Pot? Or kettle? ... Spike Lee has been accused of hypocrisy. Photograph: Fred Dufour/AFP
Just as it looked like the war of words between Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood was dying down, someone chucks in a grenade. To recap the story so far: Lee fired the opening shot, complaining at Cannes last month that black actors were conspicuous by their absence in Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.
In an interview with The Guardian the following week, Clintwood hit back, growling that Lee was hazy on his history and should "shut his face". The parting shot looked to have gone to Lee, who last weekend saw fit to remind Eastwood that he wasn't his father, and they weren't on a plantation.
But now Bill Dal Cerro, president of the Italic Institute of America based in Rome, has accused Lee of the prejudices he attributes to Eastwood. "Spike Lee is very talented," he said. "His points about African-Americans are well taken, but, ironically, he does the same thing to Italians in his films."
The Italic Institute of America has criticised Lee in the past for his portrayal of Italian-Americans in Do The Right Thing and Jungle Fever, and expressed concern about Miracle at St Anna, Lee's upcoming second world war drama set in Italy.
Does Dal Cerro have a point? Or is this just shameless coat-tailing, an undignified attempt to claim victim status? Do you get touchy when you see a toffee-nosed fop flying the flag for Britain in a foreign flick? And who are the real villains in the racism at the movies debate?
