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<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Spike, perhaps you chose the wrong highly acclaimed, multiple-Oscar-winning film icon to tick off. Clint Eastwood lapsed into full Dirty Harry mode in response to Spike Lee's complaints that Eastwood didn't include black soldiers in his film about the Iwo Jima flag-raising.
He made multiple points about why Spike was full of baloney, but the response was deftly summed up - you can almost hear the snarl through clenched teeth - in one line: "A guy like him should shut his face."
Lee was quick with a response of his own, which did nothing to defuse the budding feud.
"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."
Very astute, Spike - that's exactly what he is!
He closed with, "In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple as that. I have a different version."
Clint, back to you: "As for 'Flags of Our Fathers,' yes, 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 put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate."
Eastwood said 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."
Coincidentally, Eastwood's next project, "The Human Factor," is about Nelson Mandela and how he used the country's victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a means of fostering national unity. Starring, say, Tom Hanks as Mandela? "Yeah, I'm not going to make Nelson Mandela a white guy."</div>
Source: SJ Mercury News
He made multiple points about why Spike was full of baloney, but the response was deftly summed up - you can almost hear the snarl through clenched teeth - in one line: "A guy like him should shut his face."
Lee was quick with a response of his own, which did nothing to defuse the budding feud.
"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."
Very astute, Spike - that's exactly what he is!
He closed with, "In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple as that. I have a different version."
Clint, back to you: "As for 'Flags of Our Fathers,' yes, 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 put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate."
Eastwood said 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."
Coincidentally, Eastwood's next project, "The Human Factor," is about Nelson Mandela and how he used the country's victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a means of fostering national unity. Starring, say, Tom Hanks as Mandela? "Yeah, I'm not going to make Nelson Mandela a white guy."</div>
Source: SJ Mercury News
