Clint Eastwood Once Said Spike Lee ‘Should Shut His Face’ in Heated Feud Over Racial Representation in War Films

https://people.com/clint-eastwood-biography-spike-lee-feud-11764025

31 comments

  2. He also yelled at an empty chair, so maybe his opinion doesn’t carry that much weight

  3. Spike Lee adapts a Asian story with “oldboy” and replaces nearly the entire Asian cast with black and white people: 

    *silence*
    (Edit: someone clarified there wasn’t silence, people were critical of the film. What I didn’t see tho was people critical of the fact there were no Asians in the  film)

    Clint eastwood creates a historically accurate depiction of the horrors  of the pacific theator through both perspectives:  

    “racist”

  4. If you were white in WWII you were almost certainly serving in an all white unit. That would just be historically accurate. People can disagree about whether historically accurate is more or less important than current era representation. That doesn’t make one party or the other racist.

    But I strongly believe that if you take each of their ENTIRE body of work, only counting the stuff they DIRECTED and not just acted in, Clint Eastwood is a far superior director to Spike Lee. Spike Lee had a handful of strong movies, but his overall output is extremely uneven and the majority of his films were not great. Clint Eastwood is an amazing film director and has almost never made a bad film.

  6. What Clint Eastwood did to his girlfriend… sabotaged her whole career after they broke up just bc she wanted to keep the house he bought for her. Spent millions paying a studio to NOT let her direct a film (even though she had directed before). Receipts were finally brought to court to prove he was a petty petty bitch.

    Also, Spike Lee was pretty shitty to young black women so his defense of Bill Cosby tracks. Theyre all monsters who paint themselves as heroes. Ick.

  7. If you’re going to show Black marines at Iwo Jima, they’re almost certainly going to be background characters.

    For starters there simply weren’t that many of them, as the marine corps had generally not accepted them for most of its history. The first black marines started training in 1941. 

    Segregated units were the normal situation for most servicemen during the war- black marines served in units that were mostly black and they generally were not combat units like rifle companies, they tended to be construction units or support units. While they might be attacked by Japanese forces and participate in defensive action, they weren’t going to be leading the attack unless something had gone horribly wrong. 

    Making a movie about WW2 black marines that would be historically accurate to Eastwood’s reputation for high standards would be difficult to do – much less tell a compelling story that was also truthful to historical events. You don’t see too many movies where the protagonist shows up and delivers ammunition, brings dead bodies back to the shore, and follows the frontline from a distance. 

  8. Both of these senior citizens are guilty of being awful people

  9. They are both amazing film makers and they are both self righteous assholes who love to fuck people over. Multiple things can be true at once. Would I ever want to hang out with either one of them? Hell no. Will I watch everything they produce and direct? Sure.

  10. Why is this even a discussion? How long ago did this happen? Leave this shit alone, won’t amount to nothing

  11. >”He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one Black soldier in both of those films,” Lee told reporters at a 2008 Cannes Film Festival press conference. “Many veterans, African-Americans, who survived that war are upset at Clint Eastwood. In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple as that.”

    Claiming his depictions of those moments in history were authentic, Eastwood publicly responded with characteristic candor while promoting his 2008 drama *Changeling*: “A guy like him should shut his face”..”Has he ever studied the history?”

    Lee didn’t hold back, telling [ABC News](https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=5015524&page=1) at the time, “The man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation either.” Admitting that the *Dirty Harry* star is “a great director,” Lee added that “he sounds like an angry old man right there.” 

  12. How would Mr Lee like them represented? In WWII the majority of black were kept out of combat rolls and they complained about that. then fast forward to Vietnam when more were assigned to combat rollsthey complained.

  13. Clint Eastwood is a theater kid that thinks he’s a tough guy because of the characters he played on TV

  14. If Spike Lee or anyone who has an opinion siding with him actually watched the film, he’d have seen the Black soldiers on Iwo Jima doing their assigned jobs. They worked behind the lines as auxiliary troops and stretcher bearers. The racial segregation of Blacks from the rest of the US armed forces was kind of a big thing in WW2. If there wasn’t a Black combat unit posted. They didn’t fight. Period.

    Spike Lee said that shit to drum up publicity for his war film Miracle At St Anna. That’s it. That’s all this incident was. Cheap publicity. You can hate Eastwood for a lot of reasons, but getting sandbagged by a well known drama baiter isn’t one of them.

  16. Yea, Clint Eastwood is a huge racist am I the only who has seen his later movies where the mask fell completely off? He made an entire movie just so he could use every Asian slur he knew.

    Edit: oh yea and I forgot he also got to play the white savior at the end, too.

  17. Ah, yes, famous war hero Clint Eastwood, who spent his military career during the Korean War fighting… errr… as a lifeguard stateside?

  19. Who called President Obama “an empty chair” at the RNC. Fuck him. Playing a grizzled man of few words over and over doesn’t make you strong, tough or right. John Wayne was an asshole too.

  20. Spike Lee aways has a bone to pick with other directors. I remember he went off on Tarantino because of the constant use of the N word in his films.

  22. Spike Lee is a sack of shit, remember when he tweeted out an innocent person’s address after the George Zimmerman verdict hoping to get a mob at his parents house

  23. The US military didn’t have integrated units until the Korean war. Which is wild to think about.

  24. Didn’t he “culturally appropriate” Oldboy and cast a bunch of white people, as well as try to remake a masterpiece of film releasing a horrific piece of shit, and apparently steal the poster art for said remake. Clint and Spike are both racist old rich assholes, fuck em.

  25. black people weren’t even allowed to be on the front line in iwo jima

  27. We’re so starved for headlines that we’re dragging a 20 year old resolved controversy back into the spotlight?

  28. Who fucking cares what Clint Eastwood has to say. He made Gran Torino just so he could slur on film. Fuck that guy.

  29. Cynical me wants to know — why is this in the news cycle right now? Are both of them making new movies? Significant anniversary of a film?

  30. In fairness to Clint there were no black soldiers in that battle because the army was segregated.

  31. Working in film and television myself I’m always amazed at how white things are in the industry. This isn’t just a couple Clint Eastwood movies or just Spike speaking up.

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