Excellent interview and update. I wouldn’t want two of my favorite film makers to agree about much. People who do should just watch Steven Segall and Jean Claude Van Dam movies….

Yes, even if Japanese soldiers abused prisoners in the Bataan death march, even if they took part in the rape of Nanking, even if they bombed Pearl Harbor, the individual soldiers were in fact human beings with wives, girl friends, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters.

Communists, Nazis, Japanese, Americans—they are all human beings forced to do inhuman things in war. 

Yes, Japanese soldiers—and even German soldiers—were human beings. There is a very dark German film called simply, “Stalingrad,” that portrays (probably quite accurately), young, confident Germans ready to go to war to kill those nasty communist bastards in Russia. They ended up in Stalingrad, arguably the most hideous, vicious battle of all time. This film “humanized” Nazi (and communist) soldiers. It is a very good anti-war film.

Were the Americans who flew over Hiroshima and roasted a hundred thousand Japanese civilians also human beings? Yes, they were. They were misguided, propagandized—use whatever term you wish. But they were also “human beings.”

How about the Americans who fire-bombed Dresden, in an act of sheer, atavistic savagery? I hate what they did, but they too acted on orders from leaders they trusted (misguidedly). They too were human beings, forced by war to do inhuman things.

In war, both the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are forced to do hideous, inhuman things. Americans are forced to commit war crimes, just like Japanese, Germans, Israelis—you name it.

I hope that Eastwood’s films, that “humanize” the enemy, just might help persuade us to stay out of wars our cowardly, rear-echelon MF’s impose on us.

On the whole Spike Lee thing….this is the only way he gets any press.  He attacks and screams racism.  Flags of Our Fathers has been out for about a year and it is just getting around to this?  I guess he wanted to wait until his WWII movie was about to be released.  He also criticized Clint for “Bird”.  Complaining ‘why a white man is making a movie about a great jazz musician?’
Now a retort to Paolo
Paolo wrote “the sin of portraying Japanese soldiers as human beings. Imagine—what gall!”
They were the enemy of the United States.  I have a problem with an American filmmaker humanizing an enemy they were responisible for the death of over 100,000 Americans, 6,000,000 Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese.  Have you ever heard of the Bataan Death March?  Have you ever heard of the Rape of Nanking?  The Atrocities committed by the Japanese, though not as well known as the German Atrocities, were equal in cruelty. 
Yeah let’s humanize them.  Then we can make a movie about how noble the Nazi’s were.

I don’t know how one can read “racism” into Clint Eastwood’s films. I only saw “Bird” once, but I don’t see how you can criticize it on racial grounds.

As for “Flags of our Fathers,” the film actually spends a great deal of time discussing the plight of the Native American fellow (I’m ashamed to admit, as an Arizonan, that I can’t recall his name at the moment) who was driven to drink himself to death by all the BS surrounding the flag incident (among other factors also portrayed).

His other film, “Letters from Iwo Jima,” was criticized by the execrable harpie, Michelle Malkin, for the sin of portraying Japanese soldiers as human beings. Imagine—what gall! Anyone drawing the ire of Michelle Malkin can’t be all bad.

Anyone who takes Clint Eastwood serious as a director is obviously delusional.

All it takes is a community college intro. to film course or half a brain to see he is not a very talented director.

Ron Howard for example, was average to ok in front of the camera, but he is pure genius behind the camera.

Conversely, Eastwood was, (for his genre) average to pretty good with good screen presence in front of the camera but is lousy behind the camera.

All he has is the “Eastwood” brand and a loyal following of friends in Hollywood to vote for his films. 

I like Clint Eastwood, but he should stick to looking through the large end of a camera instead of the small end.

Should not a Black Man have an equal right to make an Asshole of himself without the whole world jumping down his throat? In *Hollywood* for Gods sake? It seems we still have a long way to go.

And here we have a guy from *Los Angeles*, the unregenerate heartland of the *Facist Pig*, moaning about the equal rights of *Cops*?! Surely this is an Asshole to the 5th power, and no one remarks on it because he is *White* like them! Sometimes I feel ashamed to be a human being.

I’m so sick of the “card players” in this country.  Be it race, creed, sexual orentation, right, left, upside-down etc, etc, etc.  Everybody is a minority.  If you’ve got the money and the wherewithall to make a film and or movie that’s great.  If yer gonna bitch about by pulling some self-serving card then shut up and do it from your perspective.  Now go on out and ENJOY the life you’ve got!

Bob

You CAN’T cast Churchill or roosevelt as Women. But you can Tell stories of Greatness and patriotism that involve the less Known and intentionally ignored. So both their Points are mute!

Don’t you love how Hollywood takes itself so seriously? The directors cult, you know, the people who make movies but prefer to call them films. Have you ever seen the interview with George Lucas where he talks like he is Leonardo Da Vinci? So Spike and Clint are having a tiff.
Hollywood is most effective with its own propaganda. There is a general consensus that “film” is the most important of the arts. Not sculpture. Not painting. Not literature. Not music. Not architecture. No, it is the holy “film”, where the visionary director reigns supreme (hence, we have all this crummy letterbox format on television, to remind the audience that are not watching TV, they are watching “a film”).
The same pretensions exist in photography, when the snap shot was to be given the same attention as a painting. But luckily, that carnival venue is at an art gallery, which you can choose not to attend. But this is not the case for “film”, since this is where high art and high commerce combine (even television has got into the act, transforming pedestrian, weekly police dramas into areas of wide screen profoundity), where the general public is informed that many of the money making movies, just so happen to be the best that “film” has to offer. Thus Jaws, and E.T., what I would call a double Speilberger with cheese, are in fact, classic American “films”.
Academy Award winning director Clint Eastwood knows how important he is. Unforgiven, a rather unctuous shoot-em-up western, is now generally accepted as yes, another classic American “film”.
But you have to love the sledge hammer subtly of a Spike Lee joint movie. I guess racial politics would be involved if someone said of He Got Game, that sure is one silly mo-fo, not even Denzel Washington’s presence could save that turkey.

While not especially a fan of maker of “joints,” Lee might have a minor point, though not one worth mentioning. Otherwise, Eastwood’s politics have long been in general just a tad deplorable. (And in real life, Clint Eastwood is not tough guy portrayed in unfortunate photo posted at Truthdig, along with headline. I remember him from “Rawhide” days, when he was a kid—older than me, but not by much.) He’s more speculative real-estate baron than film-maker, as anyone who’s looked at plot maps of Monterey Peninsula can readily testify. That fact is relevant. He managed one pretty-good film with “Unforgiven,” which—as it happens—features a black actor: Morgan Freeman, whose performance exceeds that of Eastwood in the same film. (Clint has only ever played, besides kid in “Rawhide,” “Dirty Harry,” who is modern version of “Man With No Name,” aka, “Blondie,” in Leone’s GB&U;, wherein Eli Wallach easily steals that show, along with late Lee Van Cleef, who on his own steals “For a Few Dollars More” from Clint.)

Eastwood’s remark about his latest project is some indication of his politics, or rather absence thereof. Remark is smart-ass along with plain ignorant. I’m skeptical of an knowledge of history Eastwood claims. It was Clint who made the decision to play “Dirty Harry,” not anyone else’s decision. He can’t (implicitly) take it back now, which in effect it sounds as though he’s trying to do—if he means what he says about not being into any “game.” What was “historical” about “Dirty Harry”? Steve McQueen, of “Wanted Deal or Alive” TV show about the same time as “Rawhide,” was more credible in “Bullitt.” Hell, I was disgusted by “Dirty Harry” when still a conservative at the time.

Still, Eastwood is not likely racist, if that’s what Lee is driving at. Spike sounds a little jealous, having himself made not much to talk about in many years.

Neither director is worthy of much in the way of noteworthiness—not in terms of aesthetics and not in terms of politics—personally or as presented in films. No one who pays attention is going to confuse Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood with Bergman, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Leone, Altman, Ford (who served as maker of propaganda), Hawks and Kurosawa, to name just a few of the most prominent in modern filmmaking. Both Eastwood and Lee lack visual style and are given to pedestrian, if not blatantly melodramatic, narratives. (“Mystic River” is truly an awful waste of film.)

It’s Eastwood’s (even more, Spielberg’s) cashing in on stuff like “Flags” that bothers me (my own father—a white man—fought at Iwo Jima). Nonetheless, he couldn’t possibly tell the story of every single individual who fought for that pile of shit in the middle of the Pacific. So okay, film is about that flag-raising thing, which was in fact a bit of propagandizing at the time on behalf of the “Good” war. As though there were any such thing outside revolutions. Had Eastwood made a film about how the photo was used for purposes of propaganda, I’d be right with him. (Eastwood DOES deserve credit for companion film, “Letters From Iwo Jima.”)

Otherwise, thoughtful, well-crafted art—no matter form art takes—knows no color and no gender. Best reflects time and place of making, no matter time and place depicted. As Arnold Hauser noted long ago, art OF time and place is superior to propaganda that reinforces social/political attitudes at time and place of making of art. Eastwood is right in his claim, except that one can’t be but suspicious as to sincerity, especially when it’s become PC to be anti-PC.

Neither director has made much of anything original, and so squabble is finally one between two who’ve enjoyed more success than deserved within the context of dumbed-down culture that serves perfectly as backdrop to yet one more petty squabble between PC and anti-PC, not to mention as target for the sort of propagandist art Hauser (rightly) regarded as inferior.

Oh, I forgot to ask you clint, what was your part in the war? What were your military duties and activities?

Clint lost me when I read where he would kill Michael Moore if he ever came to his house. If that is clint’s view of the world he can go to hell, and if he came in my yard I would treat him the same as he would treat michael moore.
And this just proves to me the clint is nothing but another celebrity elite and that trying to find the truth in our country and holding the perpetrators and conplicitors accountable is NO where in his agenda because his wad of cash keeps him from dealing with real issues that affect a lot of people who cannot afford to jump on a plane and zip over to another country and sip wine and rub elbow with the other elites. I see him, also, as another poster child of what is wrong the the media, msm and et. al. He is probably a member of the bilderberger group also.
I have never seen a michael moore film that I am aware of and am not busting my ass to do so even though he has stuff out there that tries to enlighten people to a reality that our msm is not providing. But even though some of clint’s movies have entertained me, he will get no more of my money. In short, I don’t believe clint is your best friend.

They both make mediocre movies, in my artistic opinion. Spike makes depressing made-for-black-people movies (which as a member of the minority, I don’t happen to care for) and Clint makes stuffy historical biopics, novel-esque dramas that move barely at a snails pace and self-important crime thrillers with oh-so-flawed heroes that make me very sleepy. Both of the men have had their egos stroked to the maximum and are in danger of suffering spontaneous combustion. Clint can go take his own advice and Spike can go do whatever it is he does instead of wasting time poking at this guys humongous ego. Hitchcock, Clint is not.

Where have all the humble directors gone?!

Fin.

Racism is racism. Black racists,like Spike Lee, need racism to have a purpose to their lives. Without it, Spike Lee would be nothing as he would have nothing to exploit. Kind of ironic, huh?

Eastwood has, to my mind, made films of importance and human dignity. His art goes beyond simple imperatives of equal representation, and cannot be held, in any event, to criteria that only address social inequities. His work exposes the deepest human dilemmas of life and death. He has demonstrated that risking nothing is risking everything, that when Charlie Parker jumps off a chordal cliff into the stratosphere of melody, he is right at home, his heart addressing a beautiful woman, his melodic structures subtle and airy, but holding planets in their courses. Yes, we have the power of life and death, but we don’t want it. Only women, not warriors, hold life in courageous hands and carry humanity into the future.

What is his real name anyway. Another phony moron from Hellwood with guns, meat and butter on his tiny brain