Clint Eastwood tells Spike Lee to 'shut his face'!

Venkman Here - I came across this article over at guardian about how Spike Lee started complaining about the racial make-up Clint Eastwood's films. Saying that Eastwood had failed to include a single African-American soldier in his films 'Flags of Our Fathers' and 'Letters From Iwo Jima' which both take place in 1945 durring WWII and the battle for the Japanese island. Lee made the comment at a press confrence promoting his 'Miracle at St Anna' war movie about members of the all-black 92nd Buffalo Division, which fought in Italy, in typical Lee fashion:

"Clint 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," Lee said. "If you reporters had any balls you'd ask him why. There's no way I know why he did that ... But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It's not like he didn't know."

Why Spike Lee had to go on open up this bag of chips is anyones guess. Clint Eastwood responds in typical Eastwood Fashion:

"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."

Eastwood Continued to defend the racial make-up of his films and that they are historically accurate. He refered to his up coming movie 'Changling' which is set in Los Angeles before it had a large group of African-Americans, he said:

"What are you going to do, you going to tell a fuckin' story about that?" he said. "Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? 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.

"He 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."

Eastwood was then asked if he would remain historically accurate with his new film 'The Human Factor' which is about Nelson Mandela's attepts to foster national unity in post apartheid South Africa. Eastwood replies:

"I'm not going to make Nelson Mandela a white guy."

Ya gotta Love Clint Eastwood. Why is Spike complaining again? Eastwood is not going around critisizing his films. I just thought this was interesting and amusing how Clint Eastwood put Spike Lees uncalled for comment to rest.