Clint Eastwood: Spike Lee Should "Shut His Face", Lee Responds, "We're Not On A Plantation"

UPDATE:
"First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either," Spike Lee told ABCNEWS.com about Clint Eastwood. "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."

"If he wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I'd like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist," he said. "I'm not making this up. I know history. I'm a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II."

"Not everything was John Wayne, baby..."

"I never said he should show one of the other guys holding up the flag as black. I said that African-Americans played a significant part in Iwo Jima," he said. "For him to insinuate that I'm rewriting history and have one of the four guys with the flag be black ... no one said that. It's just that there's not one black in either film. And because I know my history, that's why I made that observation."

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PREVIOUSLY:

Clint Eastwood has advised rival film director Spike Lee to "shut his face" after the African-American complained about the racial make-up of Eastwood's films.

In an interview with the Guardian published today, Eastwood rejected Lee's complaint that he had failed to include a single African-American soldier in his films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, both about the 1945 battle for the Japanese island.

In typically outspoken language, Eastwood justified his choice of actors, saying that those black troops who did take part in the battle as part of a munitions company didn't raise the flag. The battle is known by the image of US marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi.

"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'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."

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Read Spike Lee's Clint Eastwood criticism from Cannes just last month:

"He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one black soldier in both of those films," Lee said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, where he was a judge in an online short-film competition.

"Many veterans, African-Americans, who survived that war are upset at Clint Eastwood. In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple as that. I have a different version," Lee said.

Comments

[lyingtruth]

Easrwood is correct; Shelton Jackson Lee should shut his face!

[voicefromafar]

Oh, I'm soooooo glad you - so cleverly - made it clear that 'Spike" is not his 'given name'. That really clears a lot up for me, now I KNOW Spike Lee must be bad, Billy Bob.

[applehead]

good job clint. well said. spike lee is a bigot and therefore a hypcrite. i think he also has little man's complex. as a filmmaker, from one to ten, he's a nine. clint, from one to ten, is a one hundred. i think spike has genuis envy. how bout a guy who'd sue a network for stealing 'his' name, spike? i bet he sues mount rushmore someday for not having his ego up there. spike, leave clint alone, go after the real enemy. do the right thing. make a movie about nine one one. fight the power...fight the power that be.

[voicefromafar]

Oh yeah, so right, in fact, I bet if you started your own TV show and called it 'The Bridges of Los Angeles County' or a Hollywood restaurant called 'Pink Cadillac' the last people you would ever hear from would be Clint's attorneys.

[AurigaRa]

I might care if Eastwood wasn't such a republican, while I'll bet Spike Lee is not

[SethBLiNK]

Years ago, people asked Spike why there weren't more positive white people in his movie, and his response was "how come nobody asks Woody Allen why he doesn't use black people in his movie?"

What he meant, I think, was not that Woody should use more black actors, but that artists have a right to self expression and shouldn't be questioned in such a way.

Not only is he now going back on that, but this is the second time he has dissed Eastwood, the other being when he was making Mo' Better Blues after Eastwood had made Bird, saying that Eastwood's movie wasn't very good.

I think Clint is right. Spike should mind his business. Clint makes good movies, his movies give a lot of people work, and over the course of his career, his movies have shown a decent racial balance.

[c1ee]

A native indian was one of the main characters in the flags movie right? There's a minority for ya.

[Boadicea]

He was an alcoholic failure of a Native American. A stereotype, but one that was sympathetic and perhaps an accurate portrayal, I'm not sure.

If you take Eastwood's body of work as a whole, you can see a certain.... flavor. Vanilla.

Spike Lee was not saying that a black man should have been involved in the flag raising. Eastwood is being Republican here - he's deflecting the real issue by attacking the person who called him on it. Lee didn't say a black man should have been raising the flag. He said that black men fought in those battles.

The real issue is that in all those scenes with all those soldiers, not one black soldier appeared. Now THAT is what is inaccurate, Clint. You need to learn to take constructive criticism.

[ibivi]

Hello? Unforgiven. The other principal lead was Morgan Freeman.

[Mekarri]

Clint eastwood made the character a drunk. So yes there is a minority writen to be a drunk. Clint eastwood the other white meat.

[grimm]

"Made the character a drunk"??? The real-life character died of alcoholism, and his sad story was represented truthfully, respectfully and with grace by a talented director and actor.

You want the truth or some sugar-coated bullshit?

[devadasi]

Clint Eastwood, you are an elitist

[montestruc]

No, he is being historically accurate. Because of various racist policies of the US Government black troops did not participate in *that* action, and anyone who knows something of the history of that issue in WWII would know that and call Eastwood on it if he did.

This is not to say that US black troops did not fight and die gallantly in WWII - they did - just not in integrated units with whites.

I would suggest Mr. Lee look up some of the exploits of black units in the US Army in Europe in WWII, some were quite inspiring and would make good movies.

[ibivi]

Well put. I do however agree that black soldiers were not given their due for their war services. Patton was a racist who didn't think that black soldiers had the intellectual capacity to lead. But that is the way it was and we shouldn't rewrite history because it was unpleasant or unfair.

[StephenJK]

Maybe Spike Lee should take a good look at some of his own stereotype laden movies. I can't believe he can even TALK about things racialist. Actually, I can. Lee is a racialist, after all.

[truthmachine]

"racialist"? Nice white supremacist word there.

[Agentlady007]

I saw one movie of Spike Lee's. I saw every single movie of Clint Eastwood's.

Spike needs to clam it.

[OhBigWoo]

Poor Clint is saddled with poor judgement...after all he did endorse John McCain. Perhaps he wants more wars to make films about.

[SignedSealedDelivered]

no, eastwood is wrong...blacks did not raise the flag, but there is historic evidence that they were greatly involved in the battle that led to that moment. spike lee's comments is justified. eastwood should consider a better defense than "i'm rubber you're glue..." who knew he would be so sensitive.

[montestruc]

cite it

[WannaReadAtWork]

OK.

--- begin quoted material ---
Black combat support units also took part in the assault on Iwo Jima, where, as at Peleliu, their presence confounded the policy of segregation. Because of the random intermingling of white and black units, an African-American Marine, carrying a box of supplies, dived into a shell hole occupied by white Marines, one of whom gave him a cigarette before he scrambled out with his load and ran forward. Here, too, black stewards and members of the depot and ammunition companies came to the aid of the wounded. A white Marine, Robert F. Graf, who lay in a tent awaiting evacuation for further medical treatment, remembered that: "Two black Marines . . . ever so gently . . . placed me on a stretcher and carried me outside to a waiting DUKW."

At Iwo Jima, the 8th Marine Ammunition Company and the 33d, 34th, and 36th Marine Depot Companies served as part of the shore party of the V Amphibious Corps. Elements of the ammunition company and the 36th Depot Company landed on D-Day, 19 February 1945, and within three days all the units were ashore, braving Japanese fire as they struggled in the volcanic sand to unload and stockpile ammunition and other supplies, and move the car go inland. Eleven black enlisted Marines and one of the white officers were wounded, two of the enlisted men fatally.

--- end quoted material ---
source http://www.nps.gov/archive/wapa/indepth/extcontent/usmc/pcn-190-003132-00/sec10.htm

[DTR]

He shoulda added HRC, she would won the war, and raised the flag all by herself. Maybe even stayed on that island. She probably woulda signed on for uuuhhh 30-40mil?

[jadez]

seems old boy clint, who i do like , doesnt address the issue spike made which was,"why not a SINGLE black soldier in either movie??

seems valid to me.

[awcbuddy8]

There was. Watch the "Flags" again.

[awcbuddy8]

If anyone should shut their face it should be Spike Lee.

Good for Clint Eastwood.

[danton2000]

ouch!

[Americain]

Rat own.