Clint Eastwood has always been one of the controversial directors with a different perspective. Being an actor who turned into the field of directing, Eastwood has been celebrated worldwide for his iconic movies but not all people like him.
Director Spike Lee, known for famous movies like Do the Right Thing and BlacKkKlansman once criticized Eastwood for not casting people of color in his film. Eastwood simply stated that people like him “should shut his face”.
When Clint Eastwood Told The Director To “Shut his face”!
Spike Lee is known for creating iconic movies that often focus on the topic of racism at hand. With his 1982 film Do the Right Thing making it big in Hollywood, Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood found fame in the 1980s.
In 2006, Eastwood directed the two movies Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags Of Our Fathers. With both movies depicting two sides of the American-Japanese war during World War II, there were a lot of controversial opinions about the film. Spike Lee even criticized Eastwood for not c asting a person of color in the film (via FarOut Magazine).
“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.”
Lee further continued,
“If you reporters had any balls, you’d ask him why. There’s no way I know why he did that. But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It’s not like he didn’t know”
For a rebuttal, Eastwood didn’t give much of an explanation. Stating that he was factually correct, the Sully director simply stated that Spike Lee should keep his mouth shut!
“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”.
On the same topic, veteran director Ridley Scott faced an intense crisis because he decided to cast American actors in his 2014 film Exodus: Gods and Kings and the movie is allegedly pretty racist!
Ridley Scott Wouldn’t Get Funding Otherwise!
In his statements that went viral and controversial to unexpected lengths, Ridley Scott was criticized for allegedly casting Americans and Europeans in all the “good roles” and people of color in all the “bad roles” in his 2014 movie Exodus: Gods and Kings. Well, Scott’s statements to Variety added more fuel to the fire!
“I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn’t even come up.”
No actions were taken on the comment. As for Eastwood, the veteran director also continues to make movies with his latest one titled Juror#2.