Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven’s Gate, and the Price of a Vision

by Charles Elton

The “revelatory” ( The New Yorker ) first biography of critically acclaimed then critically derided filmmaker Michael Cimino—and a reevaluation of the infamous film that destroyed his career.

The director Michael Cimino (1939–2016) is famous for two the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter , which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and Heaven’s Gate , the most notorious bomb of all time. Originally budgeted at $11 million, Cimino’s sprawling western went off the rails in Montana. The picture grew longer and longer, and the budget ballooned to over $40 million. When it was finally released, Heaven’s Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood’s auteur era.

Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Noted television producer and author Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven’s Gate , who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. Elton’s Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker. Based on extensive interviews with Cimino’s peers and collaborators and enemies and friends, most of whom have never spoken before, it unravels the enigmas and falsehoods, many perpetrated by the director himself, which surround his life, and sheds new light on his extraordinary career. This is a story of the making of art, the business of Hollywood, and the costs of ambition, both financial and personal.

Genres: Film, Biography, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Media Tie In, History, Biography Memoir

352 pages, Hardcover

Published March 29, 2022

About the author

Dear Reader,

Fifteen years ago I began writing Mr. Toppit when I was a Literary Agent representing the Estate of AA Milne, author of Winnie The Pooh. I learned the story of Milne’s son, Christopher Robin Milne, who grew to hate the fame his father’s books brought him. To reshape that idea in a modern context was the single idea that was the genesis of my novel.

During the years I spent writing, another phenomenon occurred in the world of children’s book publishing that made Winnie The Pooh’s fame seem parochial: Harry Potter. Suddenly, my idea of a modern series of children’s stories that take over the world did not seem so far-fetched. What had originally been conceived as a small story about my boy hero, Luke Hayman, suddenly made famous by his dead father’s books widened into both an examination of the mechanics of fame and a strange journey towards a literary Tipping Point that has devastating consequences for the characters in my book.

Mr. Toppit was published by Viking/Penguin in England last year and has been very successful and received an enormous amount of media interest, helped by being one of the Richard and Judy Summer Reads (the UK equivalent of the Oprah Book Club). It is being published in the US by Other Press and I wanted to explain why this means so much to me.

Although I only had the sketchiest notion of where Mr. Toppit was going to go when I started writing it, the one thing I was certain of was that the children’s books inside my novel would first become famous in America. I began to follow the story of a radio presenter named Laurie Clow, from her sad childhood in Los Alamos to her dysfunctional life in Modesto, California and the trip she makes to England where she collides with Luke and his family and becomes the catalyst that changes all of their lives. What happens in America is crucial to the plot of my book, and its publication completes the strange circle that started 15 years ago as I began writing.

I really hope you like the book and thank you in advance for all your support.

Best

Charles Elton



ABOUT CHARLES ELTON...

Charles Elton worked as a designer and editor in publishing before becoming a literary agent. Since 1991 he has worked in television and for the past ten years has been the executive producer in drama at ITV. Among his productions are the Oscar-nominated short Syrup, The Railway Children, Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Northanger Abbey, and the recent series Time of Your Life, all produced in association with WGBH Boston's Masterpiece Theater.

Reviews

[Silvia Moreno-Garcia]

A detailed look at a secretive, complex director that reveals some answers yet maintains many question marks. It's a good example of how hard it is to write a biography when the subject in question is so elusive. We exist in a time in which every minute of a famous personality's life is documented, but Cimino came to infamy in another era and therefore he remains at times an irritatingly opaque figure which gives him a mythical proportion. Elton doesn't add fluff or needless speculation, instead logically, slowly following a trail and reporting on it in a matter of fact way. I remember hearing about "Heaven's Gate" when I was a kid and here we have the same tale of hubris, but the years have provided it with an air of tragedy and melancholy that was absent when I first bumped into it. There's something bittersweet about Cimino's story, for it is not only the story of one director, but seems to be the story of a lost era. Only now, in the days of streaming services and a push for series rather than films, can we look back with a bit of tenderness at the yesterdays and what was lost. Ironically, Paramount recently approved a series about the making of The Godfather, but surely Cimino and his Heaven's Gate would have made for a most riveting watch, a real American tragedy.

[Bob Wake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb biography of enigmatic New Hollywood director Michael Cimino, who died in 2016, four years after overseeing Criterion’s celebrated restoration of Heaven’s Gate (1980). Charles Elton’s research is fresh and thorough, and the book fact-checks and debunks a good deal of Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate, the Film that Sank United Artists, producer Steven Bach’s 1985 memoir about working with Cimino.

[Doubledf99.99 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book on a director I never new much about though I always had enjoyed his movies and they are always just as good or better on rewatches.. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, and the Year of the Dragon. Good stuff about all the movies, and the info on Heaven's Gate was really good. Heaven's Gate has always been one of my favorite westerns, and now I understand what went into the making of the masterpiece it is. Great book and highly recommended.

[J Earl · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am having to adjust my rating to reflect the inconsistency of the publisher and their complete lack of response to several inquiries concerning their inconsistency. They are what they are, buyer beware, and the new rating reflects what the publisher is, though it would be lower if I could do it.

Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, and the Price of a Vision by Charles Elton is probably one of the top handful of entertainment biographies I have read. Not necessarily the most enjoyable, Cimino was too unlikeable to me for that, but as close as a book can come when the subject is as self-absorbed as he was.

Elton does a phenomenal job of not just doing a great deal of research but also presenting Cimino in as balanced a light as possible. His positives are highlighted along with his encyclopedic list of negatives. One of the main things is that this book helps to change the narrative that Cimino was responsible, singlehandedly, for a studio's collapse as well as salvaging the reputation of Heaven's Gate.

I loved The Deer Hunter and still watch it every couple of years. I never liked Heaven's Gate but I am not a fair judge of it because westerns aren't my favorite genre, so it needs to be special to appeal to me, and it wasn't. Beautifully shot though!

What for me made this an exceptional biography, particularly of an entertainment figure, for me was the intricate weaving of what facts of Cimino's life are known, the myths he and others created, and the tumultuous roller coaster that was his professional life. These weren't just mentioned in the same descriptions but the influences between them are shown to be pivotal. We have as intimate a view of Cimino as possible as well as a detailed glimpse of filmmaking during that period.

For those who want to claim that artistic vision trumps how an artist is allowed to treat both individuals and the organizations with which he deals, there is plenty to support that here. If, like me, you don't think artistic vision gives one free rein to lie, cheat, steal, and generally be an arrogant man child, there is plenty to support that as well.

I would highly recommend this to those who read biographies and also anyone interested in the business of filmmaking, particularly over the last quarter or so of last century. There are some interesting anecdotes I would have readily pulled out to share in courses I taught to illustrate both what is common and what passes for business in the movie industry.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Niklas Pivic · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the quote at the start of this book:

> If you don’t get it right, what’s the point? —MICHAEL CIMINO, EASTMAN KODAK PRINT AD, 1980

To be fair, this is also good:

> For Cimino it was a very simple transaction and a fair exchange: United Artists would give him all the money he needed and in return he would give them a masterpiece, a pearl beyond price. The trouble was that the pearl was beyond their price.

To many people, 'Heaven's Gate' represents two things: the end of the classic auteur-commands-everything Hollywood pyramid system and the ultimate box-office bomb.

These views have been perpetrated for some time, perhaps mainly thanks to Steven Bach's book 'Final Cut'. Bach was an executive officer at United Artists, the company that bankrolled 'Heaven's Gate'.

Thanks to Charles Elton's seemingly thorough investigations, it's time to revise the aforementioned two-dimensional view of Cimino. This is a book about the man, not that one film. And, as often is the case, there are many bricks that must come together to make a house. In the case of Michael Cimino, the bricks were often hidden away, shaped very differently, and the bill for building his house surprised some people, enough to bankrupt an entire movie-making company.

The first thing that struck me about Cimino is how he, throughout his entire life, strew around lies about himself. He said he was a Green Beret, born in 1952 or 1941, and always tried to push screenwriters out of their credits.

On the other hand, he gave actors a very wide margin of freedom, freely engaged with anyone, and was very generous to some people. He made film commercials that looked as though they were made by Jean-Luc Godard and quickly made it into the film-making world.

The book details the story of how Cimino truly fucked over Deric Washburn from different angles. No matter how you tell it, it's clear that Cimino wanted to take credit for the writing in different ways, even though Washburn himself currently paints a very kind picture of Cimino, one that provides nuance:

> After forty years, it was clear that the betrayal was still painful for Washburn, but he retained a kind of counterintuitive admiration for Cimino. “Mike, looking back on the thing, if he hadn’t been so dishonest and basically such a crook, that movie would never have gotten made,” he told me. Of The Deer Hunter’s nine eventual Oscar nominations, one that it didn’t win was Best Screenplay. When I asked Washburn if he felt bitter that Cimino had won Best Picture and Best Director and he had come away with nothing, he gave a graceful response: “I wished that I had got the Oscar, but I didn’t. I don’t wish that Mike hadn’t got it. It deserved everything it got.” What he did wish was that they had gone on working together. It was a tribute to the power of Cimino’s vision and his strengths as a collaborator (even if he denied having any collaborators) that Washburn—after all that had happened to him—could tell me, “We could’ve kept working together. We could have done ten movies. I can still remember the pleasure of working with Mike. My God, he was a rare thing. If he had called me anytime in the last forty years to do a script with him, I would have dropped everything.” After the January draft, there were at least four others until the movie began shooting a few months later. From the second draft onward, Washburn’s name was gone and the credit was “Original Screenplay by Michael Cimino.”

Some of Cimino's editing techniques are interesting:

> The other changes are very Cimino. Always fixated on the nature of masculinity in both his life and his movies, he macho’d up the script. When Michael is asked if only one shot is needed to kill a deer, he replies, “Definitely,” in the first version; in subsequent drafts, the response is “Two is pussy.” When asked a question, Axel (one of the deer hunters) always says, “For sure!” This gets changed to “Fuckin’ A” in every instance. The line “There’s times I swear I think you’re not normal” becomes “There’s times I swear I think you’re a faggot.” “Jerk” is always changed to “Asshole.”

The book definitely harks back to a time when filmmaking was done by fairly small outfits. You had one or two writers, and that was it. Elton compares this with films like 'The Flintstones', which is credited to thirty-six writers.

> There are numerous examples of writers unfairly denied credits—Gore Vidal on Ben-Hur, Joss Whedon on the Keanu Reeves movie *Speed*, and Cimino himself on Bette Midler’s *The Rose*. One of the other reasons the screenplay credit is so fought over is money: a writer gets paid for his work whether the movie is made or not, but if it gets green-lit, there is a substantial production bonus paid out when credits are agreed. If there is one writer credited, he gets it all. If there are more, the bonus is divided pro rata.

Elton is very good at clarifying movie-making matters and also at putting things in perspective, as with 'The Deer Hunter':

> While the success of The Deer Hunter was an unexpected triumph for everyone connected to it, Cimino was the person who deserved it most. All directors are, of course, “responsible” for their movie (and nobody believed that more aggressively than he did), but he had done something extraordinary. Even if Washburn’s contribution was much greater than Cimino would ever acknowledge, he had come up with a detailed outline of a hugely complex movie in a week, had got a finished screenplay written in little more than a month, then pushed it into production in four months. That was almost unprecedented in Hollywood—Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, for example, involved years of research and a ten-month preproduction period. Cimino’s three-hour movie was shot in four and a half months. Kubrick’s took a year.

When 'Heaven's Gate' started filming, an entire town was taken over and nearly turned into one enormous set. It was a massive undertaking. United Artists were convinced that Cimino, in spite of his prior record, would balance his budget and keep the timeline.

> With the cast and crew gone, Kalispell reverted to its sleepy self. The Outlaw Inn no longer had all its rooms occupied; the bars and restaurants now had space for the locals; the hunters were gearing up for the fall season. In the town, there was a surprising sight: people wearing bright yellow T-shirts with the words “I made it through Heaven’s Gate” printed on the back.

When the film was out, reviews were largely nasty and devastating.

> Pauline Kael later wrote that the press had always been “waiting to ambush Cimino.” Kris Kristofferson said, “It was like you had a beloved child of yours murdered and then the murder blamed on you.”

> A sales executive from United Artists said, “It’s as if somebody called every house in the country and said there will be a curse on your family if you go see this picture.” The reviews were hardly any better than they had been the first time around. Vincent Canby: “‘Heaven’s Gate’ looks like a fat man who’s been on a crash diet. Though it’s thinner, it’s not appreciably different.” Stanley Kauffmann: “A long bore has been converted into a tolerable non-success.” Only one journalist was brave enough to admit he loved the short version—Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times. He wrote, “In its new two-and-a-half-hour version, Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate is an experience that leaves you feeling you have witnessed a true screen epic…. Now it is time to sit back and enjoy all that Michael Cimino has wrought.” However, in a rare moment of critical vulnerability, he said, “I don’t think in twenty years of movie reviewing I’ve ever been so totally alone.”

Cimino's own words actually rang true and beautifully painful:

> Then, and at no point in the future, did he refuse to take the blame: “I would respond to Heaven’s Gate in the same way that Jack Kennedy responded to the Bay of Pigs. I take full responsibility. I think if you’re a boxer and you step into the ring you can’t complain about getting hit.” He did not deny it was painful, however: “At least in the old days, when they lashed you to a post and whipped you, they stopped once you passed out.”

People lost their jobs. Cimino's reputation was in tatters and he was deemed 'poison'.

Then, there's Bach's book about 'Heaven's Gate', which Cimino hated and deemed utterly parasitic. Of course, it is. The question is how bad it truly is.

> In 2004, an unflattering documentary about the making of Heaven’s Gate was made, based in part on the Bach book. Maybe as a small act of revenge for being fired by Cimino from the movie, Willem Dafoe was the narrator. After twenty-five years, Bach had not lost his vitriol about Cimino. When asked if he had any animosity toward him or the movie, he replied, “It would be like wishing ill of a corpse.” David Field, for the first time, agreed to be interviewed, and he told the story of Bach’s backstabbing over the casting of Isabelle Huppert. When he saw the film at a screening, that part had been cut out, and he was certain Bach had had a hand in it.

Elton does a fine job in telling the story about what really happened after 'Heaven's Gate' flopped. The film has since then gained critical appeal, which only shows how humanly flawed critics can be, jumping on the let's-slay-Cimino's-film bandwagon without abandon. Elton also shows Cimino in a nuanced and human way. I'm thoroughly impressed with how Elton investigated matters and interviewed people who have rarely been heard, simply because they either didn't want to betray Cimino's trust or because they knew how pap media works.

I love this paragraph:

> In the 1980s, Michael Cimino was never included in a package. He was no longer a star director, and never would be again. Just as Heaven’s Gate had become a symbol of all failed films, so Cimino became a symbol of all failed directors. In the years after the fall, he kept a dignified silence. However, even though he chose to fly under the industry radar, his legend was always way above it. He became an almost mythical figure—a kind of Hollywood boogeyman who could strike fear into children or at least the children of movie executives.

This was also lovely to read:

> Jim Hemphill, a programming consultant to the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles, recalled a bizarre chance meeting with Cimino in a Chinese restaurant in 2015. One night he received a text from a friend who said, “I think Cimino is sitting behind me at Chi Dynasty. Get over here!” Hemphill said, “That initiated my encounter with the man who made the movie that meant more to me than almost any other. Cimino was always at the top of my list of directors I wanted to meet, yet I always assumed this was a pipe dream, given his Salinger-esque retreat from the public.” Hemphill and his friend spent an hour drinking to pluck up the courage to approach him and then “we walked over to Cimino’s table: ‘Excuse me, are you Michael Cimino?’ ‘Who wants to know?’ was the gruff reply.” They told him they were filmmakers, and he said, “Have a seat, boys.” They spoke for hours. “He talked about moviemaking with more youthful enthusiasm than anyone I’ve ever heard, including Tarantino. I think he was genuinely touched by the fact that Chris and I had devoted so much of our lives to studying what he did.” Hemphill asked Cimino if he could interview him onstage if they could organize a screening of Heaven’s Gate. “He told me, ‘No way. Never in America.’”

There are details of how The Criterion Collection restored 'Heaven's Gate' to its true technical quality.

> The Criterion restoration was premiered at the sixty-ninth Venice Film Festival in August 2012. The movie had been shown there in 1982 to booing and slow hand-claps. Now its reception was ecstatic. Cimino spoke briefly before the screening: “I’ve had enough rejection for thirty-three years. Being infamous is never fun.”

[Carter Aakhus · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s difficult to write a revealing and insightful memoir when your subject was as mysterious and elusive as Michael Cimino was. Given the circumstances, this was a very entertaining and interesting read. The problem for me was that the author was a bit too caught up in trying to uncover all the details of his personal life and did not focus as much on the filmmaking. The making of Cimino’s post-Heaven’s Gate films Year of the Dragon and Desperate Hours are glossed over, which was disappointing.

[Richard Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Cimino has been something of a Hollywood enigma for decades. Unfairly labelled with almost single-handedly ending the ‘New Hollywood’ era with the commercial failure of Heaven’s Gate (1980), this book attempts to paint a portrait of the man before and after that cultural touchstone. Elton does a terrific job of pulling this together, despite the challenge of dealing with often contradictory stories about the enigmatic and often very elusive filmmaker. The sections on the making of The Deer Hunter and Heaven’s Gate are very detailed, although the same level isn’t applied to the films that came after. The last few years of Cimino’s life are a rollercoaster of stories too. A great reassessment of a career and a singular mind, at the very least it will send you back in the direction of the remastered Heaven’s Gate.

[Charles Blanchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I devoured this book after only a few days. It is fascinating to read and a must for fans of Cimino’s work and especially for those who knew this complex creative force personally. The research is impeccable. My favorite chapters are about the challenges making Deer Hunter and Heavens Gate, his two masterpieces.

It’s ultimately a sad book when considering Cimino was never allowed to fully realize his true potential, having completed only seven feature films in a career as a motion picture director that spanned well over twenty years.

What is also discussed is the comparison between the rejection of Cimino in the United States and how his work is revered in Europe .

Highly recommended for lovers of film biographies.

[Bill Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough page-turner.
I suppose you'd have to have a keen interest in at least one of his movies (I've seen 'The Deer Hunter' ~15 times), or at least an interest in the movie biz in general, which, upon reading this, is like learning how the sausage is made.
If you're aware of his downfall (aka 'cancellation') after 'Heaven's Gate' in the early '80s, you might find it humorous to learn that -- wait for it -- he's big in France!

[Emory · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written book separating fact from fiction that works hard to uncover what a mysterious figure Michael Cimino was and tell the story of his life in a respectful, nuanced way.

Recommended for film lovers and fans of film history.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has never seen a Cimino movie (and who doubts she’d like them), this was really interesting.

[Mark Schiffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly phenomenal film bio.

[Beamish13 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Way too much time spent chasing crackpots who didn’t know Cimino well, not enough on his post-Heaven’s Gate features, with the brilliant and devastating Year of the Dragon (1985) being as worthy of reappraisal as Heaven’s Gate.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

(book received through goodreads giveaway)

This sits at a 3.5 for me, and I'm not sure whether I'm gonna end up rounding up or down by the time I finish writing about it. Elton decided on a tricky subject for a biography in the mysterious but much-maligned Michael Cimino. I knew of him from a college professor, who recommended both The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate to me - I'm unsure if the professor meant it asa cautionary tale about bullheadedness in a collaborative medium, or about the courage of sticking to one's vision. I recall being blown away by The Deer Hunter, and not fully understanding why Heaven's Gate was so maligned but knowing it was a financial disaster that ruined the studio and Cimino's career. I didn't know anything else about him, until now.

Elton fully embraces the lack of solid information around Cimino, largely cultivated by his own deceptions. He reports on his own false leads, and acknowledges where his research runs short of reaching any sort of truth. I like that a lot about this book. He has done his work and he shows it, but in an engaging way. He also does not shy away from relaying Cimino's horrendously childish behaviours. In fact, the book is at its weakest when Elton attempts to rationalize or defend Cimino's bad behaviour, especially when he uses the reported behavior of other filmmakers to justify Cimino. Pointing the finger and saying "he did it too!" is a playground tactic, and not a mature way to address Cimino's temper tantrums or intense ownership of individuals he deemed close to him. Elton signed up for a hard assignment, trying to put Cimino and Heaven's Gate into a new context and drag them out of the gutter, but pulling others into the muck isn't the way to do it.

On that note, one part of this book is a bit odd, and I don't know how I feel about it. In his research, Elton finds a woman who claims to have known Cimino for many years in his later life, primarily as a client in her wig shop, where she says Cimino would hire her to do makeovers and he would play with gender presentations. Elton makes no assumptions about this, as he shouldn't, but part of me is kneejerk reacting that perhaps he should have omitted this part of the book entirely. Although even as I type that I don't agree with it; it's just that no one knew this part of Cimino, and he clearly wasn't comfortable enough expressing it to anyone but this one woman who was not particularly close to him otherwise. At what point does one's privacy after death keep these things close to the chest, and at what point do we talk about them? I think what Elton has done, addressing it in a straightforward manner, adding no speculation (that I recall), is probably best, and illustrates how difficult it can be even now for people to feel safe exploring their gender. On that note, Elton rightly calls out the vicious media attacks and speculation on Cimino's appearance (many of which were prying into whether he was transitioning). But he does so by, without any cited sources, comparing the coverage of his changing appearance to the coverage of the Wachowski sisters' transitions, saying they received universally kind media coverage. Elton. My guy. First of all, this was a weird way to make your point, that Cimino deserved respect because the Wachowskis got it (he deserved it point blank). Secondly, I can guarantee that's not correct in re: coverage of their transitions. People are cruel to trans women, and it's no wonder the elusive, private, and perpetually wounded Cimino you've documented in this book kept his own explorations of femininity and womanhood to himself.

On the whole : Elton presents a complex portrait of a difficult and elusive person, and although he veers a bit defensive at times, and childish in his defense at that, it's a compelling and sad portrait, and framed really intriguingly within the context of how his research contradicted itself (the opening and closing about meeting members of Cimino's family is really interesting, perhaps the most compelling parts of the book).

what the hell gonna round up because I don't read enough biographies to be particularly critical of this on its genre terms.

[Dan Humphrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, if not great look at the life and work of one of the most fascinating filmmakers to ever work in Hollywood: Michael Cimino.

So much heroic time and effort and research has gone into this book, though, that one is a little disappointed it hasn’t been better fact checked. There are several errors that I picked up on and I’m not exactly an expert in Hollywood trivia or the film business. One example: Elton says, on page 276, that Orson Welles’s career was entirely financed out of Europe after 1947. But we all know that Touch of Evil was funded by Universal Pictures in Hollywood in 1958. More concerningly, on page 291, he writes that the long version of Heaven’s Gate had “only been shown for less than a week in one movie theater in New York 32 years before” and that it’s rerelease in 2012 was akin to finally being able to see Welles’s cut of Magnificent Ambersons after all those years of it being unavailable. Only then, in Elton’s account, was Heaven’s Gate finally hailed as a classic.

In fact, the long version of Heaven’s Gate is the one that has been circulating pretty much nonstop since the shorter version left theaters in 1981. It’s the long version that appeared on VHS and Beta from MGM/UA Home Video in 1983 and then, in 2000, on DVD. If anything Cimino shorter version has been the one that has been almost impossible to see after it left theaters. Even in theaters, in the late 1990s a 70 mm print of the long version of Heaven’s Gate would play here and there in big cities – it’s played in San Francisco at least twice in the late 1990s when I lived there. Finally, in the early aughts, John Kirk at MGM remastered a new version of the long cut in 35 mm that played around North America including a full week at Film Forum in 2004. The New York Times published an article upon that rerelease by Nicole Laporte referring to Heaven’s Gate as a “rediscovered masterpiece.” How could Elton not have known this?

There’s also a frustrating lack of specificity as to why, exactly, the author thinks Cimino was such a great artist. He just seems to take for granted that everyone comes to this book thinking Cimino is up there with Visconti or Eisenstein or John Ford or Ingmar Bergman, but even in a book about one of those filmmakers you would want some idea as to what it is that causes the author to think their subject really is a great artist. This book really offers nothing in that regard, and there really are still relatively few people who would put Cimeno up there with Welles, Hawks, Scorsese or the great American filmmakers.

It’s also, frankly, not the gripping page-turner that Steven Bach’s book on the making of Heaven’s Gate was. That was truly the kind of book you finish in two, maybe three sittings. You just can’t put it down. This book may be more fair, more objective in a lot of ways but it’s just not as mesmerizing a read. And it’s frustrating because it presents Cimino as a true enigma and you really do want to know more. I guess it’s a sign of the author’s sense of responsibility that he doesn’t try to come up with pat answers to questions he doesn’t, in fact, know the answer to, but you do come away frustrated that once again you’ve got a book about “a riddle wrapped inside of an enigma” as they say. All that said, though, I’m glad I read this and would recommend it to anyone who’s interested in Cimino. His career really was fascinating and you do get a lot more here than you’ve gotten in any previous account.

[Mike Thorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like all of Cimino's films and love most of them, so I found some innate enjoyment in this. However, despite over 300 pages of material, the book manages to illuminate almost nothing about the infamously elusive director. Elton is not necessarily to blame for this: the book portrays Cimino as someone whose life's mission was to keep himself shrouded in uncertainty and contradiction. Inhabiting different personas for different relationships, Cimino took the rare interviews he accepted as opportunities to spread bizarre self-mythology.

This book documents the productions of The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate at great length, but it never dips below surface-level details: we get the sense that Cimino screamed at a lot of people, ignored all attempts at communication, and took an unreasonably long time to get things done. What we don't get is an explanation for how he rose to his esteemed position, nor any insight into the undeniable artistry of his work. The book's production sections devote way too much time to matters of budget and vague logistics, and not enough time to contextualizing Cimino's creative vision. Unfortunately, Elton only glosses over the director's other five films (all woefully underrated and understudied), only affording them the level of detail one might expect from a middling Wikipedia page.

I wanted to gain some knowledge about Cimino's influences. The book references his passion for visual art but cites almost no painters, sculptors, or designers he particularly liked. On page 214, Elton describes Cimino as "immensely literate", but nothing in the previous 213 pages would've suggested as much; sure, the book broadly gestures to the director's interest in Russian literature, but again, it sheds minimal light on specific titles or authors that spoke to him. As for cinematic influences, there's a complete absence of information. There are also some egregious errors herein (for example, Clint Eastwood is incorrectly credited as the director of Don Siegel's The Beguiled).

Maybe there's inevitable failure imbedded in an attempt to write a biography of someone as willfully inscrutable as Cimino, who did everything he could to unspool any attempts at narrativizing his life. There might be some potential for an abstract, quasi-postmodern mystery in Cimino, but this is not that book. It's a breezy, painless read, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but the most passionate Cimino enthusiasts.

[Burt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Wall Street Journal had a positive review of Cimino the other day and I checked it out from my local library. Director Michael Cimino is known for the success of his 1978 film The Deer Hunter and the debacle that was his follow up - 1980’s Heaven’s Gate. Author Charles Elton focuses on these two films in his 300-page biography.

Cimino is readable and cinema buffs will enjoy it. He led an interesting life, even after Heaven’s Gate largely ended his career as a top-rank director. Readers will be interested in Elton’s take on Cimino’s many plastic surgeries and cross dressing toward the end of his life. But this autobiography is not a “deep dive” into Cimino’s life - he was always secretive and Elton didn’t have to sources to do more than skim the surface.

The man who emerges in Cimino is only semi-likeable. He was extremely vain and did everything within his power to grab every ounce of credit for The Deer Hunter. But Cimino’s success with The Deer Hunter bought a ton of leniency in Hollywood. And that leniency led to the debacle that was Heaven’s Gate. (Elton is a fan of Heaven’s Gate and does his best to argue for the greatness of the Director’s Cut of the film).

In summary, I’m glad that I read this one - it entertained me. But I’m mildly disappointed because I think that there’s a better book on Cimino floating somewhere in the ether.

[Josh Avery · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book can loosely be defined as a biography of Michael Cimino, a man who was so reclusive and eccentric that he would fabricate his own life story, changing it regularly depending on his audience. He would tell people that he was born in 1953 or 1941 (he was born in 1939). He spoke little about his home life claiming that he and his brothers were raised in an abusive home and his brothers and him didn't speak to each other because of it, yet, his brother Edward lived in the house he grew up in until the day he died and was close to his other brother Peter and they both refuted anything Michael claimed about his upbringing stating that they were raised in a loving and caring home.

What can be proven about Michael Cimino is that he was born in Westchester, NY and moved to Los Angeles and got his start directing commercials in the early days of television. He lucked into the directors chair on "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" where his star, Clint Eastwood recommended him to the big studios where he would constantly be a thorn in the side of the studios due to his perfectionism and reputation of being extremely difficult and controlling in his movies, more often than not shooting well over budget and coming up with these grand, epic films and would refuse to cut them down for distribution. One of these films, "The Deer Hunter," which is universally considered one of the best 50 films of all time, was a sprawling epic about three lifelong friends who go off to Vietnam and the effects it has on each of them is an amazing and emotionally disturbing film. It won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars
for Christopher Walken in 1979 and at well over three hours, Cimino's ego only grew as he felt that his vision was justified and he would refuse to back down on his films in the future.

There is one massive reason why he is not mentioned as an all-time great director like his peers, Scorsese, Coppola, Kubrick and Lumet, and that reason is "Heaven's Gate" a meta Western that is known as one of the biggest flops in film history and it bankrupted United Artists in 1981. It was so massive in its scope that his original cut is over five hours long and lasted less than a week in theaters. It was universally blasted by critics and consumers alike and it costed the studio what would be close to a billion dollars of 2025 money. This author does as good as he can describing the plot of "Heaven's Gate" and it still makes no sense. Between the failure of "Heaven's Gate" and his reputation as a difficult malcontent, he spent the majority of the rest of his career in movie jail. When given opportunities to direct later, he couldn't get out of his own way. He was the original director of "Footloose" and his original vision for it was some sort of epic, West Side Story dance musical with Ren and Reverend Moore ending it in an old west style shootout. Can you imagine that movie?

He rarely gave interviews and didn't allow his picture to be taken a lot for reasons most likely related to the exaggerated reality he created for himself viewing his own legend as more important than the truth.

Before his death in 2016, he worked with The Criterion Channel to remaster and finally release his cut of "Heaven's Gate" and it is viewed a lot more favorably now as a cult classic amongst film scholars and experts, but at a staggering 229 minutes, it seems to be a viewing that requires time and patience.

This was an okay book, I give it a "C", it's extremely difficult to put together a story about someone who didn't want a story to define him, and there is so much heresay and indirect quotes, he's the type of director that really didn't need a book. A documentary style book about "Heaven's Gate" and/or "The Deer Hunter" would be more compelling in my opinion.

It's not recommended unless you are a completist of books about directors like myself.

[Terry_Creagh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and deeply bittersweet (if not outright depressing) read into one of the most complex individuals to come out of the Hollywood New Wave.

The book really excels at giving as much insight into Cimino's upbringing and personal life (and all the different versions of these lives he and others presented) as possible and paints a portrait of a very complex individual and the pitfalls of fame and the film industry. Cimino does come across as unlikeable and cruel at multiple times during the book, but you can't help but admire their commitment to creating art and his obvious skill at it. The later parts of the book particularly make Cimino sympathetic, as Cimino's obvious loneliness and regret at the end of their life are very emotional to read about. One passage about his Mother's love for him, despite him cutting her out of his, made me very emotional. Still, there is a bittersweet element in him getting to bear witness to Heaven's Gate reappraisal over the last four years of his life.

Elton gives very detailed accounts and somewhat of a reassessment of the production of Cimino's two most noteworthy films (The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate) with many key players interviewed throughout, including the elusive Joann Carelli, a figure almost as elusive and intriguing as Cimino himself. The version of events Elton's has uncovered depict Cimino in a somewhat less egotistical light than the likes of Steven Bach's book Final Cut, which is refreshing to see.

However, the book lacks in some areas. It would have been nice to get more detailed accounts of the production of Cimino's last four films. These films were critically reviled, but have seen reappraisal (Tarantino particularly has championed Year of the Dragon over the years) and I think are somewhat dismissed here given they are not explored nearly as much as Heaven's Gate or The Deer Hunter. These films, along with the unmade projects of Cimino's career, deserved to have more focus than they did here. Also, due to the secrecy around Cimino remaining intact and those close to him still not being comfortable sharing a lot of details about Cimino, the book does seem like it is missing some possible insight. Carelli was never going to allow Elton or any other biographer inside Cimino's home to read all his files and such, which is unfortunate because I'm sure whatever was in there would have helped create an even deeper image of Cimino. Who knows, maybe Cimino had their own personal Rosebud in there that would explain everything about the man's life!

[Max Freese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only one of the most brilliant books on the topic of filmmaking and Hollywood, but Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, and the Price of a Vision by Charles Elton is truly one the best biographies I've ever read. It is so deeply moving and sorrowful. The complicated life of the subject, film director Michael Cimino, is written with such nuance and expertise. The last few chapters were so fascinating I couldn't put the book down.

Michael Cimino started his career directing commercials in New York City in the 1960s. He then moved to Hollywood to write screenplays and in 1974 he directed his first feature film, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot starring Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges. Cimino's follow-up was the Vietnam war movie The Deer Hunter in 1978. The Deer Hunter, starring Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep, was a massively successful film winning multiple Academy Awards including Best Director and Best Picture. Hot off that success, Cimino went to make his passion project, the movie Heaven's Gate, an epic historical Western. After a troubled production with the studio, Heaven's Gate was previewed in a few theaters in 1980 and then quickly pulled without ever getting a proper official release. The movie's budget was enormous and at the time it was considered the biggest box office bomb in history. It permanently ruined Cimino's career and the few movies he worked on after were of lower and lower quality. The last movie he made, The Sunchaser was released in 1996. Michael Cimino died in 2016 after two decades of moving away from the public eye.

Author Charles Elton does a fantastic job making this book part biography and part behind-the-scenes history. Even if you're not a movie nerd and have never seen or heard of these movies, Elton makes the material accessible and enjoyable to read. Michael Cimino was an elusive figure for most of his life and gave few interviews, and when he did, he often made contradictory statements and stories about himself. Elton performs wonders tracking down and interviewing various people from Cimino's life trying to get the story straight. Those parts feel like you're also reading a great piece of investigative journalism.

I was at first unsure of this book because I was a big fan of Michael Cimino and his movies, and I was skeptical how much more it could truly reveal. It delivers on all fronts.

[Jason M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know much about the director Michael Cimino before 2025, but as I've been making it a point to watch my way through the IMDb Top 250 movies list, I inevitably reached THE DEER HUNTER, and then watched an abridged edited of HEAVEN'S GATE currently available on Tubi. I found DEER HUNTER to not live up to the hype; HEAVEN'S GATE I found far better than its reputation, though I disliked the various escalating indignities visited upon Isabelle Huppert's character, the only proper female role in the picture.

I picked up Charles Elton's biography to help me sort through Cimino's legacy. Earlier this year I'd read comprehensive phone book-sized tomes on directors Stanley Kubrick and Woody Allen. This however, at least half the size of those two other books, reads more like an extended magazine article. Elton, a British writer trying to untangle the life of a Brooklyn/Long Island Italian-American, makes himself a character in the story, which is more about him trying to penetrate the web of Cimino's life rather than an independent and impartial reconstruction of the man's work.

Elton goes in roughly chronological order, and tells us who he met and spoke to so we know where the anecdotes come from. We know that Cimino often told tall tales about his own life, and evidently some of Elton's interview subjects did the same. One source who features in a lot of early chapters turns out to be an impostor. A woman who tries to convince us that Cimino was secretly trans, living a a separate identity as Nikki in his later years, is ... well, you can choose to believe the source or not, but her stories sounded self-serving to me, and in a proper work of journalism, where every episode has to be verified at at least two sources, this story wouldn't have appeared. Elton saves some surprising revelations for the final chapters.

As for the filmmaking, Elton spends the most time on HEAVEN'S GATE, but I wouldn't call his research exhaustive. He mentions having seen Cimino's memos and production files but doesn't cite or reproduce any of them. He clearly has sympathy for HEAVEN'S GATE and enjoys chronicling Cimino's late-in-life third act as an auteur feted across Europe, but in the book he comes across as more of a fan than a film critic.

On the whole, it's a worthy read watching Elton try to find the "real" Cimino, only to learn that there might not have ever been one.

[Brenden Gallagher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Elton chose as part of his title for his biography of Michael Cimino the phrase "the price of vision." And what a price it was.

Michael Cimino directed seven films, but he is known for two of them, the universally acclaimed "The Deer Hunter" and the equally reviled "Heaven's Gate." Both films have created a kind of legend around Cimio and cemented him as one of the 70s auteurs that film twitter likes to genuflect toward.

Because Cimino doesn't have the unassailable reputation of Coppola or Kubrick, he offers us a chance to evaluate the uncompromising auteur style of filmmaking so heralded by modern cineastes on its own terms. On one hand, there is something romantic about the kind of director willing to run well over budget and over schedule to get everything "just right." However, while Cimino took that exacting approach in directing on most of his films, the staunchly uncollaborative and fairly ungenerous method of working only yielded one masterpiece. By contrast, oft-cited anti-auteurist filmmakers like Mike Nichols and Sidney Lumet have a few gems no matter who you talk to.

So, is the cult of the auteur as much about the way such a director carries themselves as the results they get? Are we dto praise Cimino's uncompromising approach when the approach often fell short? Elton asks these questions sympathetically but unrelentingly in "Cimino." Though Elton is an obvious admirer of the director, he does seem to be asking us over and over again, as he chronicles the ruined relationships, the ruined careers, the budget overruns, and scheduling nightmares, "Was it worth it?"

And I think what makes this book so much greater than an argument in Indiewire's Twitter mentions is that Elton's considered answer is "Yes and no." On one hand, no one can watch the wedding sequence in "The Deer Hunter" without observing a work of genius. On the other hand, when Cimino consciously tried to recreate the magic he captured in that sequence, he generally ran into pain and failure.

"Cimino" is one of my favorite entries into discourse on the "auteur" that I've read, specifically because Elton is not really interested in taking a side. For Elton, it is enough to observe that Cimino was, at times, brilliant, and, more often, self-destructive, in his auteurist tendencies.

And, well, whether it was all worth it isn't a question he can definitely answer. He leaves that up to you.

[C.G. Twiles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hollywood loves nothing better than to chew up and spit out artistic geniuses—witness its treatment of Orson Welles or Stanley Kubrick. On the other hand, directors have often acted abominably and Hollywood is only too happy to ignore this so long as the money keeps rolling in. Michael Cimino, who won a Best Director Oscar for The Deer Hunter and had a varied career that also included penning the screenplay for the Bette Midler movie The Rose, went from the highest of highs in Tinseltown - watching his Vietnam drama (starring Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken) win nine Oscars including Best Picture -to the lowest of lows - his next movie "Heaven's Gate" became synonymous with "movie disaster" and gave the director such a reputation for difficulty that he was never able to recover. (Hollywood doesn't mind a difficult director so long as the movies are hits.) When Heaven's Gate - which went far over budget and was critically lambasted and ignored by audiences - flopped, Hollywood was only too quick and too happy to dismiss the same director they'd swooned about the year before.

Charles Elton meticulously researches this biography on the enigmatic director, who was a Jay Gatsby type who made up much of his past and tended to tell tall tales about himself. He never married though he had a lifelong "friendship" with a woman who was his producer and may or may not have been his girlfriend at one time or another. He often spoke of all the women he slept with, but the author - so diligent he's the first journalist to ever track down Cimino's brothers - couldn't find one woman he ever was involved with romantically. And towards the end of his life, Cimino became either a cross-dresser, a drag queen, or even possibly was transgender - no one is really sure.

It was interesting to see that Heaven's Gate - the so-called disaster that ruined so much of this man's life - is now considered a masterpiece. How Hollywood! (And I must see the directors cut)

If you are interested in Cimino, or Hollywood or movies in general, you definitely have to pick up this indispensable bio of one of the most elusive and talented directors. Thank you to #NetGalley #CharlesElton and the publisher for a copy of an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Jeff Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

In “College,” one of the most beloved “Sopranos” episodes, Tony’s compartmentalized lives threaten to converge—violently—during a road-trip with daughter Meadow. Mere hours after killing a former associate, and while Meadow is being interviewed in some collegiate office, Tony happens to see the inscription of a Nathaniel Hawthorne quote: “No Man Can Wear One Face to Himself and Another to the Multitude Without Finally Getting Bewildered as to Which May Be True.”

I thought of that quote while reading Charles Elton’s “Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven’s Gate, and the Price of a Vision.” As a person—even separate from his filmmaking—Cimino seemed like he would have been perpetually bewildered.

The man constructed a personal mythology that could be contradicted or disproven upon the slightest scrutiny. In other words, he was a liar. However, he was such a good one, we really wonder if he was the rare breed who believed his own falsehoods, even about things as objective as the year he was born.

This character study is an intriguing component to “Cimino,” but as the subtitle states, the book is mainly about 1980’s “Heaven’s Gate,” a Hollywood disaster so storied it became a cautionary tale of auteur hubris and studio naivete.

Elton does what’s common in many true-events books nowadays, he confirms some aspects of the commonly held narrative while debunking others. Yes, the budget of “Heaven’s Gate” mutated to an extent difficult to grasp. But no, the failure of the movie—although abysmal—didn’t result in the United Artists’ bankruptcy, as has been held for decades.

Re: “Cimino” as a read, it’s quite good. I have an impulsive weakness for these movie books, and I can say that this one is a cut above. Elton knows his stuff and presents it in a way interesting to the lay-reader. As an example of his inside-baseball approach, he enumerates what options a movie studio had, circa 1980, when a filmmaker went rogue. Pull the plug completely? Replace him? Or do nothing and hope the end product is worth it?

P.S.
It was mind-blowing to learn that, in an alternate universe not that different from ours, there exists “Michael Cimino’s: Footloose”!

We demand the 219-minute cut now!

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thank to NetGalley and the publisher Abrams Press for a copy of this biography and film history.

How does a biographer write about a subject who spent most of his life lying about their past, when the person who knew the subject best continues with most of the lies long past where the truth is known, even onto the subjects death. In Charles Elton's biography on the life of famed filmmaker Michael Cimino you research everything you can, chase down every person you can, and write a superb book on a very hidden man.

Michael Cimino is known principally for the films The Deer Hunter, which won numerous Oscars and critical acclaim, and Heaven's Gate which was derided by most critics, and thought by many to have lead to the closing of a major Hollywood film studio. These are only some of the legends that Mr. Elton proves wrong in his book. Many other legends are those about the director himself, from his family, his upbringing, education, age, military service and his film credits and works. Cimino tried to create a Michael Cimino that was as much art as the films that he had in hand in writing and directing.

Mr. Elton has done an incredible amount or research, tracking down schoolmates, lost friends, extras on sets, and Cimino's family who were either thought lost or dead. The writing is very good, and covers the eras that Cimino worked in both advertising and movies in detail, and information on his long exile after the failure of his final film. There is quite a cast of characters, from the loyal producer who protected him and enabled him, film critics, drivers, and others who were cast away by Cimino for a variety of reasons.

A very telling book about a man who seemed to value privacy, and recreation of his life as much as the valued creating art. Considering that he had so little much in the way of myth and fables to sort through, it is amazing that Mr. Elton was able to gather so much factual information about Cimino. A great book for movie fans, especially 1970's movies fans, or people who enjoy great biographies on complicated individuals.

[Brian Washines · Rating 4 out of 5]

Filmmaking is a passion. You lose it and it's like you've lost a life, or a reason for it. The truest embodiment of the craft we cull from the nearest streaming service. To think of the blood and tears and sweat that went into films like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter seems unimaginable. Michael Cimino is the best example of the duality of fates to befall a single artist in a single breath. A man who one minute brought about an Oscar-winning picture, and another the most infamous failures in cinematic history, Heaven's Gate.

Charles Elton isn't the first author to tackle the subject of Cimino, just the latest, but while prior work appeared to have chosen to point out Cimino's flaws, Elton is a bit more sympathetic. Not to say he eschewed the complexities of the director. Both flawed and brilliant, we see a man driven by perfection, marred by subjectivity, to where enemy fronts to his endeavors reside everywhere. A grand portrait of a rise and fall and renowned admiration of a man and his work. It's also a lesson for those interested in the craft. As Clint Eastwood (star and producer of Cimino's debut feature) as Dirty Harry said, "A man has got to know his limitations."

[A Cesspool · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kinda remarkable so many still regard Steven Bach’s Final Cut in such regard – á la alongside Lillian Ross’ Picture or Julie Salamon’s Devil’s Candy…
Particularly since Charles Elton’s 2022 Ciminio monograph.
Simply put..

Steven Bach’s Final Cut/Heaven’s Gate is more synonymous with Bogdanovich/Welles’ version of How Citizen Cain was really made;

Whereas...

Charles Elton/David Field is on par with Pauline Kale/John Houseman/David Fincher’s more sincere record: Raising Kane & Mank (respectively).

#2025_re-read

[Joe Meyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book that manages to overcome the challenges of doing a biography of a Hollywood figure who embellished and/or lied about his history from the moment he became a celebrity.
Cimino trimmed many years off his age, lied about his military service, and denied many collaborators credit for their work on projects they did with the filmmaker.
Elton makes his search for the ‘truth’ about Cimino part of his narrative (like that dogged reporter in ‘Citizen Kane’). He also admits there are many cloudy facets of the writer-director’s life that might never be cleared up.
Along the way we get fascinating accounts of the turbulent production histories of Cimino’s two major works - ‘The Deer Hunter’ and ‘Heaven’s Gate.’
A fascinating one of a kind biography of a man who carved out a unique position in modern Hollywood history with his remarkably fast rise & his equally quick descent (all within the space of just a few years).
(An electronic galley was supplied by Edelweiss.)

[Magnus Stanke · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 and 1/2 stars, rounded up to 4

Michael Cimino, the subject of this biography, turns out to be a very strange subject indeed, so strange the author struggles to come to terms with him. While it makes an entertaining read I also ended up disliking Cimino or whatever I projected onto him based on the information in the text.
However, the reason my rating isn't higher is that Chalres Elton doesn't write enough about the films themselves. Cimino only directed 7 features, and at best three of them are any good. Still, if you're going to write a book about a film director I would like to read about what's on screen and a bit more of the historic context. One of the reasons I picked this up in the first place is because of its New Hollywood setting, but there was very little talk of that, at least not enough for my liking.
Instead we get a good bit about the efforts of the author to find out more about Cimino, efforts that weren't really crowned by success.