Tributes are being paid to U.S. film director Michael Cimino, who has died aged 77.
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Cimino and the film won critical acclaim, with nine Oscar nominations and five wins, including the coveted award for Best Picture. The cause of his death was not immediately known. “He will be missed”, said actor Robert, 72, said in a statement.
After learning about Cimino’s death, filmmakers led by Academy Award victor Christopher McQuarrie, William Friedkin, Edgar Wright and Jason Reitman paid tribute on Twitter. USA media reports said Cimino died at his home in Los Angeles, citing the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.
Thierry Fremaux, the director of the Cannes film festival, tweeted the news on Saturday, saying: “Michael Cimino has died, in peace, surrounded by friends and the two women who loved him”.
However, by 1980, Cimino would become persona non grata in Hollywood following the commercial and critical disaster that was Heaven’s Gate.
Share with Us – We’d love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article, and smart, constructive criticism. The film – which flopped and tarnished Cimino’s reputation in the process – is blamed by many for helping to bring down the studio. The overly ambitious Heaven’s Gate – a western based on the Johnson County War – starred Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Jeff Bridges, Isabelle Huppert, and Willem Dafoe was a box office bomb.
The reclusive Cimino with his signature dark glasses worked only sporadically in the years that followed “Heaven’s Gate”, and with little success.
Instead, his film – renamed Heaven’s Gate – took nearly a year and more than US$40 million to make and was widely panned and a commercial failure. Heaven’s Gate has become a historical curiosity for people interested in filmmaking. Clint Eastwood thought highly enough of Cimino to invite him to direct Thunderbolt & Lightfoot which starred Eastwood and Jeff Bridges, a film that Eastwood had initially meant to direct himself.
He also directed Desperate Hours (1990), starring Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins, and the gangster film The Sicilian (1986), adapted from a novel by Godfather author Mario Puzo.
Born in New York City and raised on Long Island, Cimino graduated from Yale in 1961, and he earned a masters degree from the University of New Haven in 1963, both in painting.
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His final Hollywood film, 1996’s “The Sunchaser”, a drama about a doctor, played by Woody Harrelson, who is kidnapped by a dying patient, didn’t fare any better and marked the end of Cimino’s career.
