Spike Lee reacted to Eastwood’s remark, “a guy like him should shut his face,” saying that he didn’t attack Clint personally, so why was he making it personal… he sounded like an angry old man.

Lee said, "First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either. He's a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn't personally attack him. And a comment like 'a guy like that should shut his face' -- come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there."

Lee proposed, "If he (Eastwood) wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I'd like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist. I'm not making this up. I know history. I'm a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II."

"Not everything was John Wayne, baby," Lee exclaimed.

Lee Clarified, "I never said he should show one of the other guys holding up the flag as black. I said that African-Americans played a significant part in Iwo Jima. For him to insinuate that I'm rewriting history and have one of the four guys with the flag be black … no one said that. It's just that there's not one black in either film. And because I know my history, that's why I made that observation."