Eastwood: Trust in gut?

New York, Oct. 17 (AP): In making a movie about US marines in the battle of Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood became concerned that he was telling only half of the story.

So he made another movie.

The two films ? Flags, about six men who raised an American flag on Mount Suribachi, and the tentatively named Lambs Before the Wind on the Japanese side of the battle ? are scheduled for simultaneous release next fall.

Eastwood had difficulty articulating to Time magazine why he took on the ambitious projects.

“I don’t know ? sometimes you just get a feeling about something. You have a premonition that you can get something decent out of it,” he said. “You just have to trust your gut.”

Nearly 7,000 US troops and more than 20,000 Japanese died in the battle from February to March 1945.

Mount Suribachi, a 550-foot dead volcano at the tiny, teardrop-shaped island’s southern tip, was where the six men raised a US flag in 1945.

Eastwood has won two best-director Oscars for Million Dollar Baby and Unforgiven.