MOVIES: Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover — Looking good so far.

Leonardo DiCaprio as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

The new Clint Eastwood-directed bio-pic J. Edgar, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role as Hoover, the legendary autocrat who sat atop the FBI for five decades, released this week its official trailer/preview.  (To see it, click on the image at the bottom. The movie itself comes out in November.)  The trailer runs just two minutes, 29 seconds — obviously too short to judge the entire film.  But having spent two years of my life getting to know Mr. Hoover while researching and writing my own book about him called Young J. Edgar, I must say I liked what I saw.  

Photo shows Hoover at about 22 years old.

J. Edgar Hoover casts a long shadow over modern America, and a good, truthful movie about him is long overdue.  Hoover was the most controversial law man  in 20th century America.  He served as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for an astonishing 48 years, holding the post under nine presidents from Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s to Richard M. Nixon in the 1970s.  Though considered a hero and role model most of his life, investigations after his 1972 death confirmed massive abuses of power, illegal wiretaps, bugs, break-ins, and secret files on hundreds of thousands of people which he used as blackmail against presidents and movie stars.   Hoover stands today as one of the most hated men in American history—a probably gay man who harassed gays, a possible descendant of an African American who harassed civil rights leaders, a top law enforcement official who placed himself above the law and ruined many peoples’ lives, all making him something of a monster. 

But in truth, I found Hoover — at least the younger one I wrote about in my book — to be oddly sympathetic.   Hoover did not step into the world as an evil villain.  To a great extent, this side of him was shaped by events and forces that engulfed him during his lifetime, especially his younger formative years.  This is not to make excuses for Hoover’s very long record on the dark side, but simply dismissing him as a cartoon villain and cross-dresser misses the deeper lessons.  

Hoover came to work at the Justice Department in 1917 as a eager, bright young man ready to impress his superiors and save the country.  Within four short years, he had risen to become deputy director of the Bureau of Investigation and had already played a lead role in the Palmer Raids, one of the most eggregious civil liberties abuses in US history.  This transformation — from bright young man to hardened bureaucrat –fascinated me, especially since, to my eye, post-9/11 America seemed to be a period not unlike Hoover’s own formative years during the 1919-1920 Red Scare.  It is a core theme of my own book Young J. Edgar, and, based on the trailer, it also seems to be at the heart of the new film.  

 I have been following the Eastwood-DiCaprio project for months through news reports and Washington gossip.  I was impressed early on by two things–

  • First, the writer, Dustin Lance Black, who also wrote the screenplay for Milk (the movie about assassinated  San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk), reportedly spent several months in Washington while developing the script doing primary research at the National Archives and Library of Congress.  To understand J. Edgar Hoover, there is no substitute for seeing the FBI files.  They are simply stunning, a dazzling reflection of the man who created them.  They make endlessly fascinating reading and paint a stark portrait of absolute power breeding absolute corruption.
  • Second, when the movie crew came to Washington, D.C. last May, one place they filmed was at the Library of Congress, one of my own favorite research haunts.  I heard many stories from friends there about the movie crew and how they did their work: their eye for detail, making a point to show,  for instance, Hoover/DiCaprio’s fascination with the Library’s card catalogue.  The real-life Hoover actually worked at the Library of Congress during law school in 1914-17 and its card cataloue was a key inspiration for him in designing his FBI files.

The new trailer released this week shows the film dwelling not so much on the usual tawdry stuff about Hoover’s alleged cross-dressing or his actual fascination with celebrity sex gossip.  Yes, he very likely had a gay relationship with FBI assistant director Clyde Tolson, but much of the rest is widely disputed.   Rather, the film appears to focus on the real tension of Hoover’s life — his war (as he saw it) of good against evil, society against anarchy, patriots against traitors, subversives, and phonies, all giving him an excuse to bend the law as he saw fit and to hold power at all costs.

I fully expect to have my own list of nit-picks and criticisms once I see the entire film in November.  But for now, based on the trailer, I like what I see.

Catching Up.

So it was Amy Rose, my astute sister-in-law, who finally confronted me over it. What kind of sorry excure for a Blogger am I to not have entered a single Post in over a month and a half? My last one was March 26 — seven weeks ago. Use it or lose it!! That was the message.

So here I am today, tail between my legs, trying to make amends. Yes, there’s been an ocean of water under the bridge since my last Post, lots having to do with me — good, bad, and indifferent, all mixed together.

Here are a few headlines:

— On the personal level, yes, my new book Young J. Edgar is finally out, with very respectable pre-pub reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, a nice segment on The Bob Edwards Show on XM radio, good, solid opening events in NYC at the NY Historical Society (James Risen of the NY Times shared the stage with me, a real kick) and in Washington, DC, at the best bookstore around, Politics and Prose. C-Span Booknotes has invited me to tape a segment for “Afterwords,” and I’m still waiting to hear from the major book reviews and media. So on all these many fronts, so far so good.

Yes, mine is one of the books tangled up in the Perseus-Avalon-Carroll and Graf denoument that was making big headlines in publishing circles late last week. How it will affect Young J. Edgar, I still don’t really know. Best I can tell, it’s cause to worry, but not to panic. The new owners seem ready to stand behind it. What will happen next, stay tuned….

— As for the world at large, there has been politics galore since my last Post, good grist for cynics of all stripes. Yes, Alberto Gonzales is still Attorney General of the USA seven weeks after I last weighed in on it, long after most Washington cognoscenti had pronounced him all washed up. I guess, if you’re going to have just one friend in the world, it’s good to have it be that fellow in the White House with all the power and the heavy stubborn streak.

My own personal favorite moment in politics over the past month was the one that came during that debate of the ten Republican presidential candidates when Chris Mathews asked if any of them actually did not believe in evolution, and three raised their hands — including a sitting US Senator and two former governors. It is tempting to make a snide joke here about ignorance in high places. But don’t we all feel a wee bit embarrassed as a country that three contenders for the White House would consider it good politics to deny the validity of the last 150 years of science because it contradicts the book of Genesis? Now don’t get me wrong. I happen to consider Genesis to be a very fine book, wonderfully written, rich in imagery, bursting with noble themes, and well deserving its first-in-the-Bible status. But in a day and age when jihadists are murdering people over the Koran and religion is dividing the planet into warring tribes, isn’t this a good time to stand up for science and secular government? Even Turkey and France seem to get this point better than we do, based on recent events there.

In any event, that’s my rant for today. My coffee is cold now, so I’ll stop. Don’t be a stranger, and I’ll try to post more often as well so my sister-in-law Amy will stay off my case over this. Meanwhile, here’s to good caffeine. All the best. –KenA