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Clint on Spike: ‘A guy like him should shut his face’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Spike Lee’s not the only one who can throw barbs.
Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood has verbally lashed out at Lee for the African-American director’s pointed comments last month that in Eastwood’s Iwo Jima movies, “Negro soliders did not exist,” adding that that has angered many black veterans. Lee’s upcoming film, “Miracle at St. Anna,” involves an all-black World War II American division fighting in Italy.
In an interview today with the Guardian in England, Eastwood responded:
“Has he ever studied history? … He was complaining when I did ‘Bird’ (the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker). Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the the only guy who made it, that’s why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else.”
Eastwood acknowledges to the Guardian that there was a small detachment of African-American troops on Iwo Jima, serving as 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’d go, ‘This guy lost his mind.’ I mean it’s not accurate. … I’m not in that game. I’m playing it the way I read it historicaly, and that’s the way it is.
“When I do a picture and it’s 90 percent black, like ‘Bird,’ I use 90 percent black people.”
The Guardian reports that Eastwood then paused before delivering a final message to Lee: “A guy like him should shut his face.”
What do think of the Clint-Spike flap? Is one right? Or both?
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