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. 

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.

"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: "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!

Classic Mr NYC

I recently blogged about the 1985 NYC crime classic movie Year of the Dragon by the mysterious New York director Michael Cimino. I blogged a few times about Cimino over the years, and you read all those posts here.

But you might not have known that, during the 1960s, when he was a young aspiring filmmaker in NYC, he made some brilliant TV commercials, including this one for United Airlines. This was the height of the Mad Men era, when advertising was become a respected artform all its own, and this is the kind of ad that Don Draper might have dreamed up. 

Anyway, this short commercial is worth watching, the start of the career for a director who would achieve greatness -- and infamy. 

Remember, it's Chinatown

One of the greatest movies ever made is Chinatown, the 1974 crime thriller about the corrupt  political machinations that built Los Angeles. Funnily enough, the actual neighborhood of Chinatown appears only once at the very end of the movie. But, as it proves, Chinatown the place isn't as important as Chinatown the idea -- the idea of foreignness, mystery, scandal, and excitement. It's a ready made place for the movies, a cinematic treasure trove.

Chinatown, like any and all foreign language urban enclaves (think Greeks in Astoria, Russians in Brighton Beach, Orthodox Jews in Borough Park, Italians in Little Italy) is like a little world within a world, a satellite of the country its residents come from. The people there live insular lives, their families and communities are more important to them than the city as a whole, and they operate by their own rules, dictated more by their home country's customs and traditions then by their new country's laws. They speak their native language, the signs for their stores are in those languages' alphabets, and they read newspapers, watch TVs show, and listen to radio programs about their home counties.  

And woe unto those outsiders who dare intrude and seek to change them! These neighborhoods live in perpetual conflict with the outside (i.e. mostly white and English-speaking) world. Sometimes these two worlds come into conflict -- and drama obviously ensures. As mentioned, this makes great material for the movies.     

No movie as great as Chinatown has been made about NYC's own Chinatown but, over the years, several movies have been set in that little area of Lower Manhattan. Until Monday, at the Metrograph on Ludlow Street, several New York Chinatown movies will be playing in a festival called Imaginary Chinatown. Some of them, as this article indicates, perpetuate ugly racist stereotypes of Chinese people and that shouldn't be ignored. But what's interesting about these movies is how when outsiders (i.e. white people) go into Chinatown, they are entering a new world within their own city, a world they don't understand, and a world where they don't rule. For most, it's a rude awakening, and their arrogance, their sense of superiority, is quickly extinguished. 

My favorite NYC Chinatown movie is the 1985 Michael Cimino flick The Year of the Dragon. It's a fun, pulpy, violent movie starring Mickey Rourke as an NYPD detective trying to take down a Chinatown drug gang and the great John Lone as his arch-nemesis. It's dives deep into the culture of Chinatown and it explains, as few other Chinatown movies do, that this a world few white people and outsiders will ever understand. 

And that's, ultimately, what it's all about: understanding. Understanding the "other", the mysteries in our midst. The classic line "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" is all about how people who meddle in places they don't understand are headed to certain ruin. So before you go into Chinatown or any other place and try to change it, either understand it first -- or forget it.   

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.