“This guy should just shut up”: Clint Eastwood was angry with the famous director, and only Steven Spielberg could reconcile them

When Steven Spielberg needs to calm down two directors in deep disagreement, it’s serious business! And it happened: The Jaws director had to calm down Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee, who were reportedly sending each other not-so-gentle messages through the press in 2008. Slash movie.

who started

It all started at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival to promote his film “Miracle in Santa Ana”, Spike Lee. announced It’s about The Memoirs of Our Fathers and The Iwo Jima Letters by Clint Eastwood:

“Clint Eastwood made two movies about Iwo Jima that were over four hours long and there were no black actors on screen. If you journalists had any qualms, ask why. J “I don’t know why he did. But I do know that it was on his mind and he could have done something about it as if he didn’t know.

In Miracle in Santa Ana, Lee portrays a squad of black American soldiers who find themselves in a Tuscan mountain village besieged by the German army in 1944. After Lee’s complaint, the journalist relayed the information to Clint Eastwood, who responded: The Guardian :

Answer (careful, it hurts)

“When I did Bird, he complained, ‘Why is a white guy doing this?’ Because I’m the only guy who did it, so he could do it before, he chose something else. And especially about the memory of our fathers:

“The plot of the film is the flag of our fathers, the story of the famous image of raising the flag, and they did not take part in it. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in this picture, people will say. Me: “This guy lost his mind, it’s not true” (…) and when I make a movie that is 90% black, like the bird, I hire 90% black people.

“This guy’s not my dad, and we’re not on a plantation. He’s a great director. He makes his movies, I make mine (…) but a comment like, ‘This guy needs to shut up,’ come on. He sounds like an angry old man, I’m not making that up.” , I know the history, I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of millions of African-American men in World War II. It wasn’t just John Wayne.

Spielberg to the rescue

The argument escalated until Steven Spielberg himself intervened. The producer of The Iwo Jima Letters and Memoirs of Our Fathers, EI’s father was also friends with Spike Lee. His words of intervention have not been made public to this day, but his role as an intermediary between the two directors is confirmed in the book. American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood Signed by Mark Elliott.

The book says that thanks to Spielberg’s help, the argument was calmed down and the hatchet was buried between the two men. Since then, they remained silent during this period and never returned. Well done Uncle Spielberg!