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Director Spike Lee recently criticized Director Clint Eastwood for not including one African-American soldier in two of his recent war movies, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwa Gima.“

While promoting his own war film at the Cannes Festival, “Miracle St. Anna,” Lee told reporters:

“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. 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.”

So of course reporters did ask Clint about Spike Lee’s comments. In response Clint, in outspoken language, said to the UK Guardian:

“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. A guy like him should shut his face.”

Clint went on to say:

“I’m playing it the way I read it historically, and that’s the way it is. When I do a movie and it’s 90% black, like Bird, then I use 90% black people. He was complaining when I did Bird. 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.“

Interestingly enough considering Lee’s criticism, Eastwood’s next project, The Human Factor, will be a biopic about Nelson Mandela, and his attempts to foster national unity in post-apartheid South Africa. Eastwood when asked if he would remain historically accurate with depictions of the former president, he said: “I’m not going to make Nelson Mandela a white guy.”