This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 11, 2010 - George Hickenlooper's stylish new movie, "Casino Jack," opens Thursday night at 8 p.m. at the Tivoli to start the 2010 St. Louis International Film Festival. Early in the story, Jack Abramoff, played with considerable dash by Kevin Spacey, gets put into a holding tank after being arrested for fraud and influence-peddling. Abramoff is a classic white-collar criminal with government connections all over Washington.
He nervously eyes his two cellmates, a huge African-American man, apparently asleep, and a second man covered in tattoos, who stares coldly at Abramoff. The story cuts away and the next time we see those same three men in the cell, Abramoff is enthusiastically explaining the art of lobbying to the other two, who listen like eager students. That's most of what you need to know about Jack Abramoff in this story.
As an ultraconservative and self-proclaimed super lobbyist, Abramoff made first a dashing, then a sickening figure during the second term of the George W. Bush administration. He wanted to be the biggest and best, and he was well on his way, making millions by lobbying for Indian tribe casinos, through all the usual backroom methods, notably including the trick of playing one tribe against another.
Abramoff also had dreams of being a genuinely significant public figure, a man of wide-ranging sophisticated tastes. He was starting a Hebrew academy and fine restaurants for the Washington, D.C., area at the same time that he was buying casino cruise ships to nowhere from sketchy Florida hustlers. He was also a publicly devout and religious man, which helped him feel right at home in some segments of the political right in the later Bush years.
Such complexities in the makeup of Abramoff are clearly subsumed in his gigantic and ultimately self-destructive ego, as presented in "Casino Jack." We watch him work the tribes, play the numbers, plan the deals, take the golf trips, and always talk, talk, talk. Even in prison, he seems nearly unable to resist "the sell."
Since Abramoff, we've had Bernie Madoff, who bilked untold numbers of people out of not just millions, but billions of dollars. Add the economic controversies at the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration, and like it or not, some people may consider Abramoff's story yesterday's news.
Recent events may blunt the anger that might otherwise well up in viewers expected to see Jack Abramoff as a white-collar American Gangster.
To add to the inference, Abramoff was also the subject of a similarly titled documentary, "Casino Jack and the United States of Money," which opened in May 2010, then disappeared from big screens almost immediately.
Director George Hickenlooper, who sadly and suddenly died only two weeks ago at the age of 47, has had a solid if quiet Hollywood career, and this movie might well have been his break-out moment. Oscar buzz has already begun for Kevin Spacey's performance as Abramoff.
Hickenlooper, who went to high school and was well known in St. Louis, was internationally known for his award-winning documentary, "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" (1991), about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now." In the same year, Hickenlooper also wrote a respectable book of interviews on film-making, "Reel Conversations: Candid Interviews with Film's Foremost Directors and Critics."
Among the director's other documentaries and biopics was the recent "Factory Girl" (2006) about Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol's Factory. Hickenlooper is also credited as executive producer for an upcoming movie on Chuck Berry, directed by St. Louisan Art Holliday and scheduled for release in 2011.
Nick Otten is a freelance writer.