Review: "Year of the Dragon" (1985)

The subject of immigration has been a political hot topic for years, decades, now. It's a paradox: America is a country built by immigrants, almost all of us are the children of immigrants, and yet most of this country hates immigrants. 

America is a contradictory country if there ever was one.

But a lot of the war of American immigration comes between those whose families have been here for years, decades, or centuries and more recent arrivals. For a lot of people, the old immigrants (i.e. them or their families, usually white) were great but the new ones (usually not white) ... not so much.

One of my favorite movies about the clash between the Old World and the New, between the nativist Whites and non-White arrivals, is the 1985 crime flick Year of the Dragon that came out in the summer of 1985, forty friggin' years ago. 

It's a tight, fast-paced crime thriller about an out-of-control NYC cop named Stanley White (played amazingly by Mickey Rourke at the height of his 1980's movie career) who is determined to take down the Chinatown gangs, the Triads. The Triads are at war with the Italian mob, the Thai mobs, as well as each other. The main crime boss Stanley is trying to bust is a young, handsome, very smart guy named Joy Tai (played really well by John Lone). 

The problem is that Stanley is being thwarted by his bosses in the police department who are willing to look the other way as long as they get their bribes. Into the mix comes a young, gorgeous, Asian-American TV reporter (played by an ex-model named Arianne) who wants to help Stanley bust the gangs, free the slave labor that the crime bosses exploit, and make Chinatown a crime-free, honest place. (In their first meeting he tells her, "You're a helluva lot sexier than those other broads on the other channels." Sweet man.)

See, Stanley is a tough, politically-incorrect, totally honest, incorruptible cop who doesn't care how the Chinese did things in the old country, or how they ignore law enforcement -- no, he's gonna make them follow the law like everyone else, "even the Polacks." What evolves is a cool story about how personalities, violence, greed, and an overwhelming passion for culture and justice make NYC (and America) a wild place. I won't give it away but the ending chase scene is classic. Quentin Tarantino himself said it's one of his favorite scenes in all of cinema, and that Year of the Dragon is one of his personal favorites. 

Mickey Rourke is great in this movie, a really fun, blazing talent. It's a shame that his movie career became so hit or miss (mostly miss) after this but his perfomance is a reminder of what a talent he is. John Lone was also great in this movie, and shortly after that he starred in the 1987 Best Picture Oscar-winner The Last Emperor because of his performance in this movie. The only sore point is Arianne - she really can't act and she didn't have much a movie career after this. Even the director said afterwards about her performance "I tried ..." But all of the other actors are good, and 

Year of the Dragon was the first movie that director Michael Cimino made after the historic debacle of Heaven's Gate in 1980. Cimino's first movie, the 1974 Clint Eastwood crime caper Thunderbolt & Lightfoot had made Cimino a notable director but then his 1978 operatic Vietnam masterpiece The Deer Hunter made him an Oscar-winning, big-time director. But his attempt to make another epic masterpiece with the Western Heaven's Gate was such an overlong, ponderous and financial failure that he didn't make another movie until this one in 1985 -- and it was a return to form, in a way, back to the taught crime movie that started his career. And interestingly, even though this movie really captures Manhattan's Chinatown well, you really feel and small the streets when you watch it, it was actually all shot on a soundstage in North Carolina!

Cimino was an intriguing figure -- a director of both great talent and great sloppiness. I've blogged about his bizarre life and career many times over the years but when he hit -- like with Thunderbolt, Deer Hunter and Year of the Dragon, he hit the bullseye. 

Even though this movie came out forty years ago, I think it's more relevant than ever. Watch the whole thing below and let me know what you think!

Review: "Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, and the Price of a Vision" by Charles Elton

Over the years I've blogged about one of the most mercurial movie directors of all time -- Michael Cimino -- who had one of the most spectacular rises and falls in all of Hollywood history.

Originally from New York, Cimino directed brilliant TV commercials in the 1960s (the Mad Men era) before going out to Hollywood in the 1970s. He achieved major success in the movies, directing the 1974 Clint Eastwood hit Thunderbolt and Lightfoot followed by The Deer Hunter in 1978 -- a big hit that won Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Cimino.

Then it all came crashing down. 

His 1980 movie Heaven's Gate was one of the biggest flops ever -- and it triggered the sale of its studio, United Artists, effectively ending the company's existence. Until 1996, Cimino only directed four more movies -- including the great NYC crime thriller The Year of the Dragon in 1985 -- and then nothing at all until his death in 2016.

Cimino's life and career has always fascinating me. How could someone so talented, who had such major success, let it all slip away? How could he make a movie as great as The Deer Hunter followed by one as disastrous as Heaven's Gate? And what happened to him in those last twenty years of his life?

These questions about this unique cinematic figure also fascinated British author Charles Elton whose new book about Cimino is the first real biography of the director. Elton attempts -- and does -- answer some of these questions while leaving others frustratingly (for him and us) open.

One problem with writing about Cimino is that he lied -- a lot -- about himself: he embroidered his birthdate, his education, his family life, even his supposed military service to people. It's not clear if all this dishonesty was pathological or some kind of game he enjoyed playing with the press and public. And in a business of exhibitionists he was mostly reclusive, not courting publicity or attention. The people around him also mostly practiced this omerta, with few speaking publicly about him.

When Cimino died in 2016, the tributes and retrospectives of his life and career were few and far between -- this Oscar winning director seemed mostly forgotten except for a few like yours truly. So this new biography is a much appreciated -- and much needed -- evaluation of the life and career of a singular, controversial and important cinematic icon. I strongly recommend it. 

"Heaven's Gate" @ 40

Forty years ago today one of the most infamous movie reviews in American history appeared in The New York Times. It was written by Vincent Canby, the most respected movie critic in America, and he was reviewing the new movie Heaven's Gate by director Michael Cimino. Cimino's previous film, The Deer Hunter, had won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director the year before. Heaven's Gate had just had its premiere in NYC the night before, and this movie and review were much anticipated.

And movie history changed.

Canby wrote: "'Heaven's Gate' ... fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of 'The Deer Hunter', and the Devil has just come around to collect ... an unqualified disaster."

Ouch. 

United Artists, the studio that had financed and produced this movie, cancelled its scheduled wide-release in December. Cimino went back to the editing room, cutting down his nearly four-hour disaster into a two-and-a-half less-of-a-disaster. It was released in April, 1981 and earned about $1.5 million against a roughly $40 million-plus budget. It was the biggest failure in American history at the time -- and United Artists was sold to MGM and effectively ceased to exist. 

One movie had brought down an entire studio. Like 9/11 or the Trump Presidency or COVID-19, something unthinkable had become quite real.  

Cimino's career nose-dived after this -- he only made four small movies afterwards and then nothing at all before his death in 2016. His career was one of the quickest rises and falls of anyone in the history of movies. Over the years many people related to this movie -- either directly or indirectly -- have shared their memories of this unprecedented flop. It premiered in NYC on November 18th, 1980, and has become perhaps the most infamous movie premiere ever -- a party no one wanted to go to, a party everyone hated, a party that quickly turned into a kind of funeral. It was like being at the election night event for a losing candidate -- a candidate losing big. 

Of course, in the forty years since, many other films have come and gone that failed bigger than Heaven's Gate. But this movie remains the most expensive failure in history -- it took down a studio, one started by, amongst others, Charlie Chaplin. 

What's also sad is that Heaven's Gate had the potential to be a truly great movie -- another Godfather, another Chinatown, another Gone with the Wind. It was a revisionist anti-Western, a re-examination of America's founding myths of the West being this vast welcoming space where immigrants to roam free and realize their dreams. The film, based very loosely on Wyoming history, was about how, in the late 19th century, immigrants were murdered by wealthy cattle barons who resented and feared immigrants' enchroachments on their land (sound familiar?). These murders were, apparently, sanctioned by the Federal Government and President Benjamin Harrison. It was an American genocide, and all perfectly legal. Sadly the movie's notorious production and failure overwhelmed any interest in its plot or the history behind it -- and, instead, it was derided as American history's most expensive "minor footnote."

The movie also became a footnote in Hollywood history, a not-so-gentle reminder that no one controls  or has the final say over history -- any kind of history. 

If you want to more of Mr NYC's Michael Cimino/Heaven's Gate coverage, go here.

Review: "Ishtar" (1987)

A few months ago I blogged about movies about New Yorkers who travel to strange lands and get into trouble. Now you can add another such movie to your list, and this one's notorious, the 1987 bomb Ishtar.

When it was released more than 30 years ago, Ishtar become one of those movies that everyone loves to hate. You get them every few years: Heaven's Gate, Howard the Duck, Bonfire of the Vanities, Battlefield Earth, Gigli, and many others. They cost a fortune to make, stories of production problems and strife get into the press before release, the critics trash them, the movies tank at the box office, studio executives get fired, the directors and actors involved go into hiding, and the only ones who benefit are late night comedians (and, these days, social media folks).

It's a kind of sick thrill for those of us in the general public to see the people involved -- rich and famous and glamorous movie stars and power brokers who have more success, money and sex then we'll ever have -- suffer a massive public embarrassment. It's schadenfreude for the great unwashed.  

But what about the movie? Well, that's were it gets interesting. 

Ishtar is about two extremely untalented and clueless NYC musicians played by Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty who get a gig playing in Ishtar -- a country near the Moroccan border -- and who bumble their way into getting involved with the CIA, terrorists, archaeologists, and a hot chick. It's an extremely silly movie, totally ludicrous, and sometimes the storytelling is clunky and the tone of the movie inconsistent.

But here's the thing: Ishtar is FUNNY! Like, REALLY funny. Like, tears in the eyes funny. Ultimately, that's what a comedy is about: making people laugh, and this movie made my wife and I laugh a lot. So, in my view, Ishtar is a sucessful comedy, and I'm not the only one who, 30+ years later, has seen it and thinks this.

Ishtar bombed for several reasons: first, there was a behind the scenes smear campaign launched by the studio that produced it since a new regime has come in after production had started -- and the new regime wanted to embarrass the old regime by making it fail, and also to embarrass Beatty and Hoffman who had difficult reputations. Also, the director, Elaine May, had a difficult reputation, and the studio wanted to embarrass her. Second, the movie suffered from the fact that it was an extremely silly movie (it was based on the old 1940's Hope & Crosby "Road" movies) starring two "serious" actors whose previous movies had been Reds and Death of a Salesman -- seeing Beatty and Hoffman in this zany comedy was probably disorienting for critics and audiences (as it was for me). Third, and finally, the comedy in Ishtar is way ahead of it's time. It's cringe humor, its existentiallist humor, it's not the kind of Police Academy comedy that was popular at the time. Audiences weren't ready for it yet.

So you should give Ishtar a chance -- it's not the greatest comedy by a long shot but it's very funny and lighthearted. These days, we need that comedy more now than ever.

The Delusion of Art

Whenever I see a great or terrible work of art in any medium, a question recurs in my mind: "Why exactly did the artist want to create this? How and why did this come into the world?"

If you think about it, there's no compelling reason why any work of art should exist. As great as, say, Hamilton or the Mona Lisa or Game of Thrones are, they aren't curing diseases, providing shelter, winning wars, or generally improving the general welfare. They simply exist, for better or worse, to elevate culture.

A work of art is like a tree house: it has no real reason, no requirement to exist -- it doesn't fill any societal need at all -- except that someone at some point in time got the idea for it and then went about the difficult, delicate, sometimes exilerating, often frustrating work of creating it, hoping that people will like the finished product, and very often recruiting others along the way for assistance. Often, this assistance is financial.

One of my favorite books, as I've blogged about before, is Final Cut, about the movie debacle Heaven's Gate that destroyed United Artists. What's fascinating about it is that it's a keyhole view into the miserable, decidedly non-glamorous work of making a movie -- and how and why things can go so wrong. When you read it, you are mesmerized by the egomania and irresponsibility of the director, the bad decisions of the studio executives, the viciousness of the press, the careers and relationships made and destroyed, the complete delusion involved -- and for what? For a movie that, hopefully, a few people would pay a few bucks to see and spend a few hours at before going back about their lives. 

I just read a story about a massive Broadway musical debacle: three years ago, there was a new musical called Nerds about the early years of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Many thought it would be another Book of Mormon and it had been in the works for years -- work shopped, cast and rehearsed, and was just weeks away from debuting. And then? The money vanished, the show was cancelled, careers were deeply impacted -- and now there are lawsuits and all sorts of legal miseries. It's what happens when all of that effort fails and is for nought. It's about the dark side of creativity, the emptiness of failure. And for what? For something that didn't even need to exist in the first place.

As you read this story, you read about everything that goes into making not just this show but any piece of art: the hopes and dreams of the creators, their hard work to bring it into the world, the money and people who are needed to help it along the way -- and, most importantly, the delusion that everyone involved is required to have.

You have to be somewhat delusional to be an artist of any kind because, if you aren't, if you are strictly logical, no one would work on any show or big piece of art because ... why should anyone care? Why should this exist? Turning Victor Hugo's massive and depressing novel about failed French revolutionaries into a musical? Making a hip-hop musical about the Founding Fathers? Taking TS Eliot's book about cats and making that into a musical? The fact that people thought those were good ideas and turned them into brilliant shows still amazes me. Their creators were totally delusional enough to think that anyone would care to see these works of art -- and yet they were totally right. 

In the end, a successful show, a successful work of art, comes down to execution -- how it's actually made. If a tree house is well-built, it's a thrilling and fun place to go. No one can wait to clamour up it. But if it's badly made, it's creaky and quickly falls to earth and might really hurt someone. Then people avoid it like the plague. And you can never guess how well or badly something is executed until you try to do it.

If you think about it, turning George RR Martin's massive Song of Ice and Fire books into a TV series was a bold, really delusional thing to do -- the books are long, the plots complex and depressing, beloved characters are killed, they're kind of a mess. And yet ... it's one of the greatest shows ever, thanks to the people who created it, who executed it. Or this person, who makes sure that Scorsese's NYC movies get made just the way he wants.   

That's the mystery of art -- how a combination of pie-in-the-sky delusion and real-world hard work can either create something memorable or something that can lead to ruin. 

Michael Cimino, RIP

When did you last get excited by a movie? When was the last time a movie came out that made you want to see it - again and again and again?

I remember in the 1990s when Pulp Fiction hit theaters - it was so exciting, such daring filmmaking, such thrilling storytelling, that I went to see it four times in the theaters. Back then, movies seem to matter to people, personally, and they seemed to be important cultural touchstones as well. Movies were, dare I say it, important. They mattered. They lived.

Today? Movies suck - or mostly suck. These days, TV shows have the cultural edge that movies once enjoyed. For the most part, movies now are either one of two things: huge, cynical, money-hungry enterprises (think of the proliferation of "franchises" and the unending number of sequels) or calculated "Oscar-bait", movies designed to win awards and make some money but are otherwise forgettable. Movies don't excite anymore. They don't live inside us or the culture. The artistry of film making isn't moving forward, taking strides. It's stuck. And that's sad.

So how did we get here? It took a long time. While movies were burning up the culture in the 1970s through the 1990s, the seeds of their downfall were being planting at the same time, namely the era of blockbusters and sequels, along with the upwards spiral of production costs. But most of all came the huge costs of failure. When movies fail, they not only lose money but can destroy careers.

In 1978, a director named Michael Cimino made a movie called The Deer Hunter, about working class men and women who's lives are shattered by the Vietnam war. The movie was a huge success - it made lots of money and won several Oscars, including Best Picture. Two years later, Cimino produced his follow-up, Heaven's Gate, about 19th century land wars in the American West. This movie failed catastrophically, so much so that the studio that financed it went under. 

It was the first time that a movie's failure actually did something so devastating. Needless to say, the studios reacted accordingly. In the decades that followed, movies became increasingly "safer" so as not to offend audiences and critics. That's not to say, in the ensuing decades, that there still haven't been other huge failures as well as other exciting movies (like Pulp Fiction). But over time, safeness won over daring. The deary cinematic landscape we live in today is largely due to the failure of Heaven's Gate -- a movie that tried every bit to be as good as The Deer Hunter but wasn't.

Michael Cimino died last week, and his professional trajectory tells us a lot about the culture we live in today. After his once promising career was derailed, Cimino only directed a small number of movies, most of which critics and audiences ignored. This was, and is, a shame. A daring director was largely sidelined because of this (certainly huge) failure and the art of film, I think, suffered as a result.

Movies matter less now because directors are increasingly not the voices of their own films. When was the last time you saw a movie and really felt like you saw art being created? Yes, such film "auteurs" like Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, and the Coen Brothers are still making movies - but for how much longer? And when they're gone, who will replace them? I have no idea. There seem to be no young auteurs on the horizon.

When you watch both The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate, putting aside both movies' virtues and flaws, what strikes you about them is that these are stories being told by a great directorial voice; that you are watching someone's singular vision spring to life; that these are movies that do what only movies can do best: tell a story through moving images, the director as storyteller. Like a painter using paints and brushes, like a writer using words and a pen, like a sculptor using stones and chisel, this is a director using camera and film to tell a story and imprint an artistic style on your consciousness. Cimino didn't need special effects, he didn't need clever dialogue, he didn't need fancy editing, he didn't need any visual or storytelling tricks - he was amazingly confident in the way that he simply pointed and moved the camera, coreographing his scenes with such skill, that his vision came across so strongly that you were left with an impression that lasted long after these movies were over. 

Having seen both films, I remember them - the storytelling is unconventional, the performances are bold, the camera work is thrilling and confident, a master clearly at work. Ask yourself this: when was the last time you saw movie where you felt like this? Probably a long time.

And as good as television is these days, it will never have the cinematic visual power of the movies. Television is still mostly a writer's medium with the director serving as the writer's handmaiden. That's fine! But movies are first and last a director's medium, and they are at their most powerful when the director's voice rings loudly.

In many ways, Cimino both exemplified everything that used to be great about movie making and was also indirectly responsible for its decline. His ego, apparently, got in the way of his work. But now that he has passed on, it's important to remember that filmmakers like him used to reign supreme in our culture and that hopefully, one day, movies will live again.

PS. You must read Final Cut by Steven Bach, generally considered the best book ever written about the movie business, which chronicles the turbulent history of Heaven's Gate. It paints Cimino in a very unflattering light but, after reading it, you'll understand how movies are what they are today. You can find the documentary based on the book at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyeOmPMHRYg.

PPS. Cimino was a New Yorker, originally from Long Island, but he got his start working in advertising in NYC in the Mad Men era of the 1960s.

Steven Bach, RIP

Before Gigli, before Ishtar, before The Postman, before Battlefield Earth, heck even before Howard the Duck, there was Heaven's Gate (1980) -- the biggest movie bomb of all time. It was such a huge flop that it put its studio, United Artists, out of business. And believe or it, the guy who directed it (Michael Cimino) had just won an Oscar for directing The Deer Hunter!

Heaven's Gate wasn't just a failed movie, it was a Hollywood scandal. It was also a story of Hollywood run amok, about how money alone can't create great art.

Steven Bach was one the UA executives who oversaw the production of Heaven's Gate and his 1985 book Final Cut about this fiasco is easily the best book ever written about Hollywood and the movie business. The making of this movie is much more fascinating, entertaining, bizarre, and tragic than the actual movie itself -- and Final Cut tells this story in thrilling, intricate, honest detail. It's a great read and, if you want to understand how the movie business today came to be, it's is a must read. In this era of corporate greed and stupidity and recklessness, the story of Final Cut is, in many ways, more relevant today than ever before.

Steven Bach passed away last week at the age of 70 so this is my little tribute to him. Fortunately, he not only oversaw Heaven's Gate, but also some New York movies including Woody Allen's Annie Hall and Manhattan, and Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull.