After a lot of movie making, “J. Edgar” director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black‘s feelings are still on the fence about the former FBI director and prominent Washingtonian J. Edgar Hoover.
“He’s still a mystery to me,” Eastwood admitted. “I ended up feeling for him in certain ways, I feel like a lot of what happened to him in his youth was very wrong and hurtful, but in the end we all make choices and it’s up to us…so I think he lost his way,” Black echoed.
Black told Yeas & Nays that he came back to Washington, where he spent his summers during college, to write the film. “As soon as I found out this got greenlit I moved back out here and was staying with my mom down in Virginia,” he said. “I wanted to walk in all of his old footsteps, so from his childhood neighborhood — sadly his home is gone — to his adulthood home and of course the Department of Justice,” Black said. He also spent time with star Leonardo DiCaprio at the Mayflower Hotel, where Hoover and his righthand man Clyde Tolson lunched daily.
Eastwood and Black both walked the red carpet at the Newseum Tuesday night for the movie’s D.C. premiere. MPAA head Chris Dodd, Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier and Sen. Patrick Leahy were also in attendance.
Lanier tried avoiding the red carpet and the reporters in the Newseum entranceway. “I would have put some makeup on or something,” we overheard her say. While Leahy gushed about getting to go on set. “I went on set to watch them filming it and got a chance to chat with [Eastwood] while they were making it.” But did Leahy, a big movie buff who famously had a bit role in Christopher Nolan‘s “The Dark Knight,” try and land a cameo? “No, no,” Leahy laughed. “When I was a prosecutor I got a couple meetings with J. Edgar Hoover so I’m going to be interested in how they portray him.”
