Eastwood to Spike Lee: "Shut Your Face"
Clint Eastwood by Todd Williamson/WireImage.com and Spike Lee by Tony Barson/WireImage.com
Remember last month at Cannes when Spike Lee - promoting his African-American WWII movie
Miracle at St. Anna - made some
characteristically aggressive remarks about the dearth of black characters in Clint Eastwood's
Flags of Our Fathers? Well, the man who once played Dirty Harry has a few choice words for Lee.
"A guy like him should shut his face,"
Eastwood told the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper - apparently thinking that calling Lee a "dummy head" might sound childish. Despite his obvious anger, Eastwood gave a straightforward response to why there weren't more black roles in his film: "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." Eastwood also claimed that Lee had once griped about Eastwood directing
Bird, the biopic about African-American jazzman Charlie Parker, a story Lee thought should be told by a black director.
It's clear what needs to happen here. These two should settle matters with a good old-fashioned
"talking like this" contest. Lee certainly knows from
in-your-face confrontation (link NSFW), and Eastwood has that signature gravelly voice.
Does Lee feel lucky? -
Mickey O'Connor
