George Hickenlooper: a fond look back
BY JOE WILLIAMS Posted: Wednesday, November 3, 2010 2:25 am
I was vacationing in China when I got the sobering news that George Hickenlooper had died. The director and native St. Louisan was only 47 when he suffered a heart attack in Denver, where his cousin John was running for governor of Colorado.
In a cutthroat industry, George was famously loyal--to his family, his friends, his heroes and his hometown. Because I was the film critic for the newspaper he grew up reading, he treated me with respect and affection before we ever met. About seven years ago, he sent me a collection of his early movies, and when we were introduced at the St. Louis International Film Festival a few months later, he flung a friendly arm around my shoulders as we posed for pictures.
After that we spoke or wrote to each other whenever I needed a quote from a Hollywood director or he needed to promote a new movie. Yet I never felt that there was a mercenary element to our relationship. Three years ago, he gave me an exclusive story about his feud with Bob Dylan over the movie "Factory Girl," a scoop that would have generated more publicity at a coastal newspaper. Two years ago, he sent me Norman Snider's script for a movie called "Casino Jack" and seemed genuinely interested in my suggestions. And I was touched that he always signed his e-mails to me "Fondly, George."
In September I saw him at the Toronto film festival, where "Casino Jack" and its star Kevin Spacey got a warm reception. After the premier, I congratulated him, and he introduced me to the film crew that was shadowing him for a filmfest documentary by Morgan Spurlock. In the doc, which aired on AMC in October, Hickenlooper was described as an indie veteran on the verge of mainstream acceptance.
I don't know if George considered himself an independent artist, but I do know that breakout success eluded him. In 1991, he won an Emmy for co-directing "Hearts of Darkness," a documentary about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now"; but subsequent docs that he made about his heroes Peter Bogdanovich, Monte Hellman and Dennis Hopper were little-seen labors of love. In 2003 he got glowing reviews for "The Mayor of the Sunset Strip," a documentary about Hollywood deejay Rodney Bingenheimer, yet it only earned about a quarter million dollars at the box office. His two most commercial dramas—2004's “The Man from Elysian Fields,” starring Andy Garcia as a reluctant gigolo; and 2007's "Factory Girl," starring Sienna Miller as '60s icon Edie Segwick, Guy Pearce as her mentor Andy Warhol and Hayden Christensen as her Dylanesque lover—didn't top two million. But George kept plugging away.
George was a brilliant guy, educated at St. Louis University High and Yale, yet occasionally I heard the Midwestern fanboy in his voice. He told me how surreal it was to meet with Mick Jagger at his Venetian palazzo to discuss a role in "Elysian Fields." And he blushed when he mentioned that he had dated Naomi Watts when she was a struggling actress in his low-budget thriller "Persons Unknown."
Much of George's early work was rooted in the experiences of a Hollywood outsider. After he and fellow Central-time transplant Billy Bob Thornton got noticed with a Sundance short called "Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade," George was hired to film crime re-creations for the TV series "America's Most Wanted," a job that kept them circling the country instead of circulating at Tinseltown parties. By his side was a classmate from SLUH and Yale, Michael Beugg, who produced several of George's subsequent features, including the autobiographical crash-pad story "The Low Life."
In "Dogtown," named for George's old St. Louis neighborhood (but filmed in Cuba, Mo.), an actor returns to his Missouri hometown, where the locals assume he is more successful and happy than he really is.
In 1999, George filmed "The Big Brass Ring" in St. Louis, casting several old friends and his SLUH drama teacher F. Joseph Schulte in the film. Working from an unproduced script by Orson Welles, George updated it to a contemporary story about a Missouri politician threatened by a scandal.
George had a lifelong interest in politics, and one of his early ambitions was to be an editorial cartoonist at this newspaper. His mother, Barbara, was a fervent anti-war protester in the 1960s. After the family moved to the Bay Area for a few years, young George was introduced to liberal luminaries such as Jane Fonda and Cesar Chavez. He told me that Joan Baez once sang him to sleep.
At Yale, George rebelled against Barbara and playwright father George Sr. by becoming a Reagan Republican, and in Hollywood he had a reputation as a contrarian.. More than once, we argued about the veracity of Oliver Stone's “JFK.”
But around the time of the 2007 strike by the Writer's Guild, George came full circle. He produced a series a internet videos on behalf of the union, and in emails to me he decried the rise of the wealthy oligarchs who were stealing the American dream.
George recounted his political journey in a speech he gave at the Toronto premier party for "Casino Jack." He was proud of the film, a dramedy about the crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff (whom George and Spacey interviewed in prison). And he was particularly proud of Maury Chaikin, a veteran character actor who plays a hitman in the movie. The actor died shortly after the film was completed, and George dedicated a book about the making of the movie to Chaikin. It's book that George was going to be signing in St. Louis later this week, when "Casino Jack" will open the St. Louis International Film Festival.We were scheduled to have lunch together next Wednesday.
George had talked about moving back to St. Louis so his nine-year-old son, Charles, could attend SLUH. The Nov. 11 presentation of "Casino Jack" was supposed to be George's gala homecoming. Now it will be a posthumous tribute, with a clip reel and reminiscences by his family and friends.
And so I'm struggling to finish this story in a plane over the North Pole, with my battery dying and tears in my eyes, as I think of George Hickenlooper, fondly.
