News > Celeb > Clint vs. Spike

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SUNDAY JUNE 8 2008 6:00 AM

Normally I wouldn't be too excited about (or even interested in) two famous people "fighting" unless they were actually fighting. But normally, one of those two people isn't Clint Eastwood.

Since Clint no longer makes the kind of movies he used to, featuring him shooting evil in the stomach, then kicking it in the balls (the balls of evil are an elusive target, and made of cast iron and broken dreams. Fortunately, they're also highly susceptible to an Eastwood-kick), I guess I have to settle for him verbally battering his foes in the media. Ahh, whatever, it's still Eastwood, right?

The first jab jab was thrown by Spike Lee, he of the one good movie, a few weeks back at Cannes. Not at Clint, though, but the Cohen brothers. I guess he had to warm up for a foe the likes of Eastwood. Notch a win over a less-worthy opponent, to build confidence.

Spike Lee is in Cannes to promote a new film, but he couldn't resist taking a few swipes at some fellow directors, including Joel and Ethan Coen and Clint Eastwood.

Speaking about his World War II drama "Miracle at St. Anna," Lee said that, unlike the Coens, he was respectful in the way he portrayed death.

"I always treat life and death with respect, but most people don't," Lee said at a news conference Tuesday. "Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life like a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It's like, 'Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!' I see things different than that."

Ahh yes, because there is one way and ONLY one way to portray death onscreen. And judging by most of his recent efforts, this means putting it into an un-watchable movie.

Yes, you idiot, not everyone is making ham-fisted, clumsy bullshit where death needs to be given the weight of an elephant. There are many, many genres and even many more ways to convey something as complicated as death, than you might know about. Some people take a humorous look at it. Some revel in it's gore and enjoy a good onscreen demise. Some find a way of illustrating it's seriousness by seemingly treating it lightly. And in fact, some people make movies that are three times as good as yours. The rest settle for making them twice as good.

Not looking good for the upcoming Clint-battle. Maybe he should pick another tune-up, possibly against a Uwe Boll-type. Nope, he starts swinging.

"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," he said. "If you reporters had any balls you'd ask him why. There's no way I know why he did that -- that was his vision, not mine. But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It's not like he didn't know."

Fighting a bit out of his weight class... As evidenced by Clint's retort in a great interview published Friday.

Clint Eastwood folds his gangly frame behind a clifftop table at the Hotel Du Cap, a few miles up the coast from Cannes, sighs deeply, and squints out over the Mediterranean. "Has he ever studied the history?" he asks, in that familiar near-whisper.

Already awesome.

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."

Fucking Clint, he's still got it. Spike woke up a sleeping dragon. A squinty-eyed, leather-skinned dragon with a low rumble for a voice... Actually, it occurs to me that that describes pretty much all dragons, as well as Clint Eastwood. Hey that analogy went in a full circle!

And he has this to say about his next film, a period film taking place in a pre-integrated Los Angeles.

"What are you going to do, you gonna tell a fuckin' 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."

Clint Eastwood is swearing! Fuck yeah!

And here's the knockout blow. A verbal uppercut. Or possibly a verbal left hook, it's hard to get the conversions totally accurate.

"A guy like him should shut his face."

Not realizing he's out of his league Spike fired back with the following, and proved himself to be kind of a fucking moron.

First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either,"

Riiight. Because Clint replying to your initial attack must mean that he thinks he's a boss on some southern civil war-era plantation and that he can order you around, not that he merely took issue with your words. Nope, he's a racist trying to bully a black man. Wow.

"If he wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I'd like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist," he said. "

Yes, that's what he said, he said insignificant. He didn't just point out that the movie focused on a specific picture of soldiers raising a flag, in which no black soldiers appeared.

Clint may fire back (yeah, I know I was using a boxing metaphor, not a shooting one, it doesn't matter) but he doesn't need to, his points been made. Spike should worry about making movies. Clint should keep being the coolest son of a bitch alive.

TheCoolerKing ranks Clint's top five movies thusly: The Outlaw Josey Wales. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Unforgiven, High Plains Drifter, and possibly either A Fistful of Dollars, Paint Your Wagon or Two Mules for Sister Sara. Shit, he also loves Pale Rider. And Dirty Harry. And In the Line of Fire.

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Comments

jbaldwin

Moscow, PA

January 2007

JUN 08, 2008 06:34 AM

Thank you for the article. It inspired me to find more information.
Here's a slightly different perspective on the topic:

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Story?id=5015524&page=1

Rapid_Fire

Saskatoon, SK

July 2007

JUN 08, 2008 06:50 AM

Maybe someone should point out to Spike that there are more minorities than just black people. Flags included Ira Hayes, a native american, played by a man of First Nation decent. It seems to me that aboriginal people are represented far less often than black people in films, and most of there roles amount to cannon fodder in old westerns.

K182

I'm lost

May 2004

JUN 08, 2008 07:04 AM

I'd like to point out I agree with Spike on this... I mean I don't recall a single black actor in "Letters from Iwo Jima"! And the argument that the story centered on the Japanese down plays the significance of the black contribution on the island.

I'm sorry.. but if Spike genuinely feels that the story of the black experience hasn't been told, then it sounds like there is a movie for him to make and a story to be told. Go to it... stop complaining that someone else skipped over it. And if its good people will eventually see it.

Have a little faith in people.

Reaver

I'm lost

August 2003

JUN 08, 2008 07:40 AM

OMG! Logic! Spike Lee's only weakness.

Adroitbeing

I'm lost

September 2003

JUN 08, 2008 07:50 AM

Spike has jumped the proverbial shark and set a new low bar for being undignified in doing so.

LostLucy

USA

December 2006

JUN 08, 2008 09:16 AM

I love Spike Lee, and I don't mind him being out there speaking his mind, but he really just sounds like a petulant spoiled brat here... this is not about racism, although to be fair, the world CLint was portraying was a more racist world. period.

Cassiel

Aurora, CO

September 2004

JUN 08, 2008 09:17 AM

If Spike can make another "Do the Right Thing" then maybe I'll respect him again. But please, tackle another topic besides race. There's a lot more to the world. Try something new.

PointBlank

New York, NY

November 2004

JUN 08, 2008 10:04 AM

Cassiel said:
If Spike can make another "Do the Right Thing" then maybe I'll respect him again. But please, tackle another topic besides race. There's a lot more to the world. Try something new.

Make another Do the Right Thing? Try something new? Stop talking about race?

Those three statements are incompatible.

LiquidSunset

Rancho Cucamonga, CA

August 2006

JUN 08, 2008 10:14 AM

If Lee is so worried about how one particular minority was portrayed in a war film, then maybe he should just make his own version instead. But if he does, he'd better make sure to include all the races of people that fought in the battle, not just African-Americans. Eastwood made a film portraying the men who raised the flag, not a film about everyone who had a part in the entire battle of Iwo Jima. I wonder if Spike Lee even saw the movie?
Also, I think it's a bit pathetic when directors, such as Spike Lee, feel that they need to openly criticize other's work. It makes me think that when directors do that, they feel insecure about their own work.
If he doesn't like it, too bad; there are wayyyy better things to worry about than race in a period movie, especially when it was directed by a man who obviously did his homework..

smithers_jones

I'm lost

November 2003

JUN 08, 2008 10:59 AM

You produce a 1,000 word article on this and don't have anything more cogent to add that "Oh Snap!"? Why even bother? You must have a serious man-crush on Eastwood.

This controversy is nothing new. When the film first came out the same criticism was raised by several Black veterans of Iwo Jima and WW II historians. Lee's point is more than about Eastwood's films but about the overall trend not portray the role of Black soldiers in movies about WW II.

In the interest of balancing out the Clint Eastwood circle jerk, it worth mentioning another Eastwood film where he plays it "the way he reads it historically" The Outlaw Josey Wales is a film based on a novel written by Klansman, set in the post-Civil War South that is remarkably bereft of Black folks. The movie tell of the heroic adventures of a former Confederate soldier who continues to wage a one-man Civil War against the evil Yankee oppressors.