{"id":827,"date":"2008-06-07T07:22:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-07T07:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/flags-spike-clint-and-spike-again\/"},"modified":"2008-06-07T07:22:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-07T07:22:00","slug":"flags-spike-clint-and-spike-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/flags-spike-clint-and-spike-again.html","title":{"rendered":"Flags, Spike, Clint, and Spike again."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Two years ago, Clint Eastwood released a couple of World War II flicks that told the story of a single battle from opposite points of view, one American and one Japanese.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most critics seemed to like Letters from Iwo Jima<\/a><\/i>, the Japanese film, better than Flags of Our Fathers<\/a><\/i>, the American film, but I found Flags<\/i> much more interesting than Letters<\/i>, mainly because I\u2019m really interested in the nature of photography and the relationship between mythic images and the mundane realities behind them. One of my favorite quotes, from Chris Marker\u2019s La Jete\u00e9<\/a><\/i> (1962), states: \u201cNothing tells memories from ordinary moments; only afterwards do they claim remembrance, on account of their scars.\u201d Photographs \u2014 those pieces of film or bits of data on a flash card \u2014 are the scars that separate slivers in time from the ordinary moments that came before and after them and are now forgotten while the photographs live on. And it is always interesting to see how some slivers in time come to take on a greater iconic meaning that goes way beyond the original ordinariness of the moment.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, I just discovered via Wikipedia<\/a> that there is actual colour 16mm footage of the flag raising, which you can watch at that site. How fascinating to see this black-and-white still photo come to life like that. The 16mm footage was apparently shot from almost the exact same angle as the photo, and, following the Marker quote above, you could almost say that the frame which resembles the photo most closely would be the \u201cscar\u201d that we have all remembered, while all the frames that come before and after it are the \u201cordinary moments\u201d that we have forgotten. Or, rather, we would<\/i> have forgotten them, if it were not for the 16mm footage. But now the 16mm footage has, itself, become the \u201cscar\u201d that remembers a narrow sliver of time \u2014 not as narrow as the photo, but still narrow in its own way \u2014 while all the things that happened before and after the camera rolled have passed into oblivion.<\/p>\n

Anyway. Eastwood\u2019s World War II movies are back in the news again, now that Spike Lee has snapped at them and Eastwood has snapped back. The Guardian<\/a><\/i> reports:<\/p>\n

Clint Eastwood folds his gangly frame behind a clifftop table at the Hotel Du Cap, a few miles up the coast from Cannes, sighs deeply, and squints out over the Mediterranean. \u201cHas he ever studied the history?\u201d he asks, in that familiar near-whisper.<\/p>\n

The \u201che\u201d is Spike Lee, and the reason Eastwood is asking is because of something Lee had said about Eastwood\u2019s Iwo Jima movie Flags of Our Fathers, while promoting his own war movie, Miracle at St Anna<\/a>, about a black US unit in the second world war. Lee had noted the lack of African-Americans in Eastwood\u2019s movie and told reporters: \u201cThat was his version. The negro version did not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eastwood has no time for Lee\u2019s gripes. \u201cHe was complaining when I did Bird<\/a> [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that\u2019s why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else.\u201d 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, \u201cbut they didn\u2019t raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn\u2019t do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people\u2019d go, \u2018This guy\u2019s lost his mind.\u2019 I mean, it\u2019s not accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee shouldn\u2019t be demanding African-Americans in Eastwood\u2019s next picture, either. Changeling<\/a> is set in Los Angeles during the Depression, before the city\u2019s make-up was changed by the large black influx. \u201cWhat are you going to do, you gonna tell a fuckin\u2019 story about that?\u201d he growls. \u201cMake it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I\u2019m not in that game. I\u2019m playing it the way I read it historically, and that\u2019s the way it is. When I do a picture and it\u2019s 90% black, like Bird, I use 90% black people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eastwood pauses, deliberately \u2013 once it would have provided him with the beat in which to spit out his cheroot before flinging back his poncho \u2013 and offers a last word of advice to the most influential black director in American movies. \u201cA guy like him should shut his face.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That last sentence in particular has been making its way around the interwebs \u2014 and so it, too, has become an iconic, memorable, sliver-of-time scar that stands apart from all the ordinary words Eastwood said in that interview that have not<\/i> been remembered.<\/p>\n

And of all the online comments, perhaps the pithiest and most interesting one comes from Jeffrey Wells<\/a>, who notes:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t see why there\u2019s a debate at all because (and I got this straight from my old man, an ex-Marine who fought at Iwo Jima) there were no black solders doing any early-wave fighting during that horrific encounter, so Lee is wrong<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lee, of course, can\u2019t let it sit at that, and so he told ABC News<\/a> what he thought of Eastwood\u2019s response to his remarks:<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, the man is not my father and we\u2019re not on a plantation either,\u201d he told ABCNEWS.com. \u201cHe\u2019s a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn\u2019t personally attack him. And a comment like \u2018a guy like that should shut his face\u2019 \u2014 come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s last words took a different tone.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though he\u2019s trying to have a Dirty Harry flashback, I\u2019m going to take the Obama high road and end it right here,\u201d he told ABCNEWS.com. \u201cPeace and love.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is such a stupid, offensive response on so many levels, it\u2019s probably best not to dignify it with a point-by-point response like, say, the one provided by the folks at Libertas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The thing is, I\u2019d like<\/i> to know more about the experience of African-American soldiers during World War II. But given his track record, I just don\u2019t know if we can trust Spike Lee to tell that story the way it needs to be told. This feud has certainly raised my interest in the subject<\/i> of Lee\u2019s film, but not in the film itself, per se<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, Clint Eastwood released a couple of World War II flicks that told the story of a single battle from opposite points of view, one American and one Japanese. Most critics seemed to like Letters from Iwo Jima, the Japanese film, better than Flags of Our Fathers, the American film, but I found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFlags, Spike, Clint, and Spike again.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Two years ago, Clint Eastwood released a couple of World War II flicks that told the story of a single battle from opposite points of view, one American\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/flags-spike-clint-and-spike-again.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Flags, Spike, Clint, and Spike again.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Two years ago, Clint Eastwood released a couple of World War II flicks that told the story of a single battle from opposite points of view, one American\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/flags-spike-clint-and-spike-again.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-06-07T07:22:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_MwnH1kpbPRM\/SErM1lwG46I\/AAAAAAAABn8\/7IfC2cu5nM4\/s400\/flagsofourfathers-a.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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