized Clint Eastwood and his film "Flags of Our Fathers" for not having a single African-American in the movie.
There were many African-Americans who survived that war and who were upset at Clint for not having one in 'Flags' or 'Letters From Iwo Jima.' That was Eastwood's version: The Negro soldier did not exist. I have a different version,Lee said recently at the Cannes film festival in France.
This was Clint Eastwood's response:
He [Spike Lee] was complaining when I did 'Bird' [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. 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.
As for "Flags of Our Fathers," Eastwood says there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, "but they didn't raise the flag. The story is 'Flags of Our Fathers,' the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people would go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate."
After Spike Lee heard about Eastwood's comment, "Lee Should Shut His Face," this is what Lee told ABC News:
First of all, the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation either. He’s a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn’t personally attack him. And a comment like ‘a guy like that should shut his face’ — come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there.
Note: We agree with Clint Eastwood: Spike Lee Needs To Shut His Face! Get a life Spike...sales must be down.
