· Director told to ‘shut his face’ after race comments
· Row over black casting in Second World War films
Paul Lewis
The Guardian
Clint Eastwood has advised rival film director Spike Lee to “shut his face” after the African-American complained about the racial make-up of Eastwood’s films.
In an interview with the Guardian published today, Eastwood rejected Lee’s http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4679 that he had failed to include a single African-American soldier in his films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, both about the 1945 battle for the Japanese island.
In typically outspoken language, Eastwood justified his choice of actors, saying that those black troops who did take part in the battle as part of a munitions company didn’t raise the flag. The battle is known by the image of US marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi.”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.”
Lee’s comments came during a press conference to promote his own war film, Miracle at St Anna, at the Cannes film festival last month. “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.”
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2284235,00.html