Image courtesy of ATO Pictures
Though last year’s St. Louis International Film Festival was one of the most successful ever, it was overshadowed by the untimely death of filmmaker George Hickenlooper. A St. Louis expat, Hickenlooper began his career with the critically acclaimed documentary Hearts of Darkness; though he made several wonderful features during the past two decades, one of his most famous films was a short—Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade, featuring a younger Billy Bob Thornton. When Thornton went on to make the feature-length Sling Blade (it was he who had created the character Karl Childers), he did so without Hickenlooper.
By all accounts, Hickenlooper’s latest film, Casino Jack, was going to be his ticket into the mainstream. Based on the career of Jack Abramoff (played by Kevin Spacey), the film premiered to praise at the Toronto International Film Festival. Hickenlooper was scheduled to appear at the film’s SLIFF screening November 11, but on October 30, the filmmaker died in his sleep. The opening night of the film festival turned into a tribute, rather than a homecoming.
If you missed Casino Jack at SLIFF, you can see it in Landmark Theatres starting January 7. “If people know who Jack Abramoff was, they think, ‘It’s a political movie, it’s a movie about Washington—I’m going to stay home,’” says actor Spencer Garrett, who plays Tom DeLay in the film. But Hickenlooper’s approach was Shakespearean, not polemical, says Garrett: “It’s a comedy, and it’s a great, great story,” one told “in a very funny, human, and entertaining way. It just happens to be a story about politics. As George always put it, ‘It’s Goodfellas in Washington.’”
