Word: director
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...movie last fall to United Artists. The studio agreed to finance the picture for $7.5 million. "A really well-done western hadn't been made in a long time," explains U.A. Senior Vice President David Field. The studio's faith in Cimino was undiminished when the director's script rewrites necessitated a bigger budget of $11.6 million. The film had become more sweeping than a conventional western. It opens in the 1870s with the Harvard graduation of the hero, James Averill, who, like many of his generation, went West to help settle the land. Ten years later...
...Gate will cost as much as Francis Coppola's $30 million Apocalypse Now, which was also released by United Artists. But Coppola put up more than half the money for Apocalypse, while Heaven's Gate is being almost entirely financed by U.A. The dialogue between director and studio, according to one production insider, was "switchblades and garbage-can covers," but Field claims to be unperturbed. Says he: "I think Michael is making a masterpiece. We are trying to do everything in the world to keep that picture going...
Certainly Cimino and his company are working as well as spending. The director pores over the day's takes until after midnight and sleeps only three or four hours a night. "I have no private life," maintains Cimino, who is a bachelor. Says the film's cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond (who also shot The Deer Hunter), "Michael fell in love with this film...
...Michigan bill, similar to a Georgia law signed by Governor Jimmy Carter in 1971, was strongly supported by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "We have to make it as easy as possible for these kids to register," says Joseph Madison, director of the N.A.A.C.P.'s voter program. The percentage of voter turnout in the U.S., especially among the young, is steadily declining. Madison points out that of the 3.4 million blacks age 18 to 24 in 1976, 38% registered and only 26% voted. Of the 23 million whites in that age group, 53% registered...
...Director Robert M. Young (Short Eyes) could have destroyed the film completely by accentuating the sitcom excesses of the screenplay. He avoided that error only to swing too far the other way: his erratic pacing often kills those jokes that are worthwhile. The final confrontation between the kids, their parents and the parents' lovers is an all too typical disaster. A potentially hilarious climax ends up looking like a chaotic dress rehearsal, just as this potentially powerful movie collapses under the wreckage of its confused intentions.-Frank Rich