Michael Cimino, the Academy Award victor who directed and produced The Deer Hunter before Heaven’s Gate famously derailed his promising career and hastened the demise of United Artists in the 1980s, died Saturday.
Advertisement
The news of Cimino’s death was confirmed by his former lawyer Eric Weissmann, after the screenwriter’s friends grew concerned about their pal who had not been in contact and discovered him dead when they went to check in on him. The cause of death has not yet been determined.
Heaven’s Gate subsequently became a symbol for the excesses of the New Hollywood era and helped bring it to an end.
In the tradition of Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” (1972), Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” (1973), and Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” (1974), “The Deer Hunter” cloaked a mood of existential uncertainty beneath layers of violence.
Christopher Walken also won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor while De Niro and Streep received nominations for their roles in the gritty post-Vietnam War epic. The film won five Academy Awards, including best picture and best director. Cimino would also win directing prizes for the film from the Golden Globes, the Directors Guild of America, the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and others. The plot of the movie, now considered to be a cinematic classic, pitted immigrant homesteaders against powerful cattle barons.
It was a financial disaster that went four times over budget and a year behind schedule and almost bankrupted United Artists. Released in 1980 by United Artists, the film was more than three times over its budget.
In a Hollywood Reporter interview in 2015, Michael Cimino was still very impressed with Heaven’s Gate and had fond memories of making the film and the actor’s dedication and passion in making the film. Several sources give his birth date as February 3, 1939, and he was raised on Long Island. He went to Michigan State, graduated from Yale in 1961 and got a Master of Fine Arts there in 1963, both in painting.
Cimino died at his Los Angeles home. Eventually, he moved out to Hollywood and co-wrote scripts for the Bruce Dern movie Silent Running and Magnum Force, the second Dirty Harry movie. “R.I.P.” wrote Wright.
Advertisement
But, bearing the scarlet letter of Heaven’s Gate, Cimino directed a series of “meh” films to close out his career over the last 20 years: 1985’s Year of the Dragon starring Mickey Rourke, Mario Puzo adaptation The Sicilian, 1990’s Desperate Hours, and his final feature in 1996 starring Woody Harrelson, Sunchaser.
