FAQ

Public Enemies is a film adaptation of Bryan Burrough's Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34. The book was adapted for the movie by screenwriters Ronan Bennett, Ann Biderman, and director Michael Mann. Burrough originally pitched Public Enemies as a TV miniseries to Mann. However, he declined an offer to write that series and, while he researched and wrote his book, the project withered.

The time frame is from the breakout from the prison at Michigan City, Indiana, on September 26th, 1933, to the Biograph shooting on July 22nd, 1934, with a short (entirely fictional) epilogue between Billie and agent Winstead a few weeks or months after.

That was Clyde Tolson, associate director of the FBI and rumoured to be J. Edgar Hoover's lover or sex partner. The film gives subtle and ambiguous hints to this, as the focus was not on J. Edgar Hoover so there wasn't much point in addressing it, especially given the fact it was never proven. But in the film, Tolson is always seen with Hoover and on more than one occasion they look at each other rather oddly, suggesting they may have been lovers.