For generations the rumour-mongers have speculated about the former FBI director J Edgar Hoover's sexuality so will a new biopic by Clint Eastwood finally lift the lid? TARA BRADYmeets J Edgar(and Milk) screenwriter Dustin Lance Black
WILL THEY really go there? Once Clint Eastwood's J EdgarHoover biopic got up and running that was the question. For generations rumour mongers and biographers have speculated about the former FBI director's sexuality. Did the mob really hold Hoover to ransom with a photo of the portly G-Man in a dress? And what was the deal with Hoover and his long-time companion and FBI colleague, Clyde Tolson? When Ron Howard's Imagine Pictures hired Milkscreenwriter Dustin Lance Black to pen the script for Eastwood's J Edgar, it looked as though we'd finally get answers. This is Dustin Lance Black, after all, a chap who rarely shies away from turning an award acceptance speech into a rallying cry for tolerance.
Or would we get answers? Last August, speaking with the Wall Street Journal,the director was coy when asked if the film tackled "reports by former FBI employees that Hoover was a cross-dresser and perhaps a closeted homosexual". The article prompted a flurry of internet speculation: never mind the truth about Hoover's flapper outfit, had Black's screenplay been "de-gayed"?
“Clint never changed a thing in it,” says screenwriter Black. “I found it really upsetting that people were saying he was de-gaying it because if anything he was doing quite the opposite. He was making it more human, making it more relatable. In one scene after Tolson and Hoover have a fight in their hotel room, Clint told Leo [Di Caprio] “tell him you love him” after he’s left the room. And Leo did and it made the film for me. I think people made assumptions because Clint has a conservative stance on certain issues. But Clint and I had no conversations about the love story. We had endless conversations about the historical details, about the sources. He wanted to be sure this was accurate. But he never had to ask what a gay relationship was like. He just treated it like any other relationship. At his heart Clint’s very human and understands people. And he’s certainly not homophobic.”
Even if Black weren't on hand to tell us so, we might have guessed that J Edgarhad not been shoved back in the closet. Di Caprio's screen portrait of the FBI man is, in fact, dominated by repressed homosexuality and Hoover's relationship with sort-of lover Clyde Tolson (played by The Social Network's Armie Hammer).
“It started to become very clear that this was a man who was at the very least not successfully heterosexual. I then met some people who also weren’t heterosexual in that time period in Washington DC. Most of them now are openly gay. They are more open. Hoover did not have that option. When you look into this you learn what it was like to be gay pre-liberation and pre-Stonewall. There are stories about what you have to do to stay alive. That explains a lot about J Edgar Hoover’s behaviour.”
For Black, unravelling the truth about Hoover required a daunting amount of such historical gumshoe work. Contradictory existing sources did not make for easy research but Black and Eastwood needed to be sure.
“The first thing you encounter is myth,” says Black. “My goal was to get past all that and read all the books. So I read everything that’s written and the most frightening discovery is
they all disagree with each other. They are either trying to make him heroic or just make him evil. And I didn’t get a feeling that any of the books were helpful. I felt the place to start was where they contradicted and then went to get first hand stories. Thankfully, there are still people around who knew him. They were very helpful. They knew what it was like to be around him, knew the jokes he used to tell. From there you can then crack the window on to who he was.
“You do have to depend on your instincts to a degree. That meant going to Washington DC where he was born and died and walk in his shoes. Go into the office where he worked every day. I went into the restaurant he ate in. I drove the roads he drove. I started to live like him for many months.”
Black’s methodical screenplay charts Hoover’s life and career from the anti-Communist Palmer Raids of 1919 to his death aged 77. The commie-bashing, politician-blackmailing civil rights loathing paranoiac emerges as a darkly intriguing, if flawed protagonist. Theories linking Hoover’s hatred of Martin Luther King to the former’s own ethnicity and the latter’s private activities are delicately woven into a fascinating character study.
There are, too, hints of Hoover’s humanity: the mother (Judi Dench) who says she’d “rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son” and various bumbling displays of the man’s touchingly incompetent social skills. Did Stockholm Syndrome set in during the writing process, we wonder?
“I didn’t fall in love with him,” insists Black. “But after doing research I thought there was an important cautionary tale. I never planned on getting people to fall in love with this man. But here was a promising, brilliant young man. And this is how you turn him into a monster. His problem was that he was not allowed to love openly. Not allowed to have family. I did find it poignant. He was underdeveloped in what he wanted personally. To say he was emotionally stunted is an understatement. He was never allowed to go through his adolescence. He was told he couldn’t go through it the way a heterosexual man would. He lived with his mother. He seems not to have matured. I don’t think he understood what a really loving relationship looked like. That daffodil quote comes from a quote in one of his mother’s journal entries. Today it’s very hard to bear that scene. But those stories were common at the time.”
Eastwood's characteristically elegant picture coalesces into a parable about the dangers of repressed sexuality and provides a neat counterpoint to both Long's out-and-proud Oscar-winning screenplay for Milk.
Repression is not Black’s natural milieu, though he does know the psychology. Born into a devout Mormon family in 1974, the writer-director and LGBT rights activist grew up around Texan military bases, thinking he was going straight to hell.
“There aren’t a lot of writers who have had an east time of it. I think one of the things that is most valuable to discover as a writer is: how are you different, what sets you apart. And being gay, being a Mormon, I felt an outsider. And that allowed me to observe. I hope it also gave me empathy which is very important as a writer.
“You bring your own experience to a piece. I do think I could relate to what J Edgar Hoover was going through on the 1930s because it wasn’t that different to what I went through.”
Black came out in college and has since grown into a formidable and rising talent. After three seasons writing for HBO's polygamous Mormon comedy Big Love, he became an executive producer on the show. When he isn't writing crack screenplays for Gus van Sant and Clint Eastwood, he directs his own smaller, indie docs and features, including On the Busand Pedro. Black's latest effort as a writer-director, What's Wrong with Virginia?has recently wrapped and stars Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris and Emma Roberts. "And then I am doing Under the Banner of Heavenwith Ron Howard for Warners," he adds. "And I'm working a new TV show over at HBO."
Under the Banner of Heaven, a drama based on murders within a Fundamentalist Mormon sect during the 1980s, could not be more timely. "If you are in America you realise that this is a religion that has been trying to move to the centre for many decades. And it's now the fastest-growing religion in this country. I am not a Mormon basher.
There are things I find valuable about the church. But some points of view within the Church are very extreme. We wag our fingers at religious fundamentalism abroad. But we have that here too. We should be aware of that.”
J Edgaropens on January 20
PUT SOME MEAN ON THEM BONES
Marvelling at Leonardo Di Caprio's chubby layers in J Edgargot us thinking about movies' greatest binges and purges...
ROBERT DE NIRO Raging BullDe Niro set the bar for professional weight gain when he piled on 28 kilos (60 pounds) for Martin Scorsese's 1980 Jake La Motta biopic. Production shut down for four months so that the actor could travel around France and Italy eating gut-busting pasta dishes. The damage? Breathing and posture difficulties.
MATT DAMON The Informant, Courage Under FireHaving lost 23 kilos (50 pounds) to play a heroin addict in Courage Under Fire,Matt Damon proved his devotion to the Kerry Katona Plan by piling on the pounds for Steven Soderbergh's The Informant. The damage? Years of medication for long-term adrenal gland complications.
CHRISTIAN BALE The MachinistBale's tremendous 28 kilo loss for The Machinistwas made all the more impressive by his six-week bulk-up turnaround for Batman Begins. The damage? None. Bale is the undisputed king of binge and purge.
RENEE ZELLWEGER Bridget Jones's DiaryIt's been speculated that the non-appearance of Bridget Jones 3might be linked to Renee Zellweger's reluctance to go back on the Krispy Kremes. The actor went carb crazy when she took on the role, eating pizza, spaghetti, chocolate and garlic bread to plump out from a svelte size six to size 14. The damage? Zellweger described the weight gain process as "horrible". Presumably the diet afterwards was no fun either.
