Thierry wrote: “Michael Cimino died peacefully, surrounded by his family and the two women who loved him”.
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His feature debut as a director would be with 1974’s “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”, which starred Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges. The film, about friends who are tore apart by the Vietnam War, scored nine total Oscar nominations and won five: best picture, best director for Cimino, best supporting actor for Walken, best sound, and best film editing.
Born in NY in 1939, Cimino studied painting at college and graduated with a Master’s in Fine Arts before becoming an ad director. From there he segued into screenwriting, co-writing the ecological science fiction film Silent Running and Magnum Force, the first sequel to Dirty Harry.
Cimino’s other films included Desperate Hours (1990), a thriller starring Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins, and the gangster film The Sicilian (1986), which was adapted from a novel by Godfather author Mario Puzo.
Michael Cimino, best known for directing the Oscar-winning film The Deer Hunter was found dead in his Los Angeles home Saturday. Rest in peace, sir.
But his career came to a halt with Heaven’s Gate, a Western that was beset by problems long before it reached theaters.
“The Deer Hunter” – released in 1978 – was an unqualified triumph, winning best picture honors in addition to best director. The film, which went through multiple cuts, ballooned way over budget and was a box office disaster which was blamed for the collapse of movie studio United Artists.
Meanwhile, De Niro is in talks to star in “The War With Grandpa”, which follows a young boy who loves his grandfather but after the older man is widowed and moves in and takes his room, he plots a number of pranks to get rid of him.
“I can not believe Michael Cimino has passed away too”, director Edgar Wright tweeted.”‘Thunderbolt & Lightfoot’ is one of my favourite films.
His biggest success: Cimino director Robert De Niro in the gritty 1978 movie The Deer Hunter that explored the impact of the Vietnam War on the American psyche.
It was a financial disaster that went four times over budget and a year behind schedule, It almost bankrupted the United Artists studio. “Heaven’s Gate”, rightly or not, would become symbolic of the sort of excess and unchecked ego that the modern business of moviemaking would work to rein in. His final film was The Sunchaser in 1996.
I never second-guess myself, he told Vanity Fair in 2010.
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When “Heaven’s Gate” received a Criterion release on DVD and Blu-ray and presented at the New York Film Festival in 2013, Manohla Dargis reviewed it for the Times and suggested that a range of reactions was possible.
