Word: cimino
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...MICHAEL CIMINO GOT LUCKY. Back in 1978, Vietnam was just becoming hot movie material, Cimino, the spunky young director with one movie under his belt (the insipid Thunderbolt and Lightfoot), sold the British recording company EMI the idea for a terrific film--a gut-wrenching Vietnam drama. The Deer Hunter. A hot idea, Vietnam laced with contemporary American pop romanticism. The Vietnam War the way Bruce Springsteen would probably sing about it. Workin' class guys, they go and they fight for their country, 'cause their country ain't so great, you know--it's real bad sometimes--but they...
...Michael Cimino thought he was John Ford. Everbody told him he was. His movie was a hit, America, the critics said, was ready to grieve over its tarnished honor and indomitable spirit. Despite its relentlessly bland directorial style, its contrived, overdone script, its torturous three-hour length, The Deer Hunter moved audiences with its sheer emotional power. The movie got all its force from an amazing cast that included Robert DeNiro, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken, Cimino, though, was a talented, but unimaginative, amateur: it was obvious in every frame. Yet the movie "touched a chord." While the socially conscious...
...Michael Cimino screwed up. Professional hubris. With his cast and crew, out in Kalispell, Mont., for six months of shooting, Cimino became the compulsive perfectionist. Every detail had to be just so. Every scene had to be BIG. Hey, he was a genius. He was making an epic Western. He was hot. He had an unlimited budget. But a painfully limited talent, $35 million worth of hubris. When the film opened in New York last November it received universally poor reviews. The New York Times called it "an unqualified disaster." The film's distributor, United Artists, withdrew it from...
...plot concerns the "Johnson County Wars." In the late 19th century, rich cattle barons hire an army of well-trained assassins to rid the Wyoming territory of poor immigrants who steal their cattle in order to survive. Cimino wanted to make a bold statement about the injustice of the American aristocracy, he wanted to show the corruption of the Frontier Spirit. Not a bad idea. And crawling through Heaven's Gate's quagmire of chaotic, irrelevant scenes, unexplained connections between events, unclear alliances between people, and awful dialogue, you can find traces of that original idea...
Columbia's Price frets that the studios are "run by the three A's: accountants, attorneys and agents." Stan Kamen, who represents Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand, Michael Cimino and a dozen other heavyweights, and whose William Morris Agency is sent 2,500 scripts a year, counters that "ex-agents are running major studios. They were packagers. They know how these deals are made. Half the Hollywood movies today are packaged or semipackaged by agents." Diller agrees ruefully: "This town is Deal City. Do you know the amount of time spent on deals instead of what the movie...