FAQ for
Public Enemies (2009) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Public Enemies can be found here.

Yes. 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.

Like most true stories translated to the screen, the facts as far as characterization, times, dates, names, and places may either be "adjusted" or "dramatized" to make the film more entertaining. An example of this can be seen when John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) meets FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and says "Well, if it isn't the man who got Pretty Boy Floyd!" In real life, John Dillinger was killed before Pretty Boy Floyd. However, many facts are indeed true. John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) did carve a wooden gun in his cell and using it, he tricked a guard into opening his cell. Then Dillinger stole Sheriff Lillian Holley's new Ford car, embarrassing her and the town, and traveled to Chicago. Dillinger was also killed after Clark Gable's film Manhattan Melodrama (1934) outside the Biograph theater. He was accompanied by Polly Hamilton and Anna Sage, who tipped off the police (although she was called "The Lady in Red" she was wearing an orange skirt and white blouse as portrayed). Even the shots killing Dillinger are accurate, five shots - one from the back passing right beneath his right eye. The "Little Bohemia" raid was actually shot on location in the "Little Bohemia" lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin. However none of the gangsters were killed that night.

The time frame is from the breakout from the prison at Michigan City, Indiana, on September 26, 1933, to the Biograph shooting on July 22, 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 gay lover. 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.

You can read it online at: http://www.universalpicturesawards.com/pdfs/screenplays/Public_Enemies_screenplay.pdf