Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate (Part 4 of 8)

[hades1234567]

madness

[MassimoPiai]

2:40 early '70s cell phone!

[mightyquaid1979]

back in the day where there was very little green screen work, most of the effects were practical. ridley scott and blade runner is a prime example on how everything had to be designed and imagined and built and ridley had a hand in every aspect of that. balde runner is regarded as a classic, heavens gate a dud.

[AlexDeLarge90]

@mightyquaid1979

Yes, but Blade Runner flopped too in 1982. Only moderately successful overseas box office saved it from being a total flop.

It rapidly turned into a loved cult movie, and when the director's cut arrived in 1991, it was only getting in its stride.

[GratefulVince]

Thumbs up if you are a film buff and you know that Vilmos Zsigmond is one of the top 10 cinematographers to ever live

[jksonny]

Eastwood is still known for his efficiency, typically doing only three takes, at most. This approach makes sense to me. Granted, I'm not a director or an actor but what's really going to be the difference between an actor's performance in take two and take twenty?

[CelticBadBoyPoet7]

Ego Out of Control=Heavens Gate...MC Your Career Elevator is Here....Going DOWNNNNNNN.......

[ratchpick2]

Cimino looks like a coked- up Jon Lovitz (although I'm pretty sure Lovitz himself is pretty coked up)

[thedrmat]

@ratchpick2

True.

[TulseLuper]

Rather than simply make a great film, Cimino went out of his way to make a great film, and that was his downfall. It's like when Homer Simpson tried to make the ultimate car and wound up driving his half-brother out of business.

[zigilwantsu]

waiting a day for a cloud to come or go, ya that's fucking professional. This is not perfectionism, it is a psychological disorder , it is not understanding cinema

[RyanStileswliia]

The major differences between Coppola and Cimino are that Coppola is a brilliant story teller and understands the value of a dollar. I mean when AN went over budget, he had to invest $5 million to save the project.

Cimino is just a Glorified Artist!

[donniegerrard]

This is bigger than lunch.

[72Yonatan]

Michael Cimino did not understand that he was stealing from others by behaving as he did. He betrayed the trust of the the production company as well. And ultimately he defeated the project - dooming his own film and reputation. He made history, all right.

[TeehpodT]

They let him get away with it, so there's no use in blaming him for following his vision and bitch about it afterwards. And srtistically he was right, the movie is a masterpiece. As an artist, that is his profession, to care for the artistic side of things. If anybody failed, it was the people in charge of the business end of things, not the director.

[GTBurns48215]

HG coming out late also hurt it at the BO. may of 1977 a little film called Star Wars came out. This changed they type of movie Hollywood made and the audience wanted. People wanted escapist entertainment not some revisionist history piece.

[GTBurns48215]

HG is not the WORST movie ever made, Manos The Hands of Fate is worse. But that film cost as much as HG spent on Craft Services. Maybe less than that.

[fredblassie123]

They should have paid Eastwood $5 million to come kick Cimino's ass before it was to late....hilarious.

[GTBurns48215]

@fredblassie123 As a director Clint is far away from Cimino has it can be. His films are, on time and on budget. He does not need to spend hand over fist for his vision.

[QuietGiantProduction]

@GTBurns48215 clint eastwood is so prepared as well. did one take and that was it.

[MeatballsMarlowe]

"Heaven's Gate is bigger than lunch!" That should've been the movie's tagline!

[jngr1]

Clearly, the heads of UA should have gone to Clint Eastwood for pointers as to how to handle Cimino.

[industrialsun]

Cimino may have spent all that time and attention in every detail because script was so unpersuasive and unconvincing. When he had to speed up later in production a lot of technical problems overwhelmed him and found their way into the final version, like all that dust in battle scenes (unless he intended it to look that way, which is hard to believe). After this the future of Hollywood was American-minded filmmakers like Speilberg and Lucas, not European-inspired ones like Cimino and Coppola.

[farmerne]

Holy shit! are they really applying the chest paddles to Martin Sheen at 0:10???

[RyanStileswliia]

@farmerne

if you want more behind the scenes footage from AN, you should check out Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse documentary by Carmine Coppola. its brilliant!!

[RyanStileswliia]

@farmerne

Excuse me, I meant Eleanor Coppola made the documentary.

[mkendra29]

Loved seeing the airline commercial he directed in the 1960's here in pt. 4- always wondered how Cimino got his start. The commercial is pretty flashy for the time period. As for the making of the film, I feel bad for Bach and Field - they seemed to be well-intentioned, but they got played badly and Field's attempts be tough with Cimino always backfired. I highly doubt that someone like Jack Warner or Walt Disney would have let all this happen.

[ryanstiles]

After watching this documentary, WOW!!

This was just a mess with great visuals. Do Kris Kristofferson and Penelope Shaw know to the full extent how badly Cimino had betrayed United Artists? $44 million dollars!

In that case, forget the f''n cloud over the hill and scrap the picture. I'm not defending United Artists, they were idiots for not researching Michael Cimino, and they were desperate for fame and don't belong in business management.

[Ronin27x]

They forgot to mention that half of the $30m budget for Apocalypse Now was fronted by Coppola himself. I watched this film,and my god was it dull!

[Urvy1A]

Cimino was purely an egomaniac, he wanted everything to be real and perfect, but it backfired.

[zamboangaVillain]

@Urvy1A those executives are fools..they should have hired ROGER CORMAN...i can see roger corman laughing at this...

[jonathanmelia]

Also, the film is almost as racist as The Deerhunter: foreigners are portrayed as an unorganized, pituresque rabble who can't help themselves until the Harvard-educated WASP comes along to sort them out. Some of the themes of the film and the look of the film are compelling, but with such dreadful writing (all of Sam Waterstone's scenes are pure amateur theatricals, as are John Hurt's) it all goes to waste. Cimino should have hired a writer with talent to re-work the script, for it to work.

[jonathanmelia]

I can't agree. It was the liberal critics who condemned the film, like Pauline Kael, saying that any serious political message just got lost in a "vague, honey-hued swirl". It was the EGOMANIA of the film, its incoherence and self-regard, that was its downfall., not its politics. (It has some of the greatest cinematography of all time and some of the worst dialogue!) The late Steven Bach, in his brilliant book, is clear about this.

[Stukov16]

And think... How can a film that condemns the very foundations of the US, a film that represents authorship and art over money-making, be a success in the Neoliberal America of the 1980's? The downfall of this movie isn't just due to the unpreparedness of the audience. It had to fail, otherwise the movie industry would be different now.

I think this is one the greatest films of all time. Almost no other movie made me feel the characters this way... That's because it's long. We get to know them.

[bsjt]

No. I think Heaven's Gate traded on the '70s paranoia about govt and history to tell a fairly run of the mill story of corrupt govt which we now often see today. And better stories at that. The script, the story of HG is just not that unique.

[THEFRANKLINFILM]

Narratively the film isn't very successful, the framing device at Harvard and the boat is a complete waste of filmm, the murder of Kristofferson's girlfriend before the end is a superfluous anticlimax, it simply doesn't work. If they'd just reworked the film without these elements it had a chance of making some money...eventually, and still be a good critical film about US history. It really is a film for a small audience and it always was. Length is not a problem as long as the film works.

[Stukov16]

I'm afraid I strongly disagree. The Harvard sequence is one of the most beautiful ones, standing as a warm memory of a common past between some of the characters, between another sweet time and the hard world they're in. It gives unmeasurable depth to them. It is the complete contrast against the ending in the yacht.

[FrankClanton]

Why did the students look 50?

[usuIkane]

Well you're fucking going on 70!!! LOL

Edward loves you like you love Oliver Cromwell. How's PeterFirthFan these days. Do you still keep him in the attic along with your blow up Hitler doll?

FrankClanton is actually a fat fucking educationally subnormal freak! FrankClanton is sexually aroused by baldheaded men and bald dicks. To report FrankClanton Go to

youtube com/safety_help

Complete form and give video address of hate comment

[Stukov16]

And the murder of Kristofferson's girlfriend not only serves as a conclusion to the theme of "the bad guy always wins" (even if they destroy themselves up) but it's really the greatest tragedy of the whole epic: there's no place for love between a prostitute and a Harvard man in a world like that... I'm impressed with the film on all accounts. I can't pick anything to be removed from the film. Thank you for your comment.

[THEFRANKLINFILM]

I think there's a better film to be rescued out of all the material that survives. The whole arc of Kristofferson's prossy girlfriend in the film is destroyed by the almost cartoon revenge by the "baddies". Even if the Harvard man & prostitute would never really have "made it" it is not for the story of Heaven's Gate the film to tell it, that is another story and the desperate attempt at trying to wrap it up is clunky and unreal the way it's played. The boat following ending is even more false.

[Stukov16]

I think IT IS a story for Heaven's Gate to explore, because in the very core of the film, it's the struggle between the poor immigrants and the rich "Harvard men" that want them out of the US. The story between Kristofferson and the foreign prostitute is a microcosm of the whole situation, the "love version" of the outer "violent subject", a different type of commentary of the same thing. I think it all falls into place.

[THEFRANKLINFILM]

Why try to resurrect his old Harvard girlfriend? a love affair that has long since died and plays no dramatic part in the arc of the story, just bad story construction, something Cimino was always lazy about. He doesn't gice the narrative meat to make something like the Harvard storyline needs to work almost like an after thought. The film was at one point to end with Kristofferson & girlfriend leaving the house and then a freeze frame to a photo of the same scene with credits. More elegant.

[Stukov16]

It's the whole point of the film to have Kristofferson finally marrying an almost unknown girl to us, a distant memory. It's not possible for the character, the rich Harvard man that once was an idealist, to escape from the costumes that come with such an economical status. He marries out of mere costume, and we get that feeling of how coldly he lights the girl's cigarette. Sure, he's in a yacht, he's married to a high class girl, but he's clearly unhappy, living a clearly boring life.

[Stukov16]

Come on, people. The difference between Kubrick (my favorite), Kurosawa, Coppola, Wyler, etc, etc, was that they had many people on their side. Even Apocalypse Now, feared to be a downhill project, got the support from various people. Coppola made Apocalypse with 3 huge films behind him (Godfather 1 and 2, The Conversation), he had his own money. Cimino was alone and depending. Kubrick made cheap films. You can't compare...

[johnyexhale]

lovitz

[jonahbooc]

LOL jon lovitz! thats why cimino looks familiar!

[miguelbote77]

There are certain similarities between this project and the battle of Little Big Horn. What one was to general Custer, the other one was to Michael Cimino... a big, big illusion.

[merlin262005]

I can't get over that commercial! Dear God. That song is stuck in my head!

[elbethere]

mine too.

[Jdub14000]

@merlin262005 if ya love me lol!

[Fawksian21]

Cimino is an anomaly. The last unreclaimed and most unrepentant of the disgraced '70's auteurs. Coppola's working for himself now. Bogdanovich went back to acting. Even Friedkin's making movies again. But not Cimino. Sure he talks about 'Man's Fate' and shows up at festivals, but no one really believes he can bounce back. I mean, come on, he started talking about 'Man's Fate' 8 years ago.

[thegreeninferno]

Yeah! 70's film makers were so great!

[BannerBombers]

He got away with it due to the fact they let him. The execs were weak. It was everyone's fault.

[petuniamighty]

what an ass he is !! i agree he needed to be fired asap,amazing but in a way it is nice that he could get away with it.

[bashthebandello]

cinimo was a prick!

[petuniamighty]

how could he create a great film when this one was about scenery not character driven ,with a great story, he should have cut off his left ear and called it a day . what a selfish man

[Bass5el]

You could say the same of Kubrick, particularly around A Clockwork Orange.

[tokeburns]

but Kubrick never spent that much money on a film.

[AuronTsubaki85]

Stanley Kubrick was a perfectionist. He relied on detail & character development more then just making money at the box office. Cimino might of screwed United Artists, true. It takes brass balls to do something like that, I'll admit to that. Now, today it's all about how much money it will make in the Box Office, then be entertained by the filmmakers vision of detail & story.

[EricAKATheBelgianGuy]

@AuronTsubaki85 Yes, but did it necessarily help Kubrick? He made a lot of great movies, sure, but that obsessive attention to detail may have cost him his directing Oscar.

[ibanezman1025]

and Kubrick always delivered great films, despite going over schedule (I don't think any of his films went over budget)

[almanacofsleep]

Kurosawa famously would tear down entire sets if he felt they weren't right and was said to be dictorial in directing but the diffrence was that Kurosawa deliverd the goods. He had a great atention to detail but he was smart enough to trust his insintics as a film maker and not try to micro manage every little thing.

[albertstock85]

@koln1996 Kurosawa never ended up directing the Japanese sequences for Tora! Tora! Tora! He was hired to direct on a promise that David Lean would direct the US sequences. When this was proven false, Kurosawa made sure he breached his contract enough to be fired from the production. I've always found that to be a shame, A film by Lean/Kurosawa, would have been great. 

[thevoid99]

@albertstock85 if a film about pearl harbor that was directed by david lean and akira kurosawa was made. it would've been a masterpiece. and there never would've been that fucking piece of shit film "pearl harbor".

[TonyLyndellWilliams]

Cimino appears to suffer from OCD ... Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.