Eastwood to Spike Lee: "Shut Your Face"

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