Clint Eastwood fired back at Spike Lee who earlier criticized Clint for not including black soldiers in Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, telling the Malcolm X director to “shut his face.” At a press conference at Cannes to promote his own war film, Maracle at St. Anna, Spike commented:

“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.”

Apparently, one of those reporters had the balls because they asked Clint to which he responded.

“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.” Referring to Lee, he added: “A guy like him should shut his face.”

If you think Clint will stop there, think again.

Defending the racial make-up in his films as historically accurate, Eastwood referred to another of his films, Changeling, which was set in Los Angeles before the city had a large group of African-Americans. “What are you going to do, you going to tell a fuckin’ story about that?” he said. “Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I’m not in that game. 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 (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.”

Based on this evidence, Spike Lee has a good chance of being shot if he ever steps onto Clint Eastwood’s property and it won’t be because he’s black, as he’ll most likely claim, it’ll be because he’s annoying. Oh, hold on a second. I just received a special message from Clint which he wants me to relay to Spike. Clint has cordially invited you to lunch to discuss this issue in depth. Be there at 2 a.m. sharp and bring no witnesses. Er, I mean RSVP. Heh heh heh.

What started as a simple remark to promote Spike Lee’s new WWII movie, Miracle at St. Anna, has turned into an even better promotion. Today, Spike Lee gave his response to Clint Eastwood’s suggestion that he should “shut his face.” Spike tells ABC News:

“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.”

“If he 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,” he said. “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.”

Then again, maybe Clint Eastwood misinterpreted his comments.

“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,” he said. “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.”

They should just hug and get it over with. Maybe even give each other a fist pound. After all, fist pounding is the new hugging. They can even be cutesy about it. You know how sometimes you see young kids try to teach old white men urban handshakes, but the old guy messes up and they both laugh resulting in sort of shared “moment”? Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood should do that.

Are America Ferrera and long-time boyfriend Ryan Piers Williams engaged to be married, as recent reports would have it?
“I make a point of not talking about my personal life,” declares the “Ugly Betty” star. “”But Ryan and I are still together. No, we’re not engaged. We’ve never been engaged — though there have been at least 100 reports this past year that I was engaged to Ryan.”

As her fame has soared, so, too, has the misinformation being spread about all aspects of her life. “You have to ignore some of the things that are said about you,” she says, “Laugh at others — and just shake your head over the fact that there are people who can’t find anything better to do with their time then literally create quotes out of thin air. Some of the things are awful. One magazine, for instance, quoted me as saying that when I was younger, I used to cry at my reflection. I never said such a thiing!”

America, who’ll be before the “Ugly Betty” cameras until May 9, then prepare for a movie shoot — and she has the big-screen “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2″ upcoming — doesn’t feel that the invasion of her private life is the price she should have to pay for fame.

“I don’t think I should have to sacrifice self-respect,” she declares. “People should have respect for others and not chase personalities in their cars or show up in front of their homes. That said, I do enjoy it when fans come up to me and say they love my series and like my work. But there’s a time and place for everything. Having strangers approach you when you’re out having an intimate dinner or, for instance, when you’re on the cell phone, well that can get pretty obnoxious.”

MEANWHILE: America Ferrera alerts fans of “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” to prepare for major changes in the sequel to the 2005 hit. The “Ugly Betty” star, who reprises her “Traveling Pants” role in the August 8 release, says the new flick “is very different in feel from the original.” It takes place three years later, and finds the four girls “grown up and trying to deal with friendship after their lives have taken them in different directions, with experiences the other haven’t shared.”

FROM THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT: Scott Baio tells us his VH1 reality show will probably be coming back for a third season. According to him, “Professional-wise I get a lot of good heat from the show because it’s sort of a different-looking reality show. At network meetings I spend the first 15 minutes talking about the show because they want to know how we do it. They’re like, ‘We don’t know what this show is. Is it real or not?’ I’m like, ‘It’s whatever you want it to be.’ I can’t tell you what’s real and not real because everything is produced – everything. But it is my life and my baby and my wife and my house, but within that we play. We know where the story is. I know sort of where I want to take my life and I try to get it there.”

While Baio is happy to have buzz surrounding “Scot Baio is…” the actor admits it hasn’t necessarily helped in getting the big roles. Nevertheless, he’s just happy to work. His latest project is the Spike TV movie “Finish Line” where he says he enjoyed playing the bad guy. The action flick about a stock car driver whose need for money leads him to unknowingly work for an arms dealer premieres tonight (4/21) in HD. “Very few people have the luxury of saying, ‘I want to do this.’ You do what comes along and you make the best of it. There is only one Clint Eastwood or one Tom Cruise. They’re the type of guys who can pick and choose exactly what they want. Guys like us, we just sort of take what we can get and hopefully it’s good stuff. This was a fun little movie. I wish I could get deeper about it, but I’m not that guy.”

THE BIG SCREEN SCENE: Tom Lennon confirms that he and his cohorts hope to bring “Reno 911” back to the big screen. “We have script for a movie called ‘Reno S.O.S.,’ which is basically like ‘Lord of the Flies’ and ‘Lost’ where we crash on an island. I don’t know that they’ll necessarily green light the movie just yet, but they might.”

HAVE SCRIPT, WILL TRAVEL: Having done a string of six films over the past couple years including “Mad Money” and “Superhero Movie,” Christopher McDonald now expects to take a little time off to be with his family. However, he knows the show business rule: “If you want to work, book a very expensive vacation. If you do – and I’m going to take my kids to France – that’s the time when that gem of a role you can’t pass up comes your way.”