Michael Cimino
Encyclopedia
Michael Cimino is an American
film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for writing and directing Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter
and the infamous Heaven's Gate
. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject matter.
, New York
on February 3, 1939. A third-generation Italian-American, Cimino grew up in Old Westbury, Long Island. He was regarded as a prodigy at the private schools his parents sent him to, but rebelled against his parents by consorting with lowlifes, getting into fights and coming home drunk. Of this time, Cinimo described himself as "always hanging around with kids my parents didn't approve of. Those guys were so alive. When I was fifteen I spent three weeks driving all over Brooklyn with a guy who was following his girlfriend. He was convinced she was cheating on him, and he had a gun, he was going to kill her. Their was such passion and intensity about their lives. When the rich kids got together, the most we ever did was cross against a red light."
His father was a music publisher. Cimino says his father was responsible for marching bands and organs playing pop music at football games. "When my father found out I went into the movie business, he didn't talk to me for a year," Cimino said. “He was very tall and thin [...] His weight never changed his whole life and he didn’t have a gray hair on his head. He was a bit like a Vanderbilt or a Whitney, one of those guys. He was the life of the party, women loved him, a real womanizer. He smoked like a fiend. He loved his martinis. He died really young. He was away a lot, but he was fun. I was just a tiny kid.” His mother, a costume designer, once told him after The Deer Hunter
that she knew he was famous because his name was in the New York Times crossword puzzle.
in East Lansing, Michigan
. At Michigan State, Cimino majored in graphic arts, was a member of a weight-lifting club and a group that welcomed incoming students. He graduated in only three years with honors and won the Harry Suffrin Advertising Award. He was described in the 1959 Red Cedar Log yearbook as having tastes that included blonds, Thelonious Monk
, Chico Hamilton
, Mort Sahl
, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
, Frank Lloyd Wright
, and "drinking, preferably vodka".
In Cimino's final year at Michigan State, he became art director, and later managing editor, of the school's humor magazine Spartan. Steven Bach
wrote of Cimino's early magazine work: "It is here that one can see what are perhaps the first public manifestations of the Cimino visual sensibility, and they are impressive. He thoroughly restyled the Spartan' s derivative Punch look, designing a number of its strikingly handsome covers himself. The Cimino-designed covers are bold and strong, with a sure sense of space and design. They compare favorably to professional work honored in, say, any of the Modern Publicity annuals of the late fifties and are far better than the routine work turned out on Madison Avenue. The impact and quality of his work no doubt contributed to his winning the Harry Suffrin Advertsing Award at MSU and perhaps to his acceptance at Yale."
At Yale, Cimino continued to study painting as well as architecture and art history and became involved in school dramatics. In 1962, while still at Yale, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve
. He trained for five months at Fort Dix, New Jersey and had a month of medical training in Fort Sam Houston
, Texas. Cimino graduated from Yale University
, receiving his BFA
in 1961 and his MFA
in 1963, both in painting.
, Eastman Kodak
, United Airlines
, and Pepsi
, among others. "I met some people who were doing fashion stuff-commercials and stills. And there were all these incredibly beautiful girls," Cimino said. "And then, zoom-the next thing I know, overnight, I was directing commercials." For example, Cimino directed the 1963 United Airlines commercial "Take Me Along", a musical extravaganza in which a group of ladies sing "Take Me Along" to a group of men, presumably their husbands, to take them on a flight. The commercial is filled with dynamic visuals, American symbolism and elaborate set design that would become Cimino's trademark. "The clients of the agencies liked Cimino," remarked Charles Okun, Cimino's production manager from 1964-'78. "His visuals were fabulous, but the amount of time it took was just astronomical. Because he was so meticulous and took so long. Nothing was easy with Michael." It was through his commercial work that Cimino met Joann Carrelli, then a commercial director representative, beginning a 30-year on-again-off-again relationship.
. He co-wrote two scripts before moving on to film directing: the science fiction film Silent Running
and Clint Eastwood
's second Dirty Harry
film, Magnum Force
. Cimino's work on Magnum Force impressed Eastwood enough to buy Cimino's spec script
called Thunderbolt and Lightfoot for Eastwood's production company, Malpaso
.
(1974). The film stars Eastwood as a Korean War vet named "Thunderbolt" who takes a young drifter named "Lightfoot", played by Jeff Bridges
, under his wing. When Thunderbolt's old partners try to find him, he and Lightfoot make a pact with them to pull one last big heist at Montana Armory. Eastwood was originally slated to direct it himself, but Cimino impressed Eastwood enough to change his mind. The film became a solid box office success at the time, making $25,000,000 at the box office with a budget of $4,000,000.
, Cimino says he "got a lot of offers, but decided to take a gamble. I would only get involved with projects I really wanted to do." He rejected several offers before pitching an ambitious Vietnam War film to EMI
executives in November 1976. To Cimino's surprise, EMI accepted the film. Cimino went on to direct, co-write, and co-produce The Deer Hunter
(1978). The film stars Robert De Niro
, Christopher Walken
, and John Savage
as three buddies in a Pennsylvania steel mill town who fight in the Vietnam War and rebuild their lives in the aftermath. The film went over-schedule and over-budget, but it became a massive critical and commercial success, and won five Oscars
, including Best Director
and Best Picture
for Cimino.
for his next film, Heaven's Gate
(1980). The film came in several times over budget. After its release, it proved to be a financial disaster that nearly bankrupted the studio. Heaven's Gate became the lightning rod for the industry perception of the loosely controlled situation in Hollywood at that time. The film's failure marked the end of the New Hollywood
era. Transamerica Corporation
sold United Artists, having lost confidence in the company and its management.
Heaven's Gate was such a devastating box office and critical bomb that public perception of Cimino's work was tainted in its wake; the majority of his subsequent films achieved neither popular nor critical success. Many critics who had originally praised The Deer Hunter
became far more reserved about the picture and about Cimino after Heaven's Gate. The story of the making of the movie, and UA's subsequent downfall, was documented in Steven Bach
's book Final Cut. Cimino's film was somewhat rehabilitated by an unlikely source: the Z Channel
, a cable pay TV channel that at its peak in the mid-1980s served 100,000 of Los Angeles's most influential film professionals. After the unsuccessful release of the re-edited and shortened Heaven's Gate, Jerry Harvey
, the channel's programmer, decided to play Cimino's original 219 minute cut on Christmas Eve 1982. The re-assembled movie received admiring reviews.
, which he and Oliver Stone
adapted from Robert Daley's novel. However, Year of the Dragon was also nominated for five Razzie awards, including Worst Director and Worst Screenplay. The film was sharply criticized for providing offensive stereotypes about Chinese American
s.
from a Mario Puzo
novel in 1987. The film bombed at the box office, costing an estimated $16 million but grossing $5 million domestically.
of the Humphrey Bogart
film The Desperate Hours
in 1990, starring Anthony Hopkins
and Mickey Rourke
. Rourke also appeared in Heaven's Gate and Year of the Dragon. The film was another box office disappointment, grossing less than $3 million dollars.
with Woody Harrelson
and Jon Seda
. While nominated for the Palme D'Or
at that year's Cannes Film Festival
, the film was a box office bomb, grossing less than $30,000.
. His films are considered controversial for his one-sided storytelling and lack of factual accuracy. Other trademarks include:
Cimino frequently credits Clint Eastwood
, John Ford
, Luchino Visconti
and Akira Kurosawa
as his cinematic influences. Cimino has said that if it wasn't for Eastwood, he would not be in the movies: "I owe everything to Clint." Cimino also gave his literary references as Nabokov, Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy
, Gore Vidal
, Raymond Carver
, Cormac McCarthy
, the classics of Islamic literature, Frank Norris
and Steven Pinker
.
wrote that despite setbacks in Cimino's career, "he may yet deliver a film that will make his career larger than the cautionary tale it often seems to be or, conversely, the story of genius thwarted by the system that is still popular in certain circles." Film historian David Thomson
added to this sentiment: "The flimsy nastiness of his last four pictures is no reason to think we have seen the last of Cimino. [...] If he ever emerges at full budgetary throttle, his own career should be his subject." Cimino claims he has written at least 50 scripts overall and was briefly considered to helm The Godfather Part III
.
Among the Cimino projects that have stalled in development or given to other directors include:
and Gore Vidal
. “Oh, I’m the happiest, I think, I’ve ever been!” replied Cimino. Cimino also wrote a book called Conversations en miroir with Francesca Pollock in 2003.
's highly critical book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
deal with the film and resulting scandal. Hickenlooper's book includes one of the few candid discussions with Cimino; Biskind focuses on events during and after the production as a later backdrop for the sweeping changes made to Hollywood and the movie brat
generation. Steven Bach
, a former UA studio executive, wrote Final Cut (1985), which describes in detail how Heaven's Gate brought down United Artists
. Cimino has called Bach's book a “work of fiction” by a “degenerate who never even came on the set.”
The European DVD release
of The Deer Hunter
contains an audio commentary
with Cimino as does the American DVD release of Year of the Dragon
.
has frequently praised Cimino for his creativity and dedication to work. On Heaven's Gate
, Rouke has said, "I remember thinking this little guy [Cimino] was so well organized. He had this huge production going on all around him yet he could devote his absolute concentration on the smallest of details."
Film director/screenwriter Quentin Tarantino
has also expressed great admiration and praise for Cimino's The Deer Hunter
, especially with regards to the Vietnamese POW Russian roulette sequence: "The Russian roulette sequence is just out and out one of the best pieces of film ever made, ever shot, ever edited, ever performed. [...] Anybody can go off about Michael Cimino all they want but when you get to that sequence you just have to shut up." Tarantino also loved Cimino's Year of the Dragon
and listed its climax as his favorite killer movie moment in 2004.
, John Simon
and John Powers have also noted and criticized these qualities in many of the films he has written and directed. Cimino has also been known to give exaggerated, misleading and conflicting stories about himself, his background and his filmmaking experiences.
, producer Bruce McNall
described Cimino as "one part artistic genius and one part infantile egomaniac." In his book, Blade Runners, Deer Hunters and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off, producer Michael Deeley
described his experience with Cimino on Deer Hunter a "travail", adding "the only flaw I find in my Oscar [for The Deer Hunter] is that Cimino's name is also engraved on it." Deeley went on to criticize Cimino further for his deceit and lack of professional respect: "Cimino was selfish. [...] Selfishness, in itself, is not necessarily a flaw in a director, unless it swells into ruthless self-indulgence combined with a total disregard for the terms in which the production has been set." Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond
has said that Cimino is hard to work with but extremely talented visually.
, John Simon
and John Powers have viciously attacked Cimino's abilities as a filmmaker and storyteller. His failure with Heaven' s Gate has led many commentators to joke and/or suggest that he give back his Oscars for The Deer Hunter. John Powers wrote in reference to Cimino's Year of the Dragon: "If dementia has a name, it must be Michael Cimino." Pauline Kael
of The New Yorker
succinctly criticized Cimino's storytelling abilities in her review of Year of the Dragon
:
John Foote questioned whether or not Cimino deserved his Oscars for The Deer Hunter: "It seemed in the spring of 1979, following the Oscar ceremony, there was a sense in the industry that if the Academy could have taken back their votes — which saw “The Deer Hunter” and director Michael Cimino winning for Best Picture and Best Director — they would have done so."
refuted those claims in his book Final Cut: "[Cimino] had done no work toward a doctorate and he had become known in New York as a maker not of documentaries but of sophisticated television commercials".
Vilmos Zsigmond
and associate producer Joann Carelli) the vague impression that much of the storyline was biographical, somehow related to the director’s own experience and based on the experiences of men he had known during his service in Vietnam. Just as the film was about to open, Cimino gave an interview to The New York Times
in which he claimed that he had been “attached to a Green Beret medical unit" at the time of the Tet Offensive of 1968. When the Times reporter, who had not been able to corroborate this, questioned the studio about it, studio executives panicked and fabricated “evidence” to support the story. Universal Studios
president Thom Mount
commented at the time, "I know this guy. He was no more a medic in the Green Berets than I’m a rutabaga
." Tom Buckley, a veteran Vietnam correspondent for the Times, corroborated that Cimino had done a stint as an Army medic, but that the director had never been attached to the Green Berets. Cimino's active service – just six months in 1962 – had been as a reservist who was never deployed to Vietnam. Cimino’s publicist reportedly said that he intended to sue Buckley, but Cimino never did.
“reports” that “he’d changed his name to ‘Michelle’ Cimino” and that he was “changing his gender via surgery.” The item only served to give the rumor more currency. Cimino has said that he has not had nor intends to have a sex change and is not a cross-dresser. He suspects a former girlfriend, whom he did not name, to have started it in a drug-induced haze.
He explained that his change in appearance is due to weight fluctuations: “In the editing room, garbage comes in by the cartload. Doughnuts in the morning. Pizza comes rolling in in the afternoon. They’re always ordering food. You’re in there for 20 hours a day, seven days a week, getting no sleep, and you look like shit.” On the set of Heaven’ s Gate, he says, he went from his old wrestling weight of 120 pounds to 185, noting, “I looked like a face pasted on a fucking balloon!” With the help of Sunchaser star Woody Harrelson
he began fasting and lost about 85 pounds. “I took off a whole person!”
Cimino's friends also refute the rumor. "I roared with laughter," said film critic F. X. Feeney, in response to the rumor. "I know him well enough to know it's never going to happen. You are talking about an internationally renowned perfectionist. If he can't come out looking like Catherine Deneuve
, forget it." When asked by Gore Vidal
if the rumors were true, Cimino replied, "Oh, really? My doctors are going to be very surprised when I go to take a physical for the next movie. It's going to be a big shock."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for writing and directing Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
and the infamous Heaven's Gate
Heaven's Gate (film)
Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film based on the Johnson County War, a dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s...
. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject matter.
Origins
Michael Cimino was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
on February 3, 1939. A third-generation Italian-American, Cimino grew up in Old Westbury, Long Island. He was regarded as a prodigy at the private schools his parents sent him to, but rebelled against his parents by consorting with lowlifes, getting into fights and coming home drunk. Of this time, Cinimo described himself as "always hanging around with kids my parents didn't approve of. Those guys were so alive. When I was fifteen I spent three weeks driving all over Brooklyn with a guy who was following his girlfriend. He was convinced she was cheating on him, and he had a gun, he was going to kill her. Their was such passion and intensity about their lives. When the rich kids got together, the most we ever did was cross against a red light."
His father was a music publisher. Cimino says his father was responsible for marching bands and organs playing pop music at football games. "When my father found out I went into the movie business, he didn't talk to me for a year," Cimino said. “He was very tall and thin [...] His weight never changed his whole life and he didn’t have a gray hair on his head. He was a bit like a Vanderbilt or a Whitney, one of those guys. He was the life of the party, women loved him, a real womanizer. He smoked like a fiend. He loved his martinis. He died really young. He was away a lot, but he was fun. I was just a tiny kid.” His mother, a costume designer, once told him after The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
that she knew he was famous because his name was in the New York Times crossword puzzle.
Education
Cimino graduated from Westbury High School on Long Island in 1956. After graduating, he entered Michigan State UniversityMichigan State University
Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...
in East Lansing, Michigan
East Lansing, Michigan
East Lansing is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located directly east of Lansing, Michigan, the state's capital. Most of the city is within Ingham County, though a small portion lies in Clinton County. The population was 48,579 at the time of the 2010 census, an increase from...
. At Michigan State, Cimino majored in graphic arts, was a member of a weight-lifting club and a group that welcomed incoming students. He graduated in only three years with honors and won the Harry Suffrin Advertising Award. He was described in the 1959 Red Cedar Log yearbook as having tastes that included blonds, Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
, Chico Hamilton
Chico Hamilton
Chico Hamilton , is an American jazz drummer and bandleader.-Early life through 1960s:Hamilton was born in Los Angeles, California. He had a fast-track musical education in a band with Charles Mingus, Illinois Jacquet, Ernie Royal, Dexter Gordon, Buddy Collette and Jack Kelso...
, Mort Sahl
Mort Sahl
Morton Lyon "Mort" Sahl is a Canadian-born American comedian and actor. He occasionally wrote jokes for speeches delivered by President John F. Kennedy. He was the first comedian to record a live album and the first to perform on college campuses...
, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
, Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
, and "drinking, preferably vodka".
In Cimino's final year at Michigan State, he became art director, and later managing editor, of the school's humor magazine Spartan. Steven Bach
Steven Bach
Steven Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios.In 1990, he was a member of the jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival....
wrote of Cimino's early magazine work: "It is here that one can see what are perhaps the first public manifestations of the Cimino visual sensibility, and they are impressive. He thoroughly restyled the Spartan
At Yale, Cimino continued to study painting as well as architecture and art history and became involved in school dramatics. In 1962, while still at Yale, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve
United States Army Reserve
The United States Army Reserve is the federal reserve force of the United States Army. Together, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard constitute the reserve components of the United States Army....
. He trained for five months at Fort Dix, New Jersey and had a month of medical training in Fort Sam Houston
Fort Sam Houston
Fort Sam Houston is a U.S. Army post in San Antonio, Texas.Known colloquially as "Fort Sam," it is named for the first President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston....
, Texas. Cimino graduated from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, receiving his BFA
Bachelor of Fine Arts
In the United States and Canada, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. In some countries such a degree is called a Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...
in 1961 and his MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
in 1963, both in painting.
Commercials
After graduating from Yale, Cimino moved to Manhattan to work in Madison Avenue advertising and became a star director of television commercials. He shot ads for L'Eggs hosiery, Kool cigarettesKOOL (cigarette)
KOOL is a brand of menthol cigarette currently produced by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, introduced in 1933, that has marketed itself towards the "sophisticated man". Originally introduced as an unfiltered "regular" size cigarette, filtered 85 mm king-size versions were later added to...
, Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....
, United Airlines
United Airlines
United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees (which includes the entire holding company United Continental...
, and Pepsi
Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo...
, among others. "I met some people who were doing fashion stuff-commercials and stills. And there were all these incredibly beautiful girls," Cimino said. "And then, zoom-the next thing I know, overnight, I was directing commercials." For example, Cimino directed the 1963 United Airlines commercial "Take Me Along", a musical extravaganza in which a group of ladies sing "Take Me Along" to a group of men, presumably their husbands, to take them on a flight. The commercial is filled with dynamic visuals, American symbolism and elaborate set design that would become Cimino's trademark. "The clients of the agencies liked Cimino," remarked Charles Okun, Cimino's production manager from 1964-'78. "His visuals were fabulous, but the amount of time it took was just astronomical. Because he was so meticulous and took so long. Nothing was easy with Michael." It was through his commercial work that Cimino met Joann Carrelli, then a commercial director representative, beginning a 30-year on-again-off-again relationship.
Scriptwriting
In 1971, Cimino moved to Los Angeles to start a career as a screenwriter. According to Cimino, it was Carrelli that got him into screenwriting: "[Joann] actually talked me into it. I'd never really written anything ever before. I still don't regard myself as a writer. I've probably written thirteen to fourteen screenplays by [1978] and I still don't think of myself that way. Yet, that's how I make a living." Cimino added, "I started writing screenplays principally because I didn't have the money to buy books or to option properties. At that time you only had a chance to direct if you owned a screenplay which some star wanted to do, and that's precisely what happened with Thunderbolt and Lightfoot." Cimino gained representation from Stan Kamen of William Morris AgencyWilliam Morris Agency
WME is the largest talent agency in the world, with offices in Beverly Hills, New York City, Nashville, London, and Miami. WME represents elite artists from all facets of the entertainment industry, including motion pictures, television, music, theatre, publishing, and physical production...
. He co-wrote two scripts before moving on to film directing: the science fiction film Silent Running
Silent Running
Silent Running is a 1972 environmentally themed science fiction film starring Bruce Dern and directed by Douglas Trumbull, who had previously worked as a special effects supervisor on such science fiction films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain.-Plot summary:Silent Running depicts a...
and Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
's second Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry is a 1971 American crime thriller produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan....
film, Magnum Force
Magnum Force
Magnum Force is a 1973 American police thriller film and the second to feature Clint Eastwood as maverick cop Harry Callahan after the 1971 film Dirty Harry. Ted Post, who also directed Eastwood in TV's Rawhide and the feature film Hang 'Em High, directed the second film in the Dirty Harry series...
. Cimino's work on Magnum Force impressed Eastwood enough to buy Cimino's spec script
Spec script
A spec script, also known as a speculative screenplay, is a non-commissioned unsolicited screenplay. It is usually written by a screenwriter who hopes to have the script optioned and eventually purchased by a producer, production company, or studio....
called Thunderbolt and Lightfoot for Eastwood's production company, Malpaso
Malpaso Productions
Malpaso Productions, originally known as The Malpaso Company, is Clint Eastwood's production company. It was established in 1967 by Eastwood's financial adviser Irving Leonard for the film Hang 'Em High, using finances from the Dollars trilogy...
.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Cimino moved up to directing on the feature Thunderbolt and LightfootThunderbolt and Lightfoot
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a 1974 American crime film written and directed by Michael Cimino and starring Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy, and Geoffrey Lewis.-Plot:...
(1974). The film stars Eastwood as a Korean War vet named "Thunderbolt" who takes a young drifter named "Lightfoot", played by Jeff Bridges
Jeff Bridges
Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges is an American actor and musician. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart....
, under his wing. When Thunderbolt's old partners try to find him, he and Lightfoot make a pact with them to pull one last big heist at Montana Armory. Eastwood was originally slated to direct it himself, but Cimino impressed Eastwood enough to change his mind. The film became a solid box office success at the time, making $25,000,000 at the box office with a budget of $4,000,000.
The Deer Hunter
With the success of Thunderbolt and LightfootThunderbolt and Lightfoot
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a 1974 American crime film written and directed by Michael Cimino and starring Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy, and Geoffrey Lewis.-Plot:...
, Cimino says he "got a lot of offers, but decided to take a gamble. I would only get involved with projects I really wanted to do." He rejected several offers before pitching an ambitious Vietnam War film to EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
executives in November 1976. To Cimino's surprise, EMI accepted the film. Cimino went on to direct, co-write, and co-produce The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
(1978). The film stars Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
, Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...
, and John Savage
John Savage (actor)
John Savage is an American film actor, producer, production manager, and composer.- Acting career :...
as three buddies in a Pennsylvania steel mill town who fight in the Vietnam War and rebuild their lives in the aftermath. The film went over-schedule and over-budget, but it became a massive critical and commercial success, and won five Oscars
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
, including Best Director
Academy Award for Directing
The Academy Award for Achievement in Directing , usually known as the Best Director Oscar, is one of the Awards of Merit presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to directors working in the motion picture industry...
and Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
for Cimino.
Heaven's Gate
On the basis of this track record, Cimino was given free rein by United ArtistsUnited Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
for his next film, Heaven's Gate
Heaven's Gate (film)
Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film based on the Johnson County War, a dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s...
(1980). The film came in several times over budget. After its release, it proved to be a financial disaster that nearly bankrupted the studio. Heaven's Gate became the lightning rod for the industry perception of the loosely controlled situation in Hollywood at that time. The film's failure marked the end of the New Hollywood
New Hollywood
New Hollywood or post-classical Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and...
era. Transamerica Corporation
Transamerica Corporation
Transamerica Corporation is a holding company for various life insurance companies and investment firms doing business primarily in the United States. It was acquired by the Dutch financial services conglomerate AEGON in 1999.-History:...
sold United Artists, having lost confidence in the company and its management.
Heaven's Gate was such a devastating box office and critical bomb that public perception of Cimino's work was tainted in its wake; the majority of his subsequent films achieved neither popular nor critical success. Many critics who had originally praised The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
became far more reserved about the picture and about Cimino after Heaven's Gate. The story of the making of the movie, and UA's subsequent downfall, was documented in Steven Bach
Steven Bach
Steven Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios.In 1990, he was a member of the jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival....
's book Final Cut. Cimino's film was somewhat rehabilitated by an unlikely source: the Z Channel
Z Channel
The Z Channel was one of the first pay cable stations in the United States. Launched in 1974 from Los Angeles, California, this station was known for its devotion to the art of cinema due to the eclectic choice of films by the programming chief, Jerry Harvey...
, a cable pay TV channel that at its peak in the mid-1980s served 100,000 of Los Angeles's most influential film professionals. After the unsuccessful release of the re-edited and shortened Heaven's Gate, Jerry Harvey
Jerry Harvey
Jerry Harvey was an American screenwriter and film programmer, best known for his work on Z Channel, a pioneering cable station in Los Angeles from 1974 to 1989.-Background:...
, the channel's programmer, decided to play Cimino's original 219 minute cut on Christmas Eve 1982. The re-assembled movie received admiring reviews.
Year of the Dragon
Cimino directed a 1985 crime drama, Year of the DragonYear of the Dragon (film)
Year of the Dragon is a 1985 film directed by Michael Cimino, starring Mickey Rourke, Ariane Koizumi and John Lone. The screenplay was written by Cimino and Oliver Stone and adapted from the novel by Robert Daley....
, which he and Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
adapted from Robert Daley's novel. However, Year of the Dragon was also nominated for five Razzie awards, including Worst Director and Worst Screenplay. The film was sharply criticized for providing offensive stereotypes about Chinese American
Chinese American
Chinese Americans represent Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans...
s.
The Sicilian
Cimino directed The SicilianThe Sicilian (film)
The Sicilian is a 1987 action film based on the novel of the same name by Mario Puzo. It was directed by Michael Cimino and stars Christopher Lambert, Joss Ackland and Terence Stamp.-Plot:...
from a Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo
Mario Gianluigi Puzo was an American author and screenwriter, known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather , which he later co-adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola...
novel in 1987. The film bombed at the box office, costing an estimated $16 million but grossing $5 million domestically.
Desperate Hours
Cimino directed a remakeDesperate Hours
Desperate Hours is a 1990 remake of the 1955 William Wyler crime drama of the same title. Both films are based on the novel by Joseph Hayes, who also co-wrote the script for this movie with Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal...
of the Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
film The Desperate Hours
The Desperate Hours (film)
The Desperate Hours is a 1955 film from Paramount Pictures starring Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March. The movie was produced and directed by William Wyler and based on a novel and play of the same name written by Joseph Hayes which were loosely based on actual events.The original Broadway...
in 1990, starring Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
and Mickey Rourke
Mickey Rourke
Philip Andre "Mickey" Rourke, Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films....
. Rourke also appeared in Heaven's Gate and Year of the Dragon. The film was another box office disappointment, grossing less than $3 million dollars.
The Sunchaser
Cimino's last feature-length film was 1996's SunchaserThe Sunchaser
Sunchaser is a 1996 film directed by Michael Cimino and starring Woody Harrelson, Jon Seda and Anne Bancroft. This is director Cimino's last feature-length film.-Plot summary:...
with Woody Harrelson
Woody Harrelson
Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...
and Jon Seda
Jon Seda
Jonathan Seda is an American actor, possibly best known for his role as Detective Paul Falsone on NBC's: Homicide: Life on the Street....
. While nominated for the Palme D'Or
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and is presented to the director of the best feature film of the official competition. It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du...
at that year's Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
, the film was a box office bomb, grossing less than $30,000.
Trademarks
Cimino's films are often marked by their striking visual style and controversial subject matter. Elements of Cimino's visual sensibility include shooting in widescreen (in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio), deliberate pacing and big set-piece/non-dialogue sequences. The subject matter in Cimino's films frequently focuses on aspects of American history and culture, notably the disillusionment over the American DreamAmerican Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...
. His films are considered controversial for his one-sided storytelling and lack of factual accuracy. Other trademarks include:
- Casting of non-professional actors in supporting roles (Chuck Aspegren as Axel in The Deer HunterThe Deer HunterThe Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
, Ariane in Year of the DragonYear of the Dragon (film)Year of the Dragon is a 1985 film directed by Michael Cimino, starring Mickey Rourke, Ariane Koizumi and John Lone. The screenplay was written by Cimino and Oliver Stone and adapted from the novel by Robert Daley....
) - Frequently casts Mickey RourkeMickey RourkePhilip Andre "Mickey" Rourke, Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films....
, Jeff Bridges, Christopher Walken and Richard Bauer
Cimino frequently credits Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
, John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
, Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice .-Life:...
and Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
as his cinematic influences. Cimino has said that if it wasn't for Eastwood, he would not be in the movies: "I owe everything to Clint." Cimino also gave his literary references as Nabokov, Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
, Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver
Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....
, Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and modernist genres. He received the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road...
, the classics of Islamic literature, Frank Norris
Frank Norris
Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. was an American novelist, during the Progressive Era, writing predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague , The Octopus: A Story of California , and The Pit .-Life:Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870...
and Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
.
Unrealized projects
Since the beginning of his film career, Cimino has been attached to many projects that either fell apart in pre-production or were jettisoned due to his reputation following Heaven's Gate. Steven BachSteven Bach
Steven Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios.In 1990, he was a member of the jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival....
wrote that despite setbacks in Cimino's career, "he may yet deliver a film that will make his career larger than the cautionary tale it often seems to be or, conversely, the story of genius thwarted by the system that is still popular in certain circles." Film historian David Thomson
David Thomson (film critic)
David Thomson is a film critic and historian based in the United States and the author of more than 20 books, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.-Career:...
added to this sentiment: "The flimsy nastiness of his last four pictures is no reason to think we have seen the last of Cimino. [...] If he ever emerges at full budgetary throttle, his own career should be his subject." Cimino claims he has written at least 50 scripts overall and was briefly considered to helm The Godfather Part III
The Godfather Part III
The Godfather Part III is a 1990 American gangster film written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, and directed by Coppola. It completes the story of Michael Corleone, a Mafia kingpin who tries to legitimize his criminal empire...
.
Among the Cimino projects that have stalled in development or given to other directors include:
Books
In 2001, Cimino published his first novel, Big Jane. Later that year, the French Minister of Culture decorated him Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and the Prix Littéraire Deauville 2001, an award that previously went to Norman MailerNorman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
and Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
. “Oh, I’m the happiest, I think, I’ve ever been!” replied Cimino. Cimino also wrote a book called Conversations en miroir with Francesca Pollock in 2003.
Interviews
Interviews with Cimino are rare: He declined all interviews with American journalists for 10 years following Heaven's Gate and he gives his part in the making of that film little discussion. George Hickenlooper's book Reel Conversations and Peter BiskindPeter Biskind
Peter Biskind is a journalist, former executive editor of Premiere magazine, and the author of numerous books depicting life in Hollywood, including Seeing Is Believing, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Down and Dirty Pictures, and Gods and Monsters...
's highly critical book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood is a book written by Peter Biskind and published by Simon and Schuster in 1998...
deal with the film and resulting scandal. Hickenlooper's book includes one of the few candid discussions with Cimino; Biskind focuses on events during and after the production as a later backdrop for the sweeping changes made to Hollywood and the movie brat
New Hollywood
New Hollywood or post-classical Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and...
generation. Steven Bach
Steven Bach
Steven Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios.In 1990, he was a member of the jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival....
, a former UA studio executive, wrote Final Cut (1985), which describes in detail how Heaven's Gate brought down United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
. Cimino has called Bach's book a “work of fiction” by a “degenerate who never even came on the set.”
The European DVD release
DVD region code
DVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
of The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
contains an audio commentary
Audio commentary
On disc-based video formats, an audio commentary is an additional audio track consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with video...
with Cimino as does the American DVD release of Year of the Dragon
Year of the Dragon (film)
Year of the Dragon is a 1985 film directed by Michael Cimino, starring Mickey Rourke, Ariane Koizumi and John Lone. The screenplay was written by Cimino and Oliver Stone and adapted from the novel by Robert Daley....
.
Praise
After Cimino's success with The Deer Hunter, he was considered a "Second Coming" among critics. In 1985, author Michael Bliss described Michael Cimino as a unique American filmmaker after only three films: "Cimino occupies an important position in today's cinema... a man whose cinematic obsession it is to extract, represent, and investigate those essential elements in the American psyche..." Frequent collaborator Mickey RourkeMickey Rourke
Philip Andre "Mickey" Rourke, Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter and retired boxer, who has appeared primarily as a leading man in action, drama, and thriller films....
has frequently praised Cimino for his creativity and dedication to work. On Heaven's Gate
Heaven's Gate
Heaven's Gate may refer to:* Heaven's Gate , a religious group mostly known for a mass suicide in 1997* Heaven's Gate , a 1980 American movie* Heavens Gate , a German heavy metal band...
, Rouke has said, "I remember thinking this little guy [Cimino] was so well organized. He had this huge production going on all around him yet he could devote his absolute concentration on the smallest of details."
Film director/screenwriter Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
has also expressed great admiration and praise for Cimino's The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
, especially with regards to the Vietnamese POW Russian roulette sequence: "The Russian roulette sequence is just out and out one of the best pieces of film ever made, ever shot, ever edited, ever performed. [...] Anybody can go off about Michael Cimino all they want but when you get to that sequence you just have to shut up." Tarantino also loved Cimino's Year of the Dragon
Year of the Dragon (film)
Year of the Dragon is a 1985 film directed by Michael Cimino, starring Mickey Rourke, Ariane Koizumi and John Lone. The screenplay was written by Cimino and Oliver Stone and adapted from the novel by Robert Daley....
and listed its climax as his favorite killer movie moment in 2004.
Criticisms
Cimino is frequently criticized by colleagues and critics as vain, self-indulgent, egotistical, megalomaniacal and an enfant terrible. Producers and critics have tended to be harsher on Cimino than his fellow collaborators. Critics like Pauline KaelPauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
, John Simon
John Simon (critic)
John Ivan Simon is an American author and literary, theater, and film critic.-Personal life:Simon was born in Subotica, Bačka, County of Bačka, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later, known as Yugoslavia . He is of Hungarian descent...
and John Powers have also noted and criticized these qualities in many of the films he has written and directed. Cimino has also been known to give exaggerated, misleading and conflicting stories about himself, his background and his filmmaking experiences.
Colleagues
In writing about his experience working on The SicilianThe Sicilian
The Sicilian is a novel by Italian-American author Mario Puzo. Published in 1984 by Random House Publishing Group , it is based on Puzo's most famous work, The Godfather. It is regarded as The Godfathers literary sequel....
, producer Bruce McNall
Bruce McNall
Bruce Patrick McNall is a former Thoroughbred racehorse owner, and a sports executive who once owned the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League .McNall claimed to have made his initial fortune as a coin collector, though...
described Cimino as "one part artistic genius and one part infantile egomaniac." In his book, Blade Runners, Deer Hunters and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off, producer Michael Deeley
Michael Deeley
Michael Deeley is a British film producer who has helped create notable films such as The Italian Job, Blade Runner and The Deer Hunter. He is also a founding member and Deputy Chairman of The British Screen Advisory Council....
described his experience with Cimino on Deer Hunter a "travail", adding "the only flaw I find in my Oscar [for The Deer Hunter] is that Cimino's name is also engraved on it." Deeley went on to criticize Cimino further for his deceit and lack of professional respect: "Cimino was selfish. [...] Selfishness, in itself, is not necessarily a flaw in a director, unless it swells into ruthless self-indulgence combined with a total disregard for the terms in which the production has been set." Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, A.S.C. is a Hungarian-American cinematographer.In 2003, a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild placed Zsigmond among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.-Biography:...
has said that Cimino is hard to work with but extremely talented visually.
Critics
Critics like Pauline KaelPauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
, John Simon
John Simon (critic)
John Ivan Simon is an American author and literary, theater, and film critic.-Personal life:Simon was born in Subotica, Bačka, County of Bačka, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later, known as Yugoslavia . He is of Hungarian descent...
and John Powers have viciously attacked Cimino's abilities as a filmmaker and storyteller. His failure with Heaven
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
succinctly criticized Cimino's storytelling abilities in her review of Year of the Dragon
Year of the Dragon (film)
Year of the Dragon is a 1985 film directed by Michael Cimino, starring Mickey Rourke, Ariane Koizumi and John Lone. The screenplay was written by Cimino and Oliver Stone and adapted from the novel by Robert Daley....
:
As I see it, Michael Cimino doesn't think in terms of dramatic values: he doesn't know how to develop characters, or how to get any interaction among them. He transposes an art-school student's approach from paintings to movies, and make visual choices: this is a New York movie, so he wants a lot of blue and harsh light and a realistic surface. He works completely derivatively, from earlier movies, and his only idea of how to dramatize things is to churn up this surface and get it rolling. The whole thing is just material for Cimino the visual artist to impose his personality on. He doesn't actually dramatize himself—it isn't as if he tore his psyche apart and animated the pieces of it (the way a GriffithD. W. GriffithDavid Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...
or a PeckinpahSam PeckinpahDavid Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...
did). He doesn't animate anything.
John Foote questioned whether or not Cimino deserved his Oscars for The Deer Hunter: "It seemed in the spring of 1979, following the Oscar ceremony, there was a sense in the industry that if the Academy could have taken back their votes — which saw “The Deer Hunter” and director Michael Cimino winning for Best Picture and Best Director — they would have done so."
Conflicting stories on background
Cimino has also been known to give exaggerated, misleading and conflicting (or simply tongue-in-cheek) stories about himself, his background and his filmmaking experiences. “When I’m kidding, I’m serious, and when I’m serious, I’m kidding,” responded Cimino. “I am not who I am, and I am who I am not.” Subsequent research by journalists and authors have revealed how and where Cimino has given false information.Age
Cimino has given various dates for his birth, usually shaving a couple of years off to seem younger, including February 3, 1943, November 16, 1943, and February 3, 1952. Many biographies about Cimino, like the Michael Cimino entries in David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film and Ephraim Katz's Film Encyclopedia, simply list his year of birth as 1943. However, his real birthdate is most likely February 3, 1939. In reference to Cimino's interview with Leticia Kent on December 10th 1978, Steven Bach said, "Cimino wasn't thirty-five but a few months shy of forty."Early career
Cimino claimed he got his start in documentary films following his work in academia and nearly completed a doctorate at Yale. Some of these details are repeated in a lot of Cimino's official bios. Steven BachSteven Bach
Steven Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios.In 1990, he was a member of the jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival....
refuted those claims in his book Final Cut: "[Cimino] had done no work toward a doctorate and he had become known in New York as a maker not of documentaries but of sophisticated television commercials".
Military service
During the production of The Deer Hunter, Cimino had given co-workers (such as cinematographerCinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, A.S.C. is a Hungarian-American cinematographer.In 2003, a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild placed Zsigmond among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.-Biography:...
and associate producer Joann Carelli) the vague impression that much of the storyline was biographical, somehow related to the director’s own experience and based on the experiences of men he had known during his service in Vietnam. Just as the film was about to open, Cimino gave an interview to The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
in which he claimed that he had been “attached to a Green Beret medical unit" at the time of the Tet Offensive of 1968. When the Times reporter, who had not been able to corroborate this, questioned the studio about it, studio executives panicked and fabricated “evidence” to support the story. Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
president Thom Mount
Thom Mount
Thom Mount is the former President of Universal Pictures and one of America's well-known independent producers.In the course of his thirty-five year career in the film industry, producer and studio head Thom Mount has made an indelible mark on the American film industry. He studied film at the...
commented at the time, "I know this guy. He was no more a medic in the Green Berets than I’m a rutabaga
Rutabaga
The rutabaga, swede , turnip or yellow turnip is a root vegetable that originated as a cross between the cabbage and the turnip; see Triangle of U...
." Tom Buckley, a veteran Vietnam correspondent for the Times, corroborated that Cimino had done a stint as an Army medic, but that the director had never been attached to the Green Berets. Cimino's active service – just six months in 1962 – had been as a reservist who was never deployed to Vietnam. Cimino’s publicist reportedly said that he intended to sue Buckley, but Cimino never did.
Possible sex change
Due to changes in his appearance, rumors about Cimino having a sex change persisted for a long time. In June of 1997, Variety columnist Army Archerd devoted an item to dispelling unspecified“reports” that “he’d changed his name to ‘Michelle’ Cimino” and that he was “changing his gender via surgery.” The item only served to give the rumor more currency. Cimino has said that he has not had nor intends to have a sex change and is not a cross-dresser. He suspects a former girlfriend, whom he did not name, to have started it in a drug-induced haze.
He explained that his change in appearance is due to weight fluctuations: “In the editing room, garbage comes in by the cartload. Doughnuts in the morning. Pizza comes rolling in in the afternoon. They’re always ordering food. You’re in there for 20 hours a day, seven days a week, getting no sleep, and you look like shit.” On the set of Heaven
Woody Harrelson
Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...
he began fasting and lost about 85 pounds. “I took off a whole person!”
Cimino's friends also refute the rumor. "I roared with laughter," said film critic F. X. Feeney, in response to the rumor. "I know him well enough to know it's never going to happen. You are talking about an internationally renowned perfectionist. If he can't come out looking like Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve is a French actress. She gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties in films such as Repulsion and Belle de jour . Deneuve was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her performance in Indochine; she also won César Awards for that...
, forget it." When asked by Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
if the rumors were true, Cimino replied, "Oh, really? My doctors are going to be very surprised when I go to take a physical for the next movie. It's going to be a big shock."
Filmography
| Year | Title | Box Office | Contribution | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | Silent Running Silent Running Silent Running is a 1972 environmentally themed science fiction film starring Bruce Dern and directed by Douglas Trumbull, who had previously worked as a special effects supervisor on such science fiction films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain.-Plot summary:Silent Running depicts a... |
Co-Writer | Screenwriting debut | |
| 1973 | Magnum Force Magnum Force Magnum Force is a 1973 American police thriller film and the second to feature Clint Eastwood as maverick cop Harry Callahan after the 1971 film Dirty Harry. Ted Post, who also directed Eastwood in TV's Rawhide and the feature film Hang 'Em High, directed the second film in the Dirty Harry series... |
$39,768,000 | Co-Writer | |
| 1974 | Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a 1974 American crime film written and directed by Michael Cimino and starring Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy, and Geoffrey Lewis.-Plot:... |
$21,700,000 | Director/Writer | Directorial debut |
| 1978 | The Deer Hunter The Deer Hunter The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza... |
$48,979,328 | Director/Co-Writer/Co-Producer | Oscar win for Best Picture and Best Director |
| 1979 | The Rose The Rose (film) The Rose is a 1979 American musical drama film which tells the story of a self-destructive 1960s rock star who struggles to cope with the constant pressures of her career and the demands of her ruthless business manager... |
$29,174,648 | Writer (uncredited) | |
| 1980 | Heaven's Gate Heaven's Gate (film) Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film based on the Johnson County War, a dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s... |
$3,484,331 | Director/Writer | |
| 1981 | The Dogs of War The Dogs of War (film) The Dogs of War is a 1980 war film based upon the novel The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth, directed by John Irvin. It stars Christopher Walken and Tom Berenger as part of a small, international unit of mercenary soldiers privately hired to depose President Kimba of a fictional "Republic of... |
$5,484,132 | Writer (uncredited) | |
| 1985 | Year of the Dragon Year of the Dragon (film) Year of the Dragon is a 1985 film directed by Michael Cimino, starring Mickey Rourke, Ariane Koizumi and John Lone. The screenplay was written by Cimino and Oliver Stone and adapted from the novel by Robert Daley.... |
$18,707,466 | Director/Co-Writer | |
| 1987 | The Sicilian The Sicilian (film) The Sicilian is a 1987 action film based on the novel of the same name by Mario Puzo. It was directed by Michael Cimino and stars Christopher Lambert, Joss Ackland and Terence Stamp.-Plot:... |
$5,406,879 | Director | |
| 1990 | Desperate Hours Desperate Hours Desperate Hours is a 1990 remake of the 1955 William Wyler crime drama of the same title. Both films are based on the novel by Joseph Hayes, who also co-wrote the script for this movie with Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal... |
$2,742,912 | Director | |
| 1996 | The Sunchaser The Sunchaser Sunchaser is a 1996 film directed by Michael Cimino and starring Woody Harrelson, Jon Seda and Anne Bancroft. This is director Cimino's last feature-length film.-Plot summary:... |
$21,508 | Director | Final feature film |
| 2007 | No Translation Needed | Director | Segment in To Each His Own Cinema To Each His Own Cinema To Each His Own Cinema is a 2007 French anthology film commissioned for the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival. The film is a collection of 34 short films, each 3 minutes in length, by 36 acclaimed directors... |
Further reading
- Adair, Gilbert (1981). Hollywood's Vietnam (1989 revised ed.). London: Proteus.
- Marchetti, Gina (1991). "Ethnicity, the Cinema and Cultural Studies." Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema. Ed. Lester D. Friedman. Urbana: University of Illinois Press
- Marchetti, Gina (1993). "Conclusion: The Postmodern Spectacle of Race and Romance in 'Year of the Dragon.'" Romance and the "Yellow Peril": Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- McGee, Patrick (2007). "The Multitude at Heaven's Gate". From Shane to Kill Bill. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
- Wood, Robin (1986). "From Buddies to Lovers" + "Two Films by Michael Cimino”. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan and Beyond. New York.
- Woolland, Brian (1995). "Class Frontiers: The View through Heaven's Gate." The Book of Westerns. Ed. Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York: Continuum
External links
- MichaelCimino.Fr French fan-created website