Quick LinksThe Differences in Clint Eastwood's Background Versus Spike Lee's What Spike Lee Is Saying Isn't That Controversial Is Historical Accuracy in Movies a Thing of the Past?
As a cinematic titan on-screen and behind the camera, Clint Eastwood's storied Hollywood career has seen him go from being one of the most recognizable faces in Western movies to a director who has consistently produced strong work for decades. With his latest and possibly final film, Juror #2, coming out soon, he is one of the last people still working from Hollywood's Golden Age. A career as prolific as Clint Eastwood's doesn't come without drawing some criticism from others in the industry. While promoting his movie Miracle at St Anna, director Spike Lee criticized Eastwood for his lack of racial diversity in the casting of his war movies Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers.
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Spike Lee was quoted by The Guardian, saying: "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." Eastwood responded: "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. A guy like him should shut his face." Eastwood doubled down on his statement: "I'm playing it the way I read it historically, and that's the way it is. When I do a movie, and it's 90% Black, like Bird, then I use 90% Black people."
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Although the feud was kind of settled, with Lee acknowledging Eastwood's talents and differences as a director, Eastwood later said he felt he'd been disrespected. This opens up an interesting conversation about cast diversity concerning historical accuracy, which runs between two generations of filmmakers. While there may not be one correct opinion, it does point to a difference in attitude, which suggests that Hollywood still has a way to go with its stance on diversity.
The Differences in Clint Eastwood's Background Versus Spike Lee's Flags of Our Fathers R Release Date October 18, 2006 Director Clint Eastwood Cast Ryan Phillippe , Jesse Bradford , Adam Beach , John Benjamin Hickey , John Slattery , Barry Pepper Runtime 132 Main Genre Drama
The most noticeable difference between these two directors is the times they came from and the subjects that made them popular. Eastwood's career was made with Westerns, with the genre's often lazy attitudes to race at the forefront of why some of the genre's biggest hits haven't aged all that well. This doesn't make Eastwood responsible for that, but as Eastwood has built a directing career from more traditional genre pieces and biopics, his straightforward approach could not be more different from Spike Lee's.
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Lee's movies, for the most part, are all about racial disparity, and as his style has evolved into later works like BlaKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods, the core of his racial messaging has sadly not had to change that much because the injustices of Do the Right Thing haven't changed that much. This simple approach versus the thematic places Eastwood and Lee as two very different directors with different things on their minds.
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Eastwood's films are not less than Lee's because he doesn't have a racial message, but this can explain his less nuanced perspective. Lee is not the only one who can speak for the African American community on screen, but his filmmaking background comes from the position he has often been placed in, as the poster boy for Black directors, ever since Do the Right Thing.
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Attitudes are rightfully changing, and Hollywood tends to simplify conflicts like Iwo Jima, which tends to lean into American centralism. As has been tradition, American centralism is often mainly white. Eastwood's claim that he has been greatly mistreated isn't so much an indictment on him but, again, of the singular reputation he has -- the old white guy who makes slow, uncomplicated movies for other older people. Eastwood and Lee have both carved their filmmaking paths in the shadow of their images, and their feud is the result.
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This becomes less of a debate about racial diversity and more about how these two men have become known as the spokespeople for their target audiences and the subjects their movies are about and cater to. It's an odd and reductive form of tribalism that sets us back in how we see race on screen as two separate factions that can't coexist on screen. In 2024, the race of a character shouldn't matter. However, that becomes much more complicated when you base it on historical events like Iwo Jima.
Is Historical Accuracy in Movies a Thing of the Past? Close ✕ Remove Ads
We make movies based on historical events to capture what it was like to be there. Eastwood's opinions do not make him a racist, but they do point to a lack of understanding that Lee has, a feeling of lacking racial representation Eastwood naturally struggles to understand. It makes sense that Eastwood doesn't want to change the fact that racial segregation in battles like Iwo Jima did happen. Lee isn't calling Eastwood a racist, but from his perspective, a movie about the conflict is a chance to show what it was like for all the different groups that fought, not just the predominant one.
It might seem like a cop-out to say that both men are right, but that's only because neither is necessarily wrong; they have different objectives. Historical accuracy shouldn't become a thing of the past, but Hollywood does have to decide how to proceed. It doesn't have to be one or the other, and just because you have a predominantly white cast doesn't mean the enemy has to be a racial stereotype or a faceless army.
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To tell stories like Iwo Jima should mean telling them from all angles, not just the ones where the Americans save the day. Both Lee's audience and Eastwood's don't have to exist separately. A balance can be struck between Eastwood and Lee, and by its very nature, not everyone will be pleased. That's not a bad thing. We are allowed to disagree without fighting, and without constructive debate in the movie industry, we aren't anywhere.
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