Michael Cimino, director of The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate, dies aged 77

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Michael Cimino, the director of the Vietnam war classic The Deer Hunter and the infamous epic western Heaven’s Gate, has died. He was 77.

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. We loved him too.”

Cimino directed eight films, starting in 1974 with the highly rated Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges-starring crime movie Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, for which he also wrote the screenplay. The Deer Hunter, a harrowing story of friends from working class Pennsylvania played by Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken, in which a young Meryl Streep also appears and her then fiancé John Cazale takes his final role, followed in 1978.

The film was a critical and commercial success. On its re-release in 2014, Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw saluted The Deer Hunter’s “combination of sulphurous anti-war imagery, disillusion and patriotic melancholy”.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/02/michael-cimino-director-deer-hunter-heavens-gate-dies

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Martin Pengelly
Saturday 2 July 2016 23.27 BST

[yallerdawg]

1. The director as artist.

Michael Cimino left his mark.

Rest in peace.

[Brickbat]

2. Deer Hunter is a great film.

[840high]

6. I watch it every

time it's shown.

[OnlinePoker]

3. He wrote one of my favorite SF films, Silent Running. n/t

[BumRushDaShow]

15. I love that movie.

[sl8]

20. Do you know who wrote the musical score?

I looked up the film after reading your post & was a little surprised to see that it was scored by Peter Schickele, aka P. D. Q. Bach. He also co-wrote 2 of the songs.

I had no idear.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Running

...
The soundtrack was written by bassoonist and P. D. Q. Bach creator Peter Schickele.[2] It contains two songs written by Schickele and Diane Lampert — "Silent Running" and "Rejoice in the Sun" — which were performed by popular folk singer-songwriter Joan Baez.[3] The two songs were issued as a single on Decca (32890). In addition, an LP was released on Decca (DL 7-9188) and later reissued by Varese Sarabande on black (STV-81072) and green (VC-81072) vinyl. In 1998 a limited-release CD by the "Valley Forge Record Groupe" included an additional track with the spoken introduction "God Bless These Gardens".
...

[edbermac]

4. Robin Hardy, Wicker Man director also died.

[spiderpig]

18. I haven't read this anywhere but here.

The original Wicker Man was a stunning film. The final seconds of the freed birds...

[edbermac]

5. Very good documentary about Heaven's Gate

Based on Steven Bach's book, who is interviewed in it.

[The Wizard]

7. The Deer Hunter

had me standing up and yelling at the screen in the theater. PTSD is real.

[hoosierspud]

8. Deer Hunter blew me away like no other movie.

I walked around in a fog for two days.

[Ken Burch]

9. I think HEAVEN'S GATE is getting a more positive critical reappraisal.

It's likely that part of the reason it was slammed when it came out in the late 1970's was that the film had a very anti-capitalist message(and if you were Pauline Kael, you say any film that questioned "the free market" as Soviet propaganda).

[Archae]

11. There was far more to it than that.

First off, for being "Based on a true story..." (here we go again...) the only things Cimino kept form the "true story" were one man and a woman were lynched by cattle baron goons.

And Cimino went through money like it was play money, wasting millions.

One of the "Golden Turkey Awards" books goes into far more detail.

No, this was just a case where a director with a hit was given free rein and he ran with it.

[Ken Burch]

13. Most films that refer to themselves as "based on a true story" tend to diverge from the story a lot

And it's not as if Cimino was the only director in history who ever overspent.

(wouldn't trust the Golden Turkeys on this totally...it's written by none other than famous right-wing whackjob Michael Medved.

[Archae]

17. Oh believe me, I know.

Even "critically acclaimed" and successful movies like "JFK" are horrendous.

In "JFK" Oliver Stone kept two facts:

1. Kennedy was shot and killed
2. Jim Garrison put Clay Shaw on trial

The rest was total bullshit.

[Kablooie]

10. "Final Cut" is great book about how Heaven's Gate brought down United Artists.

Cimino was shooting beautiful footage but was wildly over budget.
He was out of control but ultimately it was the execs that allowed him to do so that created the debacle.

https://www.amazon.com/Final-Cut-Making-Heavens-Artists/dp/1557043744

[IgelJames4]

12. RIP Mr. Cimino. Your films were great.

The Deer Hunter was such a moving film, and I got teary-eyed near the end. Heaven's Gate was also a great and underrated movie.

[The Second Stone]

14. Heaven's Gate is a masterpiece

and now fully available in a director's cut on Blu-Ray. Stunningly beautiful.

[jeanmarc]

16. Liked Year of the Dragon a lot

Fun little movie.

[magical thyme]

19. they blew horses up in Heaven's Gate

Strapped dynamite to their bellies and blew them up.

Good riddance and may he and the every one of those scum-sucking vile, despicable lowlife scumbuckets spend an eternity burning in hell.

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/ftkaf/til_in_the_1980_movie_heavens_gate_when_they_blow/