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''Flags of Our Fathers'': Clint's next Oscar winner? | 141714__flag_l
THE IMAGE Six soldiers raised the flag on Iwo Jima during the fifth day of battle there, but only three made it home
Flags of Our Fathers: Merie W. Wallace

The bewildering crush of publicity that descended on the trio of survivors was familiar to the privacy-conscious director. ''They were called heroes and they didn't feel worthy,'' Eastwood says. ''They felt the heroes were back on the island.'' The lucky three were brought home to do a war-bond fund-raising tour, reenacting the flag raising at Chicago's Soldier Field. They were used by everyone — the government, the military, the press — in pursuit of larger goals, some worthy, many craven. ''It's sort of the beginning of celebrity being used as a selling point,'' Eastwood says.

The modern-day overtones don't end there. When one character talks about how the right image can ''win or lose a war,'' it's difficult not to think about images of Americans torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It's also fair to wonder what exactly Flags means to say about the value and morality of any publicity campaign during wartime. Just don't expect direct answers on that from Clint. ''When you're the audience, you're free to put whatever you want in there'' is all he'll say about the movie's possible meanings. ''It's more a story about guys just saving their asses.''

When Flags of Our Fathers was first published in 2000, Clint Eastwood liked the book enough to want to buy the movie rights. But he was too slow. Steven Spielberg had already picked it up for his company, DreamWorks. Spielberg saw in it a Pacific-theater doppelgänger of the Normandy D-Day invasion he'd brought to life in Saving Private Ryan. But two years of development with screenwriter William Broyles Jr. (Jarhead) came to naught. The story, told more or less chronologically, just wasn't working, and as Spielberg says, ''I'd already made my seminal movie about WWII. I'd done my tour of duty.''

Coincidentally, Spielberg was reminded by a lawyer who represents them both that Eastwood had once wanted a crack at the book. At the Governors Ball on Academy Awards night in 2004, after Mystic River picked up two acting awards, Spielberg made Eastwood a pitch: You direct this, he suggested, and I'll be one of the producers.

Within a week, Eastwood was fully committed.


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