After a few weeks of taking shots at Clint Eastwood’s Iraq War drama “American Sniper,” Michael Moore wrote a Facebook post on Thursday confirming rumors that Eastwood once threatened to “kill” and “shoot” him.
“Ten years ago this past week, Clint Eastwood stood in front of the National Board of Review awards dinner and announced to me and to the crowd that he would ‘kill’ me if I ever came to his house with my camera for an interview,” Moore wrote.
“I’ll kill you,” Moore recalls Eastwood as saying. After Moore laughed nervously, Eastwood allegedly repeated the threat.
‘”I mean it,” he barked, and the audience grew more quiet. ‘I’ll shoot you,'” the filmmaker wrote.
Eastwood’s legal representation did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment on Friday.
Moore wrote that he was confirming the story after a post by Salon accurately recounted the incident at the Nation Board of Review awards show. The New York Daily News reported on Eastwood’s remarks at the time, in an article published Jan. 13, 2005.
Moore has also recounted the incident before, in an article for the Daily Beast in 2012.
The director of “Fahrenheit 9/11” has questioned the merits of Eastwood’s “American Sniper” and the real-life character of the film’s subject Chris Kyle.
“My uncle killed by sniper in WW2,” he tweeted on Jan. 18. “We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders r worse.”
Moore’s remarks have supplied Fox News with plenty of segments in which hosts and guests expressed outrage over his criticisms.
Anger over Moore’s tweets also landed former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) in an impromptu photo-op Friday where she posed next to a placard that read “Fuc_ You Michael Moore.”
