comment #1

admiralmpj says ...

Hmmm, noted filmmaker Spike Lee (who once said that he got the idea of using controversy as a marketing by observing Madonna) picks a fight with a noted Oscar Winning Director four months before his own World War II movie is due to open.

Like I said, Hmmm...

It's almost mathematically predictable. Whenever that guy Ann Coulter says something particularly outrageous, she has a book coming out or the paperback of her last book is being released. Every time.

Hmmm...

comment #2

alynch says ...

Lee's wrong on several levels, because there were black soldiers in Flags of Our Fathers.

http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=flagsstillzo8.png

comment #3

Chicago48 says ...

I'm with Alynch (?) and Spike is kicking up dust ahead of his own film, but he picked the wrong person to kick up the dust with.

comment #4

breadlymoore says ...

The only beef with FLAGS should be with Eastwood's casting.

Jesse Bradford and Ryan Phillippe are two horrible actors.

comment #5

/3rtfu11 says ...

Didn't realized he followed Madonna? Guess this is how she got her cameo role in "Girl 6"?

comment #6

lbeale says ...

Day at the Races: What Woody Could Learn From Clint
Eastwood, the quintessential white Republican, might be the most racially progressive Caucasian filmmaker in the land
By Lewis Beale

(L-R) Adam Beach, Ryan Phillippe and Jesse Bradford in Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers (Photo: Paramount Pictures)

Don't ask me why, but I've been thinking about the issue of racial representation in movies -- particularly about the relationship between Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood. Not exactly two directors you'd automatically mention in the same breath, but when it comes to race, they're the yin and yang of the film community.

Allen, the Jewish New Yorker of a supposedly liberal bent, makes movies that remind me of The Day the Negroes Left Earth, that Ray Bradbury short story in which all of the planet's blacks decamp to outer space. As far as Allen is concerned, New York might as well be called White Town -- minorities in Woody's World are nearly invisible. Eastwood, on the other hand, the quintessential white Republican, might be the most racially progressive Caucasian filmmaker in the land -- most of his pictures feature black characters in strong roles. They're not just part of the fabric of Eastwood's films; they're essential to its weave.

Don't believe me? Just check out each director's work. Allen has cast only two black, Hispanic or Asian actors in a significant role in any of his films (Chwietel Ojiofor and Daniel Sunjata in Melinda and Melinda). And except for the occasional minor, often stereotyped, part (like the black hooker in Deconstructing Harry), if you look really closely at some of his features, Allen doesn't even bother to feature racial minorities as background.

Eastwood, however, seems perfectly comfortable with black characters front and center, whether they're playing his partner (Unforgiven), best friend (Million Dollar Baby), lover (The Eiger Sanction), the subject of an entire film (Bird), or simply major players (Mystic River, True Crime, Absolute Power, etc.). And it doesn't stop there. In Blood Work, he cast Latinos in significant roles. Next week, he's got Flags of Our Fathers (above), with an excellent performance by Native American actor Adam Beach, and Letters From Iwo Jima, which tells the Japanese side of the battle for Iwo Jima. The man seems to be refreshingly color blind.

How to explain this dichotomy? You'd think that Allen, who grew up in the most racially and ethnically diverse city on earth (and who married an Asian woman), would have absorbed some of this multi-culturalism and used it in his films. Instead, he seems to have retreated into a world of his own making, where minorities barely exist. And please -- don't tell me that the Upper East Side, setting of many of Allen's films, is a white enclave. It is not, and has never been, devoid of racial minorities in the street, in stores, driving cabs, whatever. Allen's exclusion of this population speaks to either a latent racism or a kind of wish fulfillment in which everyone in Woody's World looks exactly like him. Whatever the reason, it undercuts any pretense he might have to be a "New York filmmaker." Sans minorities, his films are about as reflective of New York culture as Pedro Almodovar's.

Then there's Clint Eastwood, a product of the multi-racial East Bay Area of California, and -- this is important -- a major jazz aficionado. Unlike Allen, however, famous for playing Dixieland jazz and accompanying his film credits with 1920s dance tunes, Eastwood's tastes are not frozen in some pre-integration fantasia. He's conversant with musical styles post-1930, hence, Bird, that ode to bebop, 52nd Street, and drug-addicted brilliance. The point here, though, is that Clint, although certainly not a New Yorker, seems in tune with blacks as contemporaries and peers. He does not see them as strange, otherwordly creatures outside his purview as an artist. Nor does he stereotype them in pimp, hooker, gangsta roles. Considering the man was born in 1930 and is known for living in the very white town of Carmel, Calif., it's almost astonishing how grown-up his racial attitudes are (he's also married to a Latina). It may sound cliched, but hanging out in all those jazz clubs as a young man must have taught Eastwood a lot about the world of African-Americans. Like Bill Clinton, that other White-boy-who-feels-totally-comfortable-with-black-folk, Eastwood grew up with an appreciation for black culture, and for blacks as human beings.

Something Woody Allen has yet to learn.

comment #7

dangovich says ...

I wonder, was the Morgan Freeman character in Unforgiven written as a black man in the original script?

comment #8

Major Calloway says ...

Not quite:

          VIEW ON SALLY
 
She looks over at her husband, NED LOGAN, who is working not far away and he seems to "hear" her look because he turns to her and, seeing her troubled expression, he follows her look and he too sees the rider on the Albino mare.
 
           NED
 I'll be damned. It's Billy Munny.

Ned is about forty, balding, a farmer, but not as seedy looking as his old friend, Bill Munny.

So fuck Spike Lee, the horse he rode in on, and anyone who thinks he's a progressive voice of reason. If I want to hear parochial attitudes, I'll wait for thanksgiving dinner with my fucking family.

comment #9

D.Z. says ...

Jeff: Never post a link where people post links in response.
http://www.bvsj.org/Black%20Soldiers%20at%20Iwo%20Jima.pdf
http://www.nps.gov/archive/wapa/indepth/extContent/usmc/pcn-190-003132-00/sec10.htm

comment #10

D.Z. says ...

http://www.amazon.com/Bound-Freedom-Angeles-Foundation-American/dp/0520239199

comment #11

Mjs says ...

Eastwood gave Morgan Freeman two of his best roles, including the one that got him an Oscar. I like Spike Lee. I like people that aren't afraid to stir the shit. But get the fuck over yourself. Just because you're obsessed with the fact that you're black, not everybody else has it on the brain all day, everyday. Don't fuck with Eastwood. He's one guy who isn't going to take any shit.

comment #12

cheaplog says ...

D.Z., having served with the (Greek) marines, I can tell you that combat support units and shore parties are.. well.. combat support units and shore parties. According to Wikipedia, the initial wave (which suffers by far the heaviest casualties, consisted of "30,000 Marines of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions". According to Wikipedia again, "About 40,000 more would follow", but it's not clear if that's the second wave or the number includes all the rest that followed. In any case regular troops (mentioned in your links) rarely land before the fourth wave and I highly doubt, at the time, medics and MDs (which are part of each wave) were black.

Moreover, even if only 70 thousand soldiers fought in Iwo Jima, no more than 900 of them were black according to a Guardian article which seems to push History to its limits.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/21/usa.filmnews

And no one claims any of those (the 900) were treated anything more than "workmen" (quoting Roland Durden, a black marine) or actually played a role that remotely resembles a significant one.

I don't know how racist it seems, not using blacks as cannon fodder, but this is History.

comment #13

cheaplog says ...

(Just realized that I missed one of D.Z.'s links pointing to the same Guardian article I mentioned. I guess we didn't read it the same way :-)

comment #14

Jay T. says ...

Eastwood is the man - I love how he doesn't mess around and just calls Spike Lee out on his bullshit. And a GREAT point about how Lee was complaining when Eastwood filmed Bird, which was predominently black.

comment #15

D.Z. says ...

cheaplog: "In any case regular troops (mentioned in your links) rarely land before the fourth wave and I highly doubt, at the time, medics and MDs (which are part of each wave) were black."

I highly doubt they'd deny that position to black people even then, given the circumstances of the situation.

"Moreover, even if only 70 thousand soldiers fought in Iwo Jima, no more than 900 of them were black according to a Guardian article which seems to push History to its limits."

That was a war where every single person counted, whether or not they were specialists.

comment #16

cheaplog says ...

Well, I'm a Greek commenting on American History here, but there weren't that many black people educated enough to be medics, let alone doctors, in the american army in that period I believe (bear in mind that the whole army didn't invade Iwo Jima, and we' re talking about marine infantry). And even if there were, segregation would mean they had to belong to all-black units supporting all-black troops. And as I said, no one claims any black troops were part of the initial waves.

So I didn't want to sound too racist, and I'm not as I implied that there could be (I'm talking about 1-2) black people that somehow landed early. But the chance of "black solders doing any early-wave fighting during that horrific encounter" is virtually zero, as far as I can tell.

That shot of a black unit in Flags of our Fathers which alynch mentioned, does acknowledge that there were some black people there, eventually. Anything more would have people rightly claiming that Eastwood "lost his mind" as he says.

comment #17

cheaplog says ...

And here's a link to an official publication mentioning there were just 479 black *nurses* in the *whole army*, at the end of World War II.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/72-14/72-14.HTM

comment #18

Spacelamb says ...

Spike Lee's follow-up comments about Eastwoods response ("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.") are so disingenuous. At no stage did Eastwood say that the contribution black soldiers made to the war was insignificant. And that plantation comment was just spiteful. Lee is a talented filmmaker and has a lot to be proud of but I've yet to read an interview with him where he doesn't come across as a complete douche.

comment #19

62Lincoln says ...

"I've yet to read an interview with him where he doesn't come across as a complete douche."

Sums it up rather well. That, and the observation regarding his stirring of controversy in advance of his film's opening. This guy seems to be a one note piano, and it really gets tiresome.

comment #20

DavidF says ...

Lee should just write a book about what Hollywood should have done with each and every film, blackwise. Clearly he's the only guy who actually knows.

One out of every 50 bitches me makes, he has some kind of point. Most of the time, he sounds like Hooper X.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhGv79va21c

(Yes, that's somehow the second Kevin Smith-related YouTube post I've made today...)

comment #21

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