Director Spike Lee had a thing or three to say about the lack of African American's in Clint Eastwood's 2006 war films Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. In response, Clint reportedly said Lee should "shut his face… The story is Flags of our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they (black soldiers) didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people go: 'This guy's lost his mind'. I mean, it's not accurate." It wasn't long before Lee fired back with: "First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either... 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. 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 one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II."
UPDATE: This just in from Bill Dal Cerro, president of the Italic Institute of America: "Spike Lee is very talented, but I sometimes wish he'd practice what he preaches. His points about African-Americans are well taken, but, ironically, he does the same thing to Italians in his films." According to The Hollywood Reporter: "The Italic Institute of America has criticized Lee in the past for his portrayal of Italian-Americans in Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever and has expressed worry about Miracle at St. Anna, Lee's upcoming World War II drama set in Italy.
