Clint Eastwood on Spike Lee: "A guy like him should shut his face."

The Guardian ^ | June 6, 2008

[Bodhi1]

Eastwood has no time for Lee's gripes. "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." As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, "but they didn't raise the flag. 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." Lee shouldn't be demanding African-Americans in Eastwood's next picture, either. Changeling is set in Los Angeles during the Depression, before the city's make-up was changed by the large black influx. "What are you going to do, you gonna tell a [edited] story about that?" he growls. "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 picture and it's 90% black, like Bird, I use 90% black people."

Eastwood pauses, deliberately - once it would have provided him with the beat in which to spit out his cheroot before flinging back his poncho - and offers a last word of advice to the most influential black director in American movies. "A guy like him should shut his face."

[Bodhi1]

Eastwood still likes to let his views be known, often forcefully. In 2005, he vowed he'd kill Michael Moore if the documentarian ever showed up at his house, the way he had doorstepped Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine. This March he was sacked from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's California state parks commission for objecting to the building of a toll road through a national forest. But though he has been associated in the public mind with Republican viewpoints, he's something of an individualist. "I don't pay attention to either side," he claims. "I mean, I've always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else's hair. So I believe in that value of smaller government. Give politicians power and all of a sudden they'll misuse it on ya."

Amen, Clint. Amen.

[montag813]

I wish we had leaders with the spine this great American has. God bless Mr. Eastwood.

[Vanders9]

An actor without any pretension...a beautiful thing! :)

[Mr. Jazzy]

Eastwood is right.

Spike Lee has been, is and shall always be just what he is, a punk... Whose noise should be ignored.

[albie]

Great read! Unfortunately, there are so few like Eastwood in Hollywood. When he’s gone, Spike Lee and the rest can and will re-write history (as they already have). There will be a “Flags of our Fathers” where they are all black and Muslim, just as there are terrorist films (Die Hard) where the bad guys are all blonde haired, blue eyed Swedes.

[avacado]

Just last weekend I watched two Clint Eastwood movies: ‘Kelly’s Heros’ and ‘Where Eagles Dare.’ Great movies!

Yeah Clint Eastwood!

[gunnyg]

Who really raised THE Flag on Suribachi that day???

http://www.freerepublic.com/~gunnyg/
http://www.freerepublic.com/~gunnyg/

[sinanju]

I object! The first Die Hard movie was “integrated.” The main villains were (supposed to be) German but the one of the baddies was asian, one was russian and their security systems hacker-dude was black.

[inflorida]

Good for him! Nice to see someone who isn’t caving to Hollywood’s political correctness.

[fieldmarshaldj]

"and their security systems hacker-dude was black."

And the dude was a total dork, too.

[sinanju]

So black guys can be geeks too. I wanted to stand up and salute.

[wtc911]

Just last weekend I watched two Clint Eastwood movies: ‘Kelly’s Heros’ and ‘Where Eagles Dare.’ Great movies!

--------------------------------------

Both directed by Brian Dutton, who should have had a much longer career based on these two films alone.

[hodaka]

About time someone told that four foot tall Spike Lee to shut up. Now will someone tell Jesse and Reverend Al to do the same.

[Tallguy]

Spike should worry when the tobacco juice hits the top of one of his Air Jordans — that’s the clue that Clint’s about to get medieval on him.

[Huck]

Clint’s still the man. One of my heros since I was 8.

[fieldmarshaldj]

No, no, I meant he was annoying. It’s hard to believe Hans Gruber would’ve kept somebody that irritating in his employ.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

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.’

This reminds me of the flag raising by the white firemen after 9-11. Someone wanted to make a monument of it with an integrated cast, a white, black and Latino. Have they lost their minds?

[montag813]

just as there are terrorist films (Die Hard) where the bad guys are all blonde haired, blue eyed Swedes.

Can't agree there. "Die Hard" was basically a bank heist film, not a terror attack. The baddies were shrewd and used Cold War-era fake terrorist names to conceal their true intentions. One of the best action films ever made. Almost flawless.

However you would be 100% correct about Hollywood's perversion of Clancy's "Sum of All Fears" wherein his nuclear villains were Palestinian and Hollywood replaced it with white "neo-fascists" from Europe. Disgraceful and revolting indeed

"Caucasian pro-gun anti-choice retrograde neo-fascists did this! AAAAAAAAA!!!"

[7thson]

You know, I was somewhat souring on Clint the last couple years. But this raises him up again. That last line, I can hear it in my mind, the growl, the snear. The only thing missing was the word ‘punk!’

[6SJ7]

...just as there are terrorist films (Die Hard) where the bad guys are all blonde haired, blue eyed Swedes.

John McClane: So this is what it's about, Hans? A f***ing robbery?
Hans Gruber: Well, when you steal $600, you can just disappear. But when you steal $600 million, they will find you, unless they think you're already dead.