Both Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee are renowned for their dramatic and thought-provoking films, often expressing their opinions without holding back.
That made for a dangerous mix in 2008, when the two great filmmakers had what the new biography Clint: The Man and The Movies (in bookstores July 1) called an “ugly spat.”
In his book, Levy remembers how Lee, now 68, chastised Eastwood, 95, over the absence of representation in his 2006 WWII companion films, Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers.
“He did two films about Iwo Jima back-to-back, and there was not a single Black soldier in either of them,” Lee told reporters at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival press conference. “Many soldiers, particularly African-Americans, who survived the w*r, are furious with Clint Eastwood. In his Iwo Jima vision, there were no Negro soldiers. Simple as that.”
That same year, Lee debuted Miracle at St. Anna, a war picture depicting an all-Black United States division fighting in Italy.
While promoting his 2008 film Changeling, Eastwood replied publicly with trademark honesty, claiming that his portrayals of those historical events were accurate: “A guy like him should shut his face.”
“Has he ever studied history?” Eastwood questioned the Guardian publication.
“The man is not my father, and we’re not on a plantation either,” Lee bluntly told ABC News at the time. Lee acknowledged that the Dirty Harry star is “a great director,” but added, “He sounds like an angry old man right there.”
According to the biography, another great Hollywood director intervened to bring about peace. Following the duo’s escalating statements in 2008, Levy reported that Steven Spielberg stepped in as a “go-between” and encouraged them to resolve their differences.
“We exaggerated that situation with Clint, and we crushed it.” “We’re cool,” Lee told Access Hollywood in 2008, promoting his own WWII movie, Miracle at St. Anna. “We never talked, but I talked to Spielberg, and Spielberg talked to [Eastwood],” the Academy Award winner said at the time.