Clint Eastwood slams back at Spike Lee

In one of the more high-pedigree feuds of recent memory, Oscar winner Clint Eastwood told Oscar nominee Spike Lee to "shut his face."

The words appear in a recent interview with The Guardian, and are said in response to Lee's month-old comments about the lack of an African-American presence in Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima: "That was his version," Lee had said. "The negro version did not exist."

Eastwood doesn't pull any punches:

"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." As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, "but 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'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate...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...A guy like him should shut his face."

Did Spike Lee just get owned? Or is Clint Eastwood just a crotchety old man? Your move, Mr. Lee.

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