I didn’t find a lot of proof that Hoover cross-dressed. I think it was more a form of homophobia against him. Do I think J. Edgar Hoover was gay? Yes. Do I think he cross-dressed? No. I think that was just one of the ways people tried to bash him because they probably had the sense that he was gay. Did he ever put on a dress? Hell, I put on my mom’s undergarments when I was a kid. I didn’t find much credible evidence that Hoover went out socially dressed up in women’s clothes. But a script is 90 percent research about the person, and then so much about yourself ends up being in there, too. Anyone who says a movie about history is a historical document is crazy. It’s a document that incorporates who that person was and who I am now.

—Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black to Oliver Stone on FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the subject of his new film