J. Edgar: The (Gay?) Man Behind The Mask – Out screenwriter Dustin Lance Black talks Clint Eastwood’s ‘loving’ take on J. Edgar and Leonardo DiCaprio’s turn as a powerful closet case

November 30, 2011 | by Chris Azzopardi

No milk for Dustin Lance Black – the 37-year-old filmmaker who says he feels 10 years older today – on this recent morning in a suite at a Beverly Hills hotel. Instead, the screenwriter is nursing a hangover after the premiere of his latest film, J. Edgar, with a bottle of water, joking that “it just means more honest answers; the filter’s down.”

Even without the last drops of Jack and Cokes flushing from his system (proof: lots of bathroom breaks), Black’s always spoke his mind. It’s how the writer has become one of the most admired LGBT activists of our generation, passionately speaking out on hot topics like Prop 8, being a lapsed Mormon and curious dinners with Taylor Lautner (more on that later).

Today, however, all the talk, or most of it anyway, is around his big Clint Eastwood-directed, Leonardo DiCaprio-carried follow-up to Milk, Black’s biopic about Harvey Milk’s life and legacy that won the writer an Oscar. “It puts a lot of pressure on a lot of your work,” says Black, leaning forward on a sofa. “It’s a dangerous thing to have around the house, so I wrapped him up and flew him toVirginia with my mother. I love him, but he’s not allowed in the house while I’m working. I don’t want to think I’m writing toward that. I want to keep taking risks, and this is a risky film.”

It’s risky not just because of the controversial career of its subject, J. Edgar Hoover, the notoriously snaky FBI director who dominated the bureau for nearly 50 years, carrying his tenure through eight presidencies and three wars. What’s attracting the most controversy is the attention the film gives the infamous G-Man’s mysterious private life: Was Hoover’s closest colleague, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer of The Social Network), more than just his right-hand man?

“Women were very interested in him and he didn’t respond, but he did like to show up to work every morning with Clyde Tolson and drive home with him each night.” Black laughs. “And this is well before it was fashionable to carpool! So it became incredibly apparent that he wasn’t straight and I started to wonder, ‘Well, what did gay look like? Why was he behaving like that?’”

By interviewing gay men of the time – before Stonewall and the sexual revolution, when homosexuality was so vague that gay people were called “daffodils” – Black was able to piece together Hoover, who was never married and lived with his mother (played by Judi Dench) until she died.

“This portrait of this man was a very complex one and a very interesting one,” says DiCaprio, in the titular role through a half-century stretch, seen in his later years with makeup that took up to seven hours to apply. “I just loved the research that (Black) did and the take that he had on J. Edgar Hoover’s life. No matter what his sexual orientation was, he was devoted to his job and power was paramount to him. Holding onto that power at all costs was the most important thing in his life.”

Black’s screenplay, though, doesn’t slight the importance of Tolson in Hoover’s life. How gay does Black go with J. Edgar? “It’s not Milk,” Black explains. “Milk was gay from head to toe. This is not that.”

The men were nothing alike: “Milk came out and gave people great hope,” he says, “but this man was incredibly closeted and spread fear. I thought, ‘If I’m able to sell this thing, I might be able to finally examine why.’”

He looked into the hearsay regarding Hoover’s hankering for drag, but that turned out to be just what many thought – a rumor. But this is what Black knew: Hoover was an emotionally repressed mama’s boy who was smitten with Tolson; they had many meals together, up until their last moments alive, and they traveled to attend horse races, often sleeping in the same room to, you know, save pennies.

J. Edgar, then, doesn’t ignore the love story. It’s there in the flustered face of Hoover the first time Tolson interviews for associate director of the FBI, their affectionate handholding and a tussle-turned-makeout scene. The poignant ending, as the two are seen growing old together, is convincing on its own that the men were more than just colleagues. Eastwood had lots of inquiries regarding the script and the research behind it, but he let Black run with all of it.

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