Casino Jack

The films of the American director George Hickenlooper, who has died unexpectedly aged 47, straddled several genres, but he will be best remembered as a documentary maker thanks to his most celebrated work, Hearts of Darkness: A Film-maker’s Apocalypse (1991). This riveting account of the troubled gestation of Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now (1979) combined behind-the-scenes footage shot by Coppola’s wife, Eleanor, with retrospective accounts by the cast and crew.

Hickenlooper observed “a strong parallel between Francis making the movie and the war itself. He really delved into the most sordid aspects of his own character.” As Apocalypse Now‘s budget and schedule ran out of control – and its leading man, Martin Sheen, had a heart attack – Coppola was consumed by fears and self-doubt, as captured in the documentary. “There were too many of us, we had access to too much equipment, too much money, and little by little we went insane,” he said. Among the documentary’s highlights is a largely incoherent Marlon Brando muttering improvisations as the rogue US colonel Walter E Kurtz. Hearts of Darkness was a critical triumph and won several awards, including an Emmy for Hickenlooper.

His background had played a crucial role in his career choice. He was born in St Louis, Missouri, to George, a playwright, and Barbara, a stage actor. His great uncle, Leopold Stokowski, was the musical director on the Disney classic Fantasia (1940). At the age of 13, Hickenlooper received a Super-8 camera from his father. He began to make his own films while at St Louis University high school. His works were broadcast on television in St Louis and he went on to study film at Yale University. He graduated in 1986 and moved to Los Angeles, where he found work as an intern for the producer and director Roger Corman.

Hickenlooper’s interest in the process of film-making led to his directing Art, Acting and the Suicide Chair: Dennis Hopper (1988), a short documentary about the Hollywood star who had a supporting role in Apocalypse Now. Hickenlooper’s book Reel Conversations, a collection of interviews with directors and critics, was published in 1991, the year of his big break with Hearts of Darkness. His next project was the study of another director at work. Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas (1991) explored the making of Bogdanovich’s Oscar-nominated film The Last Picture Show. Hickenlooper moved into fictional drama with The Killing Box (1993), an odd tale of supernatural forces and the American civil war. This was followed by the short film Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade (1994), written by and starring Billy Bob Thornton, as a convicted killer named Karl Childers. Thornton later expanded the idea into a full-length feature, Sling Blade (1996), resuming the role and directing himself.

Hickenlooper, meanwhile, returned to his recent past for the semi-autobiographical The Low Life (1995). He directed and co-wrote the film, which explored the tribulations of a Yale-educated writer trying to make it in Los Angeles. In his 1997 feature Dogtown, a failed Hollywood actor heads home to a small town in Missouri.

Hickenlooper returned to the documentary format with Mayor of the Sunset Strip (2003), an engrossing study of the veteran Los Angeles DJ, promoter and music obsessive Rodney Bingen- heimer. The film follows its socially awkward protagonist through a career spent basking in the glow of other celebrities. In an interview, Hickenlooper told me: “When I first met Rodney, he took me into his small apartment filled with all sorts of photos of himself with people like Hendrix, Elvis and Lennon. It got me thinking about why Rodney was drawn to popular culture. There’s a universal story here. I saw myself in Rodney, in terms of ‘Why did I come to Hollywood? Why was I interested in popular culture? Why did I want to be part of it too?’”

Hickenlooper’s next feature, Factory Girl (2006), was a drama based on the life of the doomed Andy Warhol protege Edie Sedgwick. Critics largely applauded Sienna Miller’s performance in the title role, but reaction to the film itself was mixed. Lou Reed, who knew Sedgwick and Warhol well, was particularly scathing, calling the script “one of the most disgusting, foul things I’ve seen … in a long time”. Hick Town (2009) was a more personal film, following the director’s cousin John Hickenlooper, the mayor of Denver, Colorado, at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Hickenlooper had been due to attend the premiere of his final film, Casino Jack (2010), starring Kevin Spacey as the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was imprisoned for fraud and conspiracy. The film opens in the US next month.

He is survived by his parents, his wife, Suzanne, and his son, Charles.

• George Hickenlooper, film director, writer and producer, born 25 May 1963; died 29 October 2010

–Rob Hughes, The Guardian