Spike Strikes Back: Clint's 'an Angry Old Man'

Lee's response to Eastwood's claim?

"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."

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Lee also pointed to a 2006 Guardian article about African-American veterans' dismay that their experience wasn't covered in "Flags of Our Fathers."

In his interview, Eastwood added that Lee's got another thing coming if he complains about the lack of black actors in "Changeling." The film is set in Los Angeles during the Depression, before the city had a significant black population.

"What are you going to do, you gonna tell a f*****' story about that?" Eastwood ranted. "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 picture and it's 90 percent black, like 'Bird,' [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker] I use 90 percent black people."

He finished his roast with a simple, harsh directive:

"A guy like him should shut his face," Eastwood said.

Lee's last words took a different tone.

"Even though he's trying to have a Dirty Harry flashback, I'm going to take the Obama high road and end it right here," he told ABCNEWS.com. "Peace and love."