Maureen Dowd: Dirty Harry Meets Dirtier Edgar

Maureen Dowd is a New York Times columnist.

I ASK Clint Eastwood, the star who defined macho in 20th-century movies, what it was like to direct a scene with two men kissing.

Especially when it’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer playing a rule-bending and gender-bending version of J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson.

Stretching out his Giacometti legs in the Four Seasons bar, the rangy 81-year-old said he juiced up the action to make it a fistfight that suddenly turns erotic. Or as Eastwood circumspectly puts it, “It becomes an expression, at least from one of the parties — maybe both — of borderline something else.”

A director who prides himself on his economy (one or two takes often suffice) and frugality, Eastwood said: “It moved so fast, nobody had a chance to feel awkward. Afterward there were some jokes.”...