Re “Titanic,” the result is not just in the grosses, but in the movie itself. It’s a big splashy romantic spectacle that connected with audiences and on its own terms made perfect sense. At no point do we wonder “Why are we look at this?” That’s a constant question with “Heaven’s Gate.”
More than anyhting else it represents that perils of auteurism in commercial film practice. It was all linked to the belief that Cimono not only had magical filmmaking powers, but that the audience was enraptured with them. Cimino was riding in on the publicity campaign engineered by Alan Carr (yes THAT Alan Carr) that made “The Deer Hunter” (a truly terrible movie) an Oscar-winner. “The Deer Hunter” wasn’t a box office blockbuster. It did OK, but no more. “Heaven’s Gate” was expected to do more.
It did less. WAY less in every way.
Cimino’s subsequent films were no better and he’s at present out of the film business altogether.
It’s been years since I read FINAL CUT, so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but … didn’t Cimino buy many, many acres of land at studio expense, make improvements on it (like irrigation) at studio expense … and have ownership placed in his name?
Heaven’s Gate is also the perfect example of what happens when you bite the hand that feeds you. Camino managed to competely alienate himself from the big wigs in film industry who were financing his film. He was a talented director who single-handedly destroyed his career with Heaven’s Gate. It’s what happens when ego and perfectionism gets in the way of productivity. Orson Welles endured the same kind of alienation in his time. I guess that’s why Terrence Malick has only made a half a dozen films in his more than 30-year career and had most of his films independently financed.
I really don’t think Heaven’s Gate is a particularly awful film, but it will never get out from under it’s reputation as the archetypal box office bomb.
Thanks, Alan, for giving us the background on the whole Heaven’sGate fiasco. I have yet to see the film and haven’t read the book, but, as you say, the Heaven’s Gate disaster altered the free flow of cash that bankrolled films up to that period. Your story of the film reminds me of what I have heard about another famous box office disaster – Cleopatra – the Burton/Taylor bomb of the ’60’s. That film also nearly bankrupted its studio, and finally ended that awful spate of long drawn out films set in Roman or biblical times – which was a good thing.
Perhaps your story also reflects the need for any film to have a good executive producer, to keep the budget and director in line. Excess of any kind is never good for film production and almost always breeds an inferior product. Yet, in spite of Heaven’s Gate, there are many examples of films that deserved better from the box office or the studio who made them. I recently watched with fascination the story of the making of Blade Runner on the 2 disk special edition. Here is another film that went considerably over budget and time for production, and was heavily interferred with by the studio. It bombed upon release. Yet, in this case the director, Ridley Scott, was right, and the film eventually triumphed inspite of its shaky start. Nothing will save a bad film, though, as the Heaven’s Gate story tells us. Thanks Alan, and to the other posters for adding to this perspective. A cautionary tale still for all involved in the film business – which is, after all, a business.
Heaven’s Gate is misunderstood. Yes, it was an indulgent exercise but so is great art. Yes, it’s very long. But some stories must be told for as long as they are needed to be told. More importantly, Heaven’s Gate was not created as a roller coaster, money grabbing, “tent pole” comic book movie. Okay so it failed. But it failed by attempting to be great.
Sure, you can throw charges of financial excess, hubris, ego-mania, insolence, rudeness, and writing a threadbare script at Cimino, but at least he tried to create something meaningful. UA was a company that had great success giving directors freedom. But then again those other directors UA worked with were able to control themselves. Some directors need controlling. Some directors need a strong producer.
The documentary version of the book Final Cut is great. The cast and crew were behind Cimino. He worked as hard as everyone else. The DP, Vilmos Zsigmond tells a story of how they were getting in trouble because they were working through the lunch break. They had to break for lunch. But Cimino, staring off, simply replied that this movie is too important for lunch. Okay, so that was selfish of Cimino to feel that way. But he was making a movie, after all. And movies are more important than lunch, right?
Yeah, remember that Final Cut was written by a man whose was a United Artists exec at the time, so it’s hardly an objective version of what went on during the making of the film.
It’s interesting that the 219-minute cut—the closest to Cimino’s intentions existant—was shown on the Z Channel after the 149-minute cut failed at the box office, and they coined the whole notion of a “director’s cut” as part of the marketing. This is one of those films were even fairly knowledgable people are more aware of the controversy surrounding the film that are they of the film itself.
i finally saw the film for the first time last year. it was pretty much unwatchable. took me about three or four painful sittings to get through it. i dont see any way how this film can be a masterpiece, or even a great flawed film.
but maybe its just that i dont care for cimino’s aesthetic, because i was also thoroughly unimpressed with “the deer hunter”, for many of the same reasons as “heavens gate”.
he had one hit and thought he could do whatever the hell he wanted from then on. when you make a big budget film you still have to answer to the people that pay for it. that’s business
It isn’t a popular view but I think Heavens Gate is excellent. It was never going to make back its’ money, but it is beautifully shot and some of the sequences are breathtaking. Elements like the roller-skating and the dancing at the Harvard graduation sound strange, but integrate well within the movie. There are certainly flaws, but I love the film regardless.
Final Cut chronicles the production in a one-sided way, but Cimino certainly did some horrendous things like the land irrigation that Harry Long mentions, and I don’t think the directors telling of the tale would have him covered in glory either. It is a great read.
And out of it all comes my biggest regret: that Cimino never got to make The Yellow Jersey: the great cycling movie that never was.
Interesting podcast about this on www.leftfieldcinema.com
Well, i have mixed feelings. It covers some important issues- some say the soul of America, capital v the disempowered, immigrants- but it’s also self-important. It’s ponderous and majestic. There was cruelty to, mistreatment and even killing of, animals. Its failure along with the success of Star Wars led to the continuing dominance of a juvenile market mentality, but it aimed higher. Joe Queenan called it the worst film ever, which i certainly can’t agree with, but i see he at least knows that British really means Welsh. I also have mixed feelings over The Deer Hunter, which greatly impressed me for its tremendous scope and depiction of the horrors of war when i was 17, but certainly also seems to support American patriotism rather than questioning the US presence in Vietnam, while also depicting the Vietcong as the sadistic enemy.
As the cliche goes, “it’s not quantity, it’s quality.” Camino, imo, was the perfect example of a person who neccessitated “quantity” over “quality” in his films. Had Samuel Fuller ever worked with him, Fuller would have likely shot Camino dead on the spot after one day. I just watched the Deer Hunter again the other night, the first time in many years. It’s still as powerful as ever, but one thing I realized while watching it was that it moved sooooooooo damned slow. I told myself, ’There’s no way in hell this guy needed 20 minutes of screen time to show the band of pals driving to the bar, or playing pool inside the bar, or hunting in the forest. He was overly excessive, but still a good director. That’s what killed his career – excessiveness. There was a method behind Orson Welles madness when he took forever to get a film edited, but with Camino, he just wanted everything and the kitchen sink in his films.
exactly. i agree with everything you just said.
Not to be the egomaniac or anything, but if you guys would just go to www.myspace.com/flmlvr, you can read my write-up on “Heaven’s Gate” which, of the films I wrote about, was my favorite one to write about. I’m old enough to remember EVERYTHING about that film when it first came out, and thought you would like the perspective of someone who can remember the whole thing from the movie fan’s point of view……………
once again,
www.myspace.com/flmlvr – just click “blog” and scroll till you see it………….
Heaven’s Gate was essentially a Marxist interpretation of the West, which not surprisingly didn’t go over very well with American audiences. The film garnered much better reviews in Europe.
“Final Cut” is a masterful, incisive read into the whole mess, and a wonderful, even-handed look at what can happen when both sides are looking for ‘bank’ AND ‘art’.
Lehmann Katz was a financial wizard at UA, an absolute expert at evalauting budgets, according to Bach.
Katz in a memo essentially said: “This is unrealistic. By a lot.” That was the last stop, the last flag waving, the last chance before the cameras started up. And they went ahead. Because the potential ‘prestige’ was blinding them more than the bottom line was scaring them.
Cimino stands as a latter-day Erich von Stroheim, the same obsessive details, the same “get out of my way” attitude, the same “why can’t you see what I am trying to do” feeling.
Like Stroheim, Cimino could charm, cajole and bully, depending on what did the job. And, deep down, I don’t think he could do anything else.
That’s why I don’t just lump the film into the ‘big failure’ category. Many studio bombs have been dropped with far less ambition.
On some completely unrealistic level, Cimino was sincere, as was Stroheim. It was the rest of the world that was getting in the way.
There are people like that. And in the end, I’d rather have such people show up now and then than not show up at all.
Stictly watching, yes, I think Cimino desperately needed a scriptwriter on this one. To me the film’s length is fine, given the size of the story; it’s the script that comes apart.
A most unusual Criterion offering would be the re-mastered 219-min cut on Blu-Ray, a copy of Steven Bach’s book and a CD of David Mansfield’s beautiful score (easily the least commercial and most endearing part of the film.)
(Currently, the DVD I have is the MGM “219” transfer which is poor and cheaply done, but who knows if the full-length neg is even still available.)
In watching “Final Cut.” Cimino’s first cut ran over 5 hours, which I would think is the one to include in a DVD package. The cut currently available runs a little less than 4 hours.
The Johnson County War is a big story, and a convoluted one. Cimino approached it from the POV of sifting through the many images. Each frame is so carefully composed. It really is a work of art, as well as history.
beautifully shot, but too long, and he doesn’t get the balance right between the quiet and violent movements, so the film never really establishes a consistent tone or rhythm.
Lester is right though. As much as i love Deer Hunter, the seeds of Cimino’s destruction were clearly evident in the film, and ‘The Deer Hunter’ took that whole ‘impressionist’ angle too far, to admittedly pointless effect.
The real problem with Heaven’s Gate though is that there was no real story. I understand he was trying to tell the story through images, but at 3.5 hours, it needed a much stronger achor than that. There is no compelling narrative or characters. And the epilogue feels incredibly tacked on, and manipulative, trying to make us feel sympathy for a character we barely even know, and a tragedy viewed almost entirely at arm’s length.
“‘The Deer Hunter’ took that whole ‘impressionist’ angle too far, to admittedly pointless effect.”
Heaven’s Gate i mean. i took that drawn out aspect of the first half of Deer Hunter too far.
beautifully shot, but too long …
Not long enough in my mind. It was pretty clear from the documentary “Final Cut” that Cimino had to cut and paste this film to meet the Christmas deadline, and with 200 hours of film that was a pretty amazing accomplishment. This is the type of story that really should have been told over a series of episodes like “Fanny and Alexander” or “War and Peace.” It was on that scale. Instead, he was pressed to further shave down his film to fit the attention span of Americans who prefer their Westerns packaged into tight little stories with clearly delineated sides of conflict. I suppose what put people off the most about this movie was its moral ambivalence, not its length or “lack of story.”
As for breaking the bank, Cimino is not to blame. It was pretty clear UA didn’t know how to handle Cimino. When Eastwood had Cimino direct Thunderbolt and Lightfoot he made it very clear how many takes he had. Eastwood set limits. Eventually Bach did the same when it came time for Cimino to film the Harvard graduation scene, which was filmed in Oxford since Harvard said no. UA had no one to blame but themselves. They thought they could piggy back Cimino to major success, but instead Cimino used the opportunity to film the movie he long wanted to make. He had conceived HG back in the early 70s but had no backers, it was only with the success of The Deer Hunter that he finally had someone who would give him the opportunity. And, he took it. I don’t blame him in the least. And, this film will hold up much longer than any other film he made. Interesting that all the actors, Zsigmond, and even Bach stood behind Cimino in the end.
It was the last gasp of 70s revisionism, on an epic scale, and it’s interesting in that regard. I don’t think it’s a great film though.
“t. I suppose what put people off the most about this movie was its moral ambivalence, not its length or “lack of story.”
what moral ambivalence? it’s pretty obvious who is ‘good’ and who is ‘bad’ in Heaven’s Gate.
great movie
It’s not a great film but there are some truly inspired moments. I don’t care what anyone says the extended rollerskate fiddle scene is great stuff. I think a lot of the blacklash against Cimino was critic generated too. What he did was negligent and wasteful to be sure but his attitude and the fact that entertainment journalists needed something to latch onto made him an easy target.
It was the last gasp of 70s revisionism …
What would you call Dead Man and The Unforgiven then?
what moral ambivalence? it’s pretty obvious who is ‘good’ and who is ‘bad’ in Heaven’s Gate.
Anyway, Cimino was looking for different territory than Leone and Peckinpah. The only thing really like it before was McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Cimino chose to rewrite how The West Was Won. Averill (an historical figure by the way) only made his “decision” in the movie at the very end, after much ambivalence. I guess he hoped he could continue to forestall the inevitable until he finally saw it was no longer possible.
Actually my favorite part of Bach’s book was the stuff devoted to “Raging Bull” and what Scorsese and DeNiro did to get it made. But an altogether fantastic book all the same.
Well, I don’t see how it could be surprising that Cimino, the director of the slightly better though just as overblown and extravagant Deer Hunter (and later, The Sicilian!), would follow it up with an overlong, overly dramatic film like Heaven’s Gate. It’s not a terrible film per se, but there’s a lot that I don’t like about it … then again, there’s not much I liked about the Deer Hunter either and that’s considered great by most people, so what do I know.
Alanedit
Ha! a post on Heaven’s Gate, the film that bankrupt and changed the power structure between directors and corporations in the film business. This isn’t a discussion on the film itself, but about the repercussions created when art runs amok with someone else’s paycheck.
I have just read Steven Bach’s book “Final Cut”: The Dreams and Disasters in making Heaven’s Gate and came away with a twofold story: That of the egomaniacal director, and the studio that failed to contain him. This is legendary stuff, I know most of you have heard about this debacle one way or another.
Enter Michael Cimino, fresh from his Oscar win for Deer Hunter. Enter United Artists, the only only studio funded by artists (Charile Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith) and until then run by a bunch of businessman and people with no knowledge of how to run a studio. It was owned by Transamerica, a multi billion dollar conglomerate in which motion pictures where a drop of their investment.
My conscious of the story, and it is a great one, is that Cimino punished the regime that morphed the business from the prosperous time of directorial control in the 70’s and lost his soul in the process. It was 1979, this was the end of an era of director driven films, and Heaven’s Gate was the nail in the coffin that signaled the takeover from lawyers, agents, and accountants that gave way to the culture of the 80’s and still exists today. Moviemaking is a business, and expensive one that is. Artists are artists, but to thrive in that business one must be crazy. The risks involved, monetarily or otherwise, are great but the rewards are greater once a movie hits. Box office statistics became the norm after the making of this film, since it’s scandal became actual news. The problem was, and still persists, is that journalists and the press in general love to taint the fate of careers to further enhance their own. The movie never really had a chance, because the perceived notion of Cimino as out of control cemented his reputation as the film was also a mess. He shot 1.3 million feet of film, amazing for it’s time. He also refused to cut the film down to a manageable lenght, and became a commercial liability. The book states his first cut ran 5 1/2 hours (!) and yet he could only cut 15 minutes. The question popped through my mind was…why couldn’t he be contained in the first place? I side with the businessman on this one. UA was trusting him to deliver a bankable film, but not a commercial one.
This was the real reason why the film turned into the disaster that it did. Nobody wanted it to make it, first of all it’s a western (revisionist ahead of it’s time) and second of all was about a footnote in american history. It had no stars, and the script was intelligible. That’s disaster right there! but because of Deer Hunter, he saw the chance afforded by the freedom and took it…very far.
Final Cut is a term that only applies to very few people, and gives autonomy to those who enjoy it. Cimino had it and grabbed the excess to as far as it could go. The executives hired to oversee the studio had no understanding, and had no culture in place to legally stop him.
Let’s say for example that you write a check for 11 million dollars to __________ to make a three hour epic based on a script no one understood and much less finished. You’re not a film people, so you trust the artist. Specially since anyone would have been in business with him, given he’d just won an Oscar.
Two years later, and a million feet of film exposed, 40 million (500% overhead!) in the can, and a public relations nightmare in your hands. What would you have done?
I would have fired the fucker two weeks into production. He was already days behind schedule before he even shot a frame of film. There is nobody else responsible for the film but him, since the businessman who put their faith in the project didn’t understand anything about making pictures. They were incompetent, and Cimino knew this. That could be a reason why he went to the lenghts that he did: because he could. Try that now and you would not only be fired, but held responsible for financial reasons. Directors are employees of the studios. As hollywood soon took hostage by lawyers, accountants, and managers that gave the 80’s the air of excess and formula that is still in place. The difference now is that outlets for selling and receiving revenue are greater than ever, since the conglomerates control them all. It’s why the film business is in the state of mind it is: Grosses are high but there’s never enough money to be made.
This wasn’t unheard of at the time, and only in recent years has it has it happened again. James Cameron notoriously went to bat with Fox over Titanic’s cost, and held the film hostage from the studio. The result is in the grosses, so that gamble paid of. As a filmmaker myself with commercial aspirations, I just don’t see why directors complain about the lack of budget when studio films cost a routine of 55 million just to make and market, yet the money is rarely on the screen because it’s spent on salaries, fees, and other managerial decisions that don’t have anything to do with the movie. Do they even pay for scripts anymore?
This was a case of a director completely in love with his movie, oblivious to the funders, audience, and people involved. Perhaps in the back of his mind, he knew he would have only one shot to make the film he wanted to make and damned all in the process. Ambition, whether it exceeds talent of not, is admirable. More so when there’s a gamble and your artistic conviction is all you see, while reality rings another bell. It is true that filmmaking is ridiculous, partly because the people who control that culture facilitate it’s excess. It’s a business, occationaly art creeps through the cracks and masterpieces are born. Apocalypse Now is the only film I can compare it’s making akin to what happened on Heaven’s Gate…except that it’s actually good and Coppola financed it himself.
That’s all the sadder, all that money and effort towards a film only Cimino could understand and make out of it. It isn’t very good, but far from the worse movie ever made. It’s probably THE most indulgent movie ever made.
The studio system worked because the founders ran an efficient machine. The employees were under contract, and it was an assembly line operation that cranked out picture after picture. The changes in the 50’s broke the mold of monopoly enjoyed by decades of success, and signaled with cultural times a change reflecting socio economic times. None of this was more apparent than in the 70’s, which 9 times out of 10 everyone would agree was the greatest decade in our filmmaking period. It amazes me that with all the technological sophistication and visual advances we’d had as a culture, movies are still stuck on the same pattern that’d build them 100 years ago. No matter how you dress the story, it’s still about actors, story, and the director who service them through the technicians. It hasn’t gotten any better, and we’re in a world of chaos where usually artists thrive on.
The saga of heaven’s gate is a good example of how art vs commerce conflict, and clash but must coexist in the most expensive art form of them all: Filmmaking. Anyone who wants to understand what economics mean to film making should read this book, and come away with a complex understanding of how risky the movie business really is. Take away the messengers (artists) and you’ve got nothing to sell.
Or watch the documentary…which could be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdcRiPLp4oU
Best,
Alan