Spike Lee Goes After Clint Eastwood for Iwo Jima's Lack of Color

A lot of noise has been made recently by filmmaker Spike Lee regarding the lack of African American characters in Director Clint Eastwood's World War II movies depicting the battle of Iwo Jima.

Mr. Lee's comments came during a press conference to promote his own war film, Miracle at St Anna, about members of the all-black 92nd Buffalo Division who fought in Italy during World War II, at the Cannes film festival last month. According to an article in the UK Guardian, he said, "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 said. "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."

The movies, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, tell opposing sides, the American Flag Raising and the Japanese defeat respectively of the battle of Iwo Jima. While there was an African American contingent of soldiers on Iwo Jima during the battle, the two movies cited by Lee do not have the artistic need of African American characters. With Flags of our Fathers, the main actors, story, and action of the movie centers on the men who raised the Flag over Iwo Jima. Most of these men, their families, and their friends were probably close to 100% white.

The exception, Ira Hayes, was a Pima Indian. From the Japanese side, Letters from Iwo Jima, most of the movie was made up from the letters sent home to their families in Japan. The last time I checked, there weren't too many black Japanese. So then, to counter Spike Lee's point, why would Mr. Eastwood feel the need to have African Americans running through throughout the movies if the script/story didn't require it. The movies were not represented as historical documentaries of the entire battle of Iwo Jima. They were more of a microcosm of the larger battle. Microcosms that didn't require African-American characters to help tell the story.

According to Mr. Eastwood, this isn't the first time Mr. Lee has taken umbrage with his work. During the same interview with the UK Guardian, Mr. Eastwood said, "He was complaining when I did Bird (the 1988 movie presenting the life of jazz saxophonist 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...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 would go: 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate."

Perhaps in the end, Mr. Lee has caused this row between the two incredibly talented actors, to draw contrast and bring publicity to his movie, which according to internet movie database (www.imdb.com) "...chronicles the story of four black American soldiers who are members of the US Army as part of the all-black 92nd Buffalo Soldier Division stationed in Tuscany, Italy during World War II. They experience the tragedy and triumph of the war as they find themselves trapped behind enemy lines and separated from their unit after one of them risks his life to save an Italian boy. "