Spike Lee Slams Clint Eastwood
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Spike Lee is slamming Clint Eastwood over his two recent Iwo Jima movies, saying the filmmaker overlooked the role of African-American soldiers during World War II.
Mr. Lee — whose next film is this fall’s “Miracle at St. Anna,” the story of an all-black American division fighting in Italy during the war — said Mr. Eastwood’s 2006 movies “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima” were whites-only affairs.
“He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one black soldier in both of those films,” Lee said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, where he was a judge in an online short-film competition.
“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,” Mr. Lee said.
Mr. Eastwood was in Cannes for his missing-child drama “Changeling,” starring Angelina Jolie. At a news conference for the film, a reporter tried to ask for his reaction to Mr. Lee’s criticism, but the moderator cut her off and told journalists to limit questions to Mr. Eastwood’s own movie.
Due in American theaters in October, “Miracle at St. Anna” centers on four Americans — played by Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso and Omar Benson Miller — in the Buffalo Soldiers division in Tuscany..
