On the verge of turning 80, Clint Eastwood shows no sign of letting up; he’s directed, on average, a film a year for the last decade, with the supernatural drama “Hereafter,” set for release later this year.
Now, he’s about to take on what might be the boldest, bravest film of his career, teaming with “Milk” writer Dustin Lance Black on “Hoover,” a biopic of long-serving FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. And with the rumors surrounding their subject’s personal life, which include homosexuality and cross-dressing, this would appear to be more in the writer’s wheelhouse than the director’s.
With the reports last week linking Leonardo DiCaprio to the lead role, we’ve taken a look at the script to answer the two most pressing questions surrounding the project: can DiCaprio pull off the part, and will the form be a sober look at the founding of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or a seedy trawl through the secret life of one of twentieth century America’s most controversial figures?
The story begins in 1963, as a 68-year-old Hoover awaits the arrival of a writer from the FBI’s PR department, to whom the Director will dictate his memoirs. He tells of how, as a young man in charge of the filing system at the Bureau of Investigation in 1919, he witnessed a bombing attack on the home of Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. While there, Black introduces a device that recurs throughout the film; to display Hoover’s investigative powers he sees “a brief imaginary STRING OF LIGHT [that] connects the severed finger to A BLOWN OPEN BRIEFCASE. He’s making connections. Organizing.”
It’s a slightly lame device, reminiscent of similar techniques used laughably in Ron Howard’s “The Da Vinci Code,” but fortunately it doesn’t appear that often. It does however highlight the powers of detection that precipitated Hoover’s rise — he’s almost a Sherlock Holmes-style super-sleuth here, and Black does a good job of indicating how his advocacy of forensics and fingerprinting changed the nature of law enforcement forever. His deductive powers get him noticed by the top brass, and he’s soon rising through the ranks (though we never really learn why Hoover is so predisposed to suspicion and clue-hunting). We also catch glimpses of his home life, with a father who suffered a mental breakdown, and an ambitious mother, as well as an awkward attempt at a date with a woman from the secretarial pool, Helen Gandy.
It’s in this date scene that the film’s subtext starts to appear. Hoover previously seems cocky and assured, but he doesn’t know how to respond to Helen’s flirting, awkwardly going for a kiss, and then attempting to propose. It becomes clear that there’s no sexual rapport between the two, despite a certain natural chemistry (and indeed, Gandry goes on to serve as Hoover’s secretary for the rest of his life, seemingly quite happily). As such, there’s a few seeds relating to Hoover’s sexuality planted early on, although they don’t start to pay off until he meets Clyde Toulson, at the beginning of the second act, and it’s only here, in 1924, that the story really kicks into gear.
Toulson (a good role for “Milk” alumnus James Franco) is a recent law school grad who applies for a job with the bureau. He’s unqualified, and is thought to be a homosexual, but Hoover offers him a job anyway. There’s an instant attraction between the two men, and Toulson becomes Hoover’s right hand man throughout much of his career. Due to Hoover’s deeply closeted nature, however, the relationship is never consummated; when Toulson makes a move on his boss, the two even come to blows. It’s clearly the most important relationship in the script, and the emotional hinge of the piece. Hoover’s sexuality is the driving force of the film, and you couldn’t miss it, but its treatment is quite subtle, for the most part, and some of the grandstanding from “Milk” has been toned down.
But Hoover isn’t strictly homosexual — he confesses to “becoming physical” with a woman at one point, but he’s a man desperately trying to hide his true nature from the world, and from himself; while it’s a slightly pat comparison, it’s not unlike the second half of “Brokeback Mountain,” for example. This life of repression is where the real emotional sting comes, particularly in a quietly devastating scene where Hoover attempts to confess all to his mother. The cross-dressing is hinted at in only one key scene, and in a very different manner from that which you’d expect. Without giving too much away, there’s something of a Norman Bates quality about old J. Edgar (quite frankly, a bit too much, and we assume it will be toned down in future drafts… but then again the version of “Milk” that floated around was nearly the exact one that ultimately hit the screen). Having said that, we’re glad it doesn’t dominate the film — it would risk overshadowing the rest if too much weight was put on what is, at best, an unsubstantiated rumor.
As for the rest, the script switches between Hoover in the 1960s, as in the opening, including Hoover’s attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr., and the 1910s, 20s and 30s, showing his rise to power, stretching the law to go after political radicals. Hoover turns around the reputation of the bureau, backing a series of Bureau based comic books depicting Hoover as an action man (represented with an animated sequence, of all things), and watching in satisfaction as Jimmy Cagney plays an FBI agent in “G-Men” — the tide turning as cinema heroes go from gangsters to law enforcers.
Hoover seems to enjoy the celebrity that follows, requesting that he be sat near the front of a club, and dining with movie stars, even as criticism of his methods starts to appear — the scene from “Public Enemies” in which Hoover is asked if he’s ever personally made an arrest is reprised (although it’s virtually the only crossover between the two films). Amongst all of this, there is a sort of thriller element as well — the Bureau’s attempt to solve the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby takes up a good chunk of screen time right through the second and third acts of the film.
One of the main problems with Black’s script for “Milk” was that it served as something of a hagiography of its subject, and you never got to know Harvey Milk as anything other than an icon and a martyr. Considering Hoover’s reputation, that was never going to be a risk here, but Hoover’s a remarkably well-drawn figure in the script — he does some truly monstrous things, but Black maintains a certain degree of sympathy for him throughout. It’s a very, very meaty role, and it’s easy to see why DiCaprio might have his eye on it. The question is, can he pull it off?
If there’s any sense in the casting, we sort of hope Eastwood ends up splitting the role, with separate, older actors for the 1960s segments; unless he’s planning on ‘Benjamin Button’ing the cast — which is probably excessively expensive — poor quality old-age make-up risks mucking up the whole thing. While we like DiCaprio in general, he’s not an actor that we can see remaining convincing in the role from his early twenties to his mid seventies, considering he still has a certain difficulty breaking out of the perception of some audiences that he’s just the kid from “Titanic” (not his fault, we’d argue…). Even for the chunk that DiCaprio’s most suited for, the scenes set in the 1920s and 1930s, he doesn’t seem like a natural fit — he’s too tall and handsome (Hoover was a short brick of man), for one, but also has never struck us as an authority figure; the insanity he can pull off fine, but Hoover, even as a young man, needs to convince as a man who can make presidents quake in their boots.
We also have no idea how the blend of detail-loving, method actor DiCaprio (who pushed Christopher Nolan to add more emotional layers to “Inception“) and the “let’s get it wrapped by 4:30 so I can go play golf” working practices of Eastwood will work out, but if it works out, the pairing should be a fascinating combination. Directors half Eastwood’s age could learn a huge amount from the veteran’s willingness to step outside of his comfort zone, and if he has faith in DiCaprio (and, of course, nothing’s confirmed yet, other than the actor’s interest in the part, and the fact that meetings have taken place), then we’re willing to give him a chance.
