Black: Hoover Film Won't Be Degayed

Clint Eastwood says his film biography of FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover, alleged secret gay man and cross-dresser, won't "go down that road," reports Wall Street Journal.

Milk's Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black has written the screenplay for the film, but when asked if the screenplay will address reports "by former FBI employees that Hoover was a cross-dresser and perhaps a closeted homosexual, Mr. Eastwood says not really. In fact, what attracted him to the screenplay was the fact that it 'didn't quite go down that road.'"

Eastwood says he did a lot of his own research on Hoover. "I went back and read probably all the material that [Mr. Black] had read. . . . I went and visited with the FBI in Washington, D.C., and tried to find out as much as I could about people who had worked with Hoover."

But Black says reports his script won't touch on that aspect of Hoover's life are false. He tells AfterElton.com: "To think that somehow you're going to a make a movie about somebody like J. Edgar and you're not going to learn what's in his heart, that's just not going to happen in a script that I write. It's unfounded [the idea that the movie is being de-gayed.]"

Leonardo DiCaprio will play Hoover and The Social Network's Armie Hammer has been cast as his suspected lover Clyde Tolson. Earlier this week, Hammer told E! Online's Ted Casablanca that DiCaprio should get ready to pucker up.