The confrontation between Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood may need been overblown however Steven Spielberg nonetheless intervened.
There are a whole lot of issues that Spike don’t like, and one was the way in which Clint depicted World Conflict II. When Eastwood’s double header Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima got here out in 2006, it was his probability to return to a style he hadn’t touched in a long time. However for Spike Lee, Clint Eastwood solely served to erase a major a part of historical past, thus launching a bitter however short-lived feud between the administrators that solely one other cinematic icon might resolve.
Spike Lee’s difficulty with the films – notably Letters from Iwo Jima – was that only a few, if any, Black individuals had been depicted, though it has been estimated that no fewer than 700 Black troopers took half within the namesake 1945 battle. It was, to some, as if Eastwood was limiting the occasion to the flag elevating, captured in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic {photograph}. As Lee put it, “Clint Eastwood did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and if you blinked you would miss the one Black person that was in it. There were Black marines in Iwo Jima.”
Clint Eastwood, naturally, wouldn’t simply sit again and watch Spike Lee run throughout his garden like that, saying, “This guy’s lost his mind…A guy like that should shut his face.” Cautious, Clint, you heard what Spike mentioned about Wim Wenders…
Time does heal most wounds, however Spike Lee discovered a mediator in Steven Spielberg (who we all know has no time for BS), who approached the twenty fifth Hour director at an L.A. Lakers sport. “He said, ‘Spike, stop talking about Clint Eastwood.’ I said, ‘I’m not…I’ve said all I’m gonna say,’ and that was it.” In a separate interview relating to that very same Lakers sport, Lee remembered, “I said: ‘Steven, it’s over with Clint Eastwood.’ Steven laughed and said: ‘I’ll call Clint and tell him in the morning.’ I said: ‘It’s over!’”
Spike Lee would get to inform his personal facet of WWII not lengthy after Clint Eastwood’s movies with 2008’s Miracle at St. Anna. Lee maintains that it was by no means meant to be a rebuttal of any sort, which is probably true, as one might see the director finally getting round to the subject material to assist higher characterize Black troopers. Lee would return to warfare – this time utilizing the Vietnam Conflict as a plot gadget – with 2020’s Da 5 Bloods.
