Clint Eastwood to direct J. Edgar Hoover's coming out movie!

Clint Eastwood is in post on his supernatural December opening thriller Hereafter, and according to The Hollywood Reporter is gearing up to begin work on his next movie - a biopic of the first F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover. A biopic which is almost certain to carry a fascinating agenda. You see, there's an awful lot of speculation in various Hoover biographies to suggest that the man was a closet homosexual and cross-dresser. Although the point was mute in Billy Crudrup's great supporting gig in Public Enemies last year, it was most certainly hinted at in the Bob Hoskins portrayal of the complicated man in Nixon. When we see that Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar winning screenwriter of Milk and an openly gay man himself has wrote the screenplay for the movie Eastwood has become attached to, it doesn't take Columbo to conclude that his biopic will touch on this subject in a big way. It just seems so likely. Of course there's an awful lot to cover with a re-telling of Hoover's life story and it could focus on many different avenues. His creation of the F.B.I. of course, his obsession with John Dillinger (though we've been there done that), his secret files on U.S. subversives and radicals, his often illegal COINTELPRO program or even the small evidence to suggest he was assassinated because he was the man who knew too much, a topic Marc Forster might cover later this year. Hell, he was so paranoid he kept mass files and dossiers on nearly everyone - friends and foes, so it was certainly advantages for many that he would be bumped off, so who knows? If the Eastwood/Black movie is the gay angle, which I'm almost certain will be significant - who would have thought that Eastwood would have been the man to do it? Working title of the screenplay is Hoover but Eastwood is fond of poetic titles, so don't expect it to stick. Previously hatched at Universal, Hoover should find a home at Warner Bros this week, where Eastwood's shingle is based. Once the director gets a cast together, the movie will be ready to go. Eastwood, 80 in May, has already wrapped on 7 movies since 2004, two of which he had leading roles in. The guy puts everyone to shame.