Clint's Still Got It

Clint Eastwood is one of my favorite actor/directors. He's 78 now, and even at that age I still wouldn't mess with the guy.

A couple of weeks ago, Spike Lee said Clint Eastwood's work was bogus and leaning towards racist, because he didn't have any blacks in Flags Of Our Fathers.

Here's Eastwood in a recent interview with the Guardian:

Eastwood has no time for Lee's gripes. "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."

Not bad, but he follows it up with a beauty: "A guy like him should shut his face."

Cool. Not, "Well, Spike has his own views, and I respect that..." Or: "A helpful dialogue would help us find common ground, and in today's world we can all get along..." No. For Eastwood it's "Shut your face."

Whatever happened to cool actors? I don't mean the kind of cool that comes with saving animals, practicing Scientology, or using the standard Bush-hate to get some cheap press. I mean Marlon Brando cool, when he advised that "The way to say fuck you in Hollywood is "trust me."' Or maybe John Wayne, when he showed up on the set of a movie, gun in hand, looking to kill Dennis Hopper for messing around with his daughter.

The cool actors didn't care about bad press. They had minds of their own and they weren't worried about the sensitive tastes of Oprah Winfrey fans.

Eastwood's old, but he's still got the touch. After Michael Moore ambushed Charlton Heston for use in his documentary, Eastwood promised that if Moore showed up at his door, he'd kill him. I don't know if Moore took the threat seriously or not, but I sure as hell would. When Eastwood whispers, he always sounds like he means it.

Here's the rest of the Guardian interview. It's worth a read.