Im fascinated by failure, and Im fascinated by finality. Shakespeares historical plays are more universal than his comedies because they relate to the finality of life. Without finality, life would not be beautiful.
George HickenlooperTheres something unique about the United States, a sense of individual rights and freedoms, and a sense of social and civic responsibility that we contributed to so much of the world. We lost that mission in the 1980s and 1990s, when we entered a gilded age, and the culture of individualism became a culture of avarice.
George HickenlooperThe arc of the celebrity phenomenon ultimately is: everything turns to dust and everything does go away.
George HickenlooperNarrative, fiction filmmaking is the culmination of several art forms: theater, art history, architecture. Whereas doc filmmaking is more pure cinema, like cinema veritรฉ is film in its purest form. You're taking random images and creating meaning out of random images, telling a story, getting meaning, capturing something that's real, that's really happening, and render this celluloid sculpture of this real thing. That's what really separates the power of doc filmmaking from fiction.
George HickenlooperDocs are more exhausting because of the physical labor that's required. Feature filmmaking is more exhausting because of politics and the bullshit. You get to the point of rolling film and until you lock picture it's one political game after another. They're both struggles for survival. They are two different worlds.
George Hickenlooper