Spike Lee takes aim (again) at 'old man' Clint Eastwood: 'We're not on a plantation!'

The war of words between four-time Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood and two-time Oscar loser Spike Lee heated up over the weekend. First, Eastwood told Lee he should "shut his face" about the absence of African Americans in "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima." Then Lee fired back, "The man is not my father, and we're not on a plantation either.

"He's a great director" Lee admitted. "He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it, though, I didn't personally attack him. And a comment like 'a guy like that should shut his face' -- Come on, Clint, come on! He sounds like an angry old man right there."

The trouble between the two began last month at the Cannes film fest, where Lee was promoting the fall release of "Miracle at St. Anna," a WWII drama about the heroic efforts of four African American soldiers in Italy. Never shy about expressing his opinion, Lee took the opportunity to criticize Clint Eastwood, who "made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total, and there was not one Negro actor on the screen."

Lee went on to challenge the media: "If you reporters had any ... , you'd ask him why. There's no way I know why he did that. That was his vision, not mine. But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It's not like he didn't know." So, Jeff Dawson, a reporter for The Guardian, did just that.

When Dawson asked Eastwood about Lee's allegations, he replied, in his trademark no-nonsense style, "Has he ever studied the history?" Eastwood explained that while there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as part of a munitions company, "they didn't raise the flag. 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 would go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate."

Eastwood maintained that Lee has had it in for him for two decades. "He was complaining when I did 'Bird' [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else." And Eastwood says don't expect his next film, "Changeling" starring Angelina Jolie and set in largely white Depression era Los Angeles, to make Lee any happier. "What are you going to do, you gonna tell a ... story about that?" he growls. "Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I'm not in that game. I'm playing it the way I read it historically, and that's the way it is. When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like 'Bird,' I use 90% black people."

In response to these comments, Lee issued a challenge to Eastwood via ABCnews.com: "If he wishes, I could assemble African American men who fought at Iwo Jima, and I'd like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist. I'm not making this up. I know history. I'm a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the 1 million African American men and women who contributed to World War II."

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