February 3, 2011 | Arts / Entertainment

Focus of J. Edgar Hoover biopic in question

Depending on who you ask - the director or the screenwriter - the movie about J Edgar Hoover will, or won't, explore Hoover's alleged cross-dressing and homosexuality.

Director Clint Eastwood recently claimed J. Edgar won't "go down that road."  

"I went back and read probably all the material that [screenwriter Dustin Lance Black] had read," explained Eastwood. "I went and visited with the FBI in Washington, D.C., and tried to find out as much as I could about people who had worked with Hoover.

"If you're doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality," he said. "But you really don't know what was going on in the person's mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him."

However, Black, who won an Oscar for his screenplay MILK, said that the movie will address reports "by former FBI employees that Hoover was a cross-dresser and perhaps a closeted homosexual."

Black said: "To think that somehow you’re going to a make a movie about somebody like J. Edgar and you’re not going to learn what’s in his heart, that’s just not going to happen in a script that I write. It’s unfounded [the idea that the movie is being de-gayed.]"

Leonardo DiCaprio is set to play Hoover, with The Social Networks'  Armie Hammer cast as his suspected lover Clyde Tolson. Hammer told E! Online that DiCaprio should get ready to pucker up, making us think Black might be right on this one. (We certainly hope so!)

Dustin Lance Black Says No De-Gaying of J.Edgar Hoover Movie [After Elton]