Spike Lee vs. Clint Eastwood

    When it comes to Clint Eastwood, perhaps the most revered of our living American filmmakers, most of the stories out of Cannes have been valentines about his upcoming film, "Changeling," which stars Angelina Jolie as a defiant single mother in 1920s Los Angeles. But leave it to Spike Lee, who's at the festival as a judge of online shorts, to toss some black roses Eastwood's way. According to reports from the festival, Lee--who has a film coming this fall about an all-black U.S. division fighting in Italy during World War II--is ticked off that Eastwood's celebrated pair of  war films from 2006 ("Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima") are missing something: any sign of African American fighting men.

As Lee put it: "He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one black soldier in both of those films. 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. I have a different version."

So far, no one's managed to get a response from Eastwood. One reporter who tried to raise the issue at a festival press conference was cut off by a moderator, which is pretty par for the course at film festivals, which these days seem to generate far more worshipful celebrity features than any hard news. Of course, I couldn't help but wonder: How would Mr. Dirty Harry respond? Knowing Eastwood's dry-as-mesquite humor, I think he could've easily defused the situation by answering: "Spike who?"

Comments

[Nick Lawrence]

There are no black soldiers in "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" because these films are historically accurate. During WWII, the US Marine Corps was highly segregted (as was the Navy). There were very few African Americans in the marine corps, and they were not allowed to serve in front-line combat roles. Although all-black army units fought with distinction in Italy and other places, the battle of Iwo Jima was fought by segregated divisions of US marines.