We look back at one of the most infamous film productions in history.
Here are 10 stories of excess from Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate…
In 1979, director Michael Cimino was at the height of his powers.
The director pledged to make every effort to makeHeavens Gatein the allotted time.
United Artists may have wanted Oscars, but what they got was a nightmare.
Lessons ranged from shooting to horse riding to cock fighting lessons to Yugoslavian dialect coaching.
Pretty much like a painter would paint.
Hed paint by picking people up and dropping them into place.
It took time, Visciglia remembers.
Maybe a couple of hours to pick 50 people.
The end results are undeniably beautiful, with individual shots composed like Renaissance oil paintings.
An estimated $900,000.
Im not used to doing 57 takes, Im really not, Brad Douriff says.
Im not used to doing a minimum of 32 takes.
The shot in the finished film is over in a matter of seconds.
Heavens Gates grandest set piece was and is its battle sequence between settlers and mercenaries.
Each time Id pray to God that none of us got hurt.
Wed just keep doing it over and over.
Youve got wagons in the mix.
Dust so you could hardly see.
Hell, this picture can go on forever as much as I care, horse wrangler told Steve Bach.
My boys and I have never been paid like this.
The field Cimino chose for his climactic battle sequence?
Hes talking about hundreds of people and horses and wagons and explosives, Bach reasoned.
Who the hell is going to see grass?
It was all, he said, part of the poetry of America.
If Cimino wanted grass, then grass he would have.
We shot in the morning and the dawn was there.
Then the clouds came in and we lost the light until it was totally overcast.
This is bigger than lunch!
He thinks, theres that beautiful cloud.
Thatll be there for an eternity if I get it on film.
Legend has it that a tree was chopped down and relocated to improve the composition of a solitary shot.
Then there was the vintage locomotive Cimino wanted for the film.
The train appeared in the film for a matter of minutes.
With the studio now in control as producers, Cimino effectively forced to work as the companys employee.
Some of the immigrants, mostly extras, are brushed by horses and knocked into the mud.
One minor actor has both feet stepped on by horses.
Several persons tumble out of lurching wagons.
These and numerous other snippets from Gapays expose were circulated in the news.
Its a little long, a hollow-eyed and visibly exhausted Cimino conceded.
Cimino was equally determined to get the final cut he wanted.
Its quite funny actually, recalls assistant editor Penelope Shaw.
He said, Im not showing it to them until Im ready.'
The toxic reaction by critics at theHeavens Gatepremiere on the 19th November 1980 has since passed into legend.
When reviews and articles aboutHeavens Gateproliferated, its fate was sealed.
After just one week, United Artists pulled the film and cancelled its wider release.
A crewmember once said that Cimino had fallen in love with his own movie.
That adoration in turn led to an obsessive pursuit of what he thought was perfection.
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