Cimino, whose film “The Deer Hunter” became one of the great triumphs of Hollywood’s 1970s heyday, and whose disastrous “Heaven’s Gate” helped bring that era to a close, has died.
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Director Michael Cimino, left, talks with actor Robert De Niro (wearing beret) during a break in the filming of The Deer Hunter. “He will be missed”.
Ultimately, although me made several more low-profile films, Cimino ended up a recluse, only appearing in public for a handful of screenings and movie-related events.
Correspondents say Heaven’s Gate led to the demise of director-driven productions in the late 1970s and the imposition of tighter controls on film budgets. The film’s name went on to enter the filmmaking lexicon of an expensive disaster on the cards.
According to Deadline, Michael Cimino was a member of a group of directors who were called the “New Hollywood” filmmakers, who popularized the director of movies as being the driving creative force in filmmaking. Cimino studied to become an architect, and described his turn to film direction “crazy and suicidal”. His first film was Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, starring Clint Eastwood, in 1974.
The director worked sporadically after the Heaven’s Gate flop and made only four other films: Year of the Dragon (1985), The Sicilian (1987), Desperate Hours (1990) and The Sunchaser (1996).
Eric Weissman, a friend and former lawyer of Cimino’s told New York Times that Cimino’s body was found by the police at his home after friends were unable to get in touch with him via phone.
July 03, 2016 by hellomagazine.com Fans and admirers of the Oscar-winning director have paid tribute to Michael Cimino, who died aged 77.
Ciminos masterpiece was 1978s The Deer Hunter, the story of the Vietnam Wars effect on a small steel-working town in Pennsylvania. Rushed out in 1980, it was savaged by critics, earned less than $4 million at the box office and helped sink United Artists, the studio that bankrolled the film.
Cimino was born in New York City and raised in Long Island.
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Heaven’s Gate, based on a screenplay that Cimino himself wrote, was about migrant homesteaders, rich cattle ranchers, mercenaries and USA marshals in the state of Wyoming in the 1890s. He was an important and masterful film maker. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published early in 2015, Cimino expressed happiness that the film was being seen anew and accepted at last by audiences for its sweeping intimacy and audacious vision of the American West.
