J. Edgar

I am trying very hard to keep the image of Robert Ebert after his throat cancer surgery out of my head as I sit down and type my thoughts on this movie. I have been having a throat pain on and off for several months now and it is scaring the shit out of me. And why do I taste salt every time I drink water?

Anyway, another image that I have trouble keeping out of my head is Clint Eastwood, the director of this film, chewing the words: "He is a fucking cock sucker!!!"

The simple days... The really simple days when FBI originally started, in the first decade of the 20th century, things seem so simple then. The cars had simple engines... the liquor was hard, and the vegies all organic. And you could meet women in a club and they would offer to warm your bed for ya.

It makes me reflect on today, we are into second decade of the 21st century, at the end of which, will I look back and think, "wow... those were the simple days, they measured computer performance in peta-flops.", and they didn't even have to sign a pre-date to go on a date.

Anyway, snap back to reality, wow! I thought half way into this movie, this whole country is created not by white men, it was created by homosexual men! The film portrays J. Edgar Hoover, founding director of the FBI and Clyde Tolson, founding Associate director of the same TLA as homosexual couples. Various reports (wiki) quotes Clint Eastwood saying that he chose the script because it was not homosexual! But that was clearly a statement of the opposite, that the script did not focus on his homosexuality.

Was the script a PSA (public service announcement) for personal fitness? Because Clyde got a stroke for saying that he doesn't like to exercise and Hoover dies hours after revealing that he wasn't working out either to Clyde.

Because it wasn't a promo piece for the FBI either. Though it did show that the underlines, the nameless agents do do good work that hoover takes credit for.

I don't know why, but I have a fairly positive impression of the FBI, despite my deep seeded hatred for spying of all form be it organized or disorganized, effective or ineffective, and government sanctioned or not. So the movie is a slight understatement there for me too.

Perhaps it is for the best that the movie does not go into great detail about the things that we find lacking. The details of his extortions, the details of his relationship with Clyde, the details of all the political struggles that he won.

Btw, did Rober Ebert get throat cancer from HPV when he had oral sex with his black wife or through his promiscuous Hollywood lifestyle?... sorry, my most feared thoughts escape my skull some times...

The movie overall felt like it fits the demographics--most of the people in the audience, me excluded, were older couples same age as the dying Hoover. People from a simpler times... like when in a hundred years they'll complain about lack of details: "oh man, that old geezer is posting into a blog about his java code about such a simple system called Hadoop. That's soooo simple and unscalable."