The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate Wikipedia pages

The Deer Hunter
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The Deer Hunter
Robert De Niro, in character, points a pistol to his head. It is a black-and-white image with red highlighting his bandanna and the film credits below.
Theatrical release poster

Directed by
Michael Cimino
Produced by
Barry Spikings
Michael Deeley
 Michael Cimino
 John Peverall
Screenplay by
Deric Washburn
Story by
Michael Cimino
 Deric Washburn
 Louis Garfinkle
Quinn K. Redeker
Starring
Robert De Niro
Christopher Walken
John Savage
John Cazale
Meryl Streep
George Dzundza
Music by
Stanley Myers
Cinematography
Vilmos Zsigmond
Edited by
Peter Zinner
Production
   company
EMI
Distributed by
Columbia-EMI-Warner (UK)
Universal Pictures (US)
Release date(s)
December 8, 1978 (Los Angeles)
February 23, 1979 (United States)
February 27, 1979 (United Kingdom)

Running time
183 minutes[1]
Country
United States
Language
English
 Russian
 Vietnamese
 French
Budget
$15 million[2]
Box office
$48,979,328[3]
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 American war drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steelworkers and their service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, John Cazale, Meryl Streep, and George Dzundza. The story takes place in Clairton, a small working class town on the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh and then in Vietnam, somewhere in the woodland and in Saigon, during the Vietnam War.
The film was based in part on an unproduced screenplay called The Man Who Came to Play by Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker about Las Vegas and Russian roulette. Producer Michael Deeley, who bought the script, hired writer/director Michael Cimino who, with Deric Washburn, rewrote the script, taking the Russian roulette element and placing it in the Vietnam War. The film went over-budget and over-schedule and ended up costing $15 million. The scenes of Russian roulette were highly controversial on release.
The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken, and was named by the American Film Institute as the 53rd Greatest Movie of All Time in the 10th Anniversary Edition of the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot 1.1 Act I
1.2 Act II
1.3 Act III
1.4 Epilogue
2 Cast
3 Pre-production 3.1 Development
3.2 Screenplay 3.2.1 Cimino's claim
3.2.2 Washburn's claim
3.2.3 Deeley's reaction to the revised script

4 Filming 4.1 The wedding scenes
4.2 The bar and the steel mill
4.3 Hunting the deer
4.4 Vietnam and the Russian roulette scenes
4.5 Filming locations
5 Post-production 5.1 Sound design
5.2 Previews
6 Soundtrack 6.1 Selected tracks
7 Release
8 Analysis 8.1 Controversy over Russian roulette 8.1.1 Critics' response
8.1.2 Cast and crew response
8.2 Director Cimino's autobiographical intent
8.3 Coda of "God Bless America"
9 Reception 9.1 Top-ten lists
9.2 Revisionism following Heaven's Gate
10 Awards 10.1 Lead-up to awards season
10.2 51st Academy Awards
10.3 Golden Globes
10.4 Complete list of awards
11 Legacy 11.1 Honors and recognition
11.2 In popular culture
11.3 American Film Institute recognition
12 Home media
13 See also
14 References 14.1 Annotations
14.2 Notes
14.3 Bibliography
14.4 Further reading
15 External links

Plot[edit]
Act I[edit]
In Clairton, a small working-class town in western Pennsylvania, in late 1967, Russian American steel workers Michael "Mike" Vronsky, Steven Pushkov, and Nikonar "Nick" Chevotarevich, with the support of their friends and coworkers Stan and Peter "Axel" Axelrod and local bar owner and friend John Welsh, prepare for two rites of passage: marriage and military service.
The opening scenes set the character traits of the three main characters. Mike is the no-nonsense, serious but unassuming leader, Steven the loving, near-groom, pecked at by his mother for not wearing a scarf with his tuxedo and Nick is the quiet, introspective man who loves hunting because, he likes ". . . the trees . . . the way the trees are . . ." The recurring theme of "one shot", which is how Mike prefers to take down a deer, is introduced. Before the trio ships out, Steven and his girlfriend Angela, who is pregnant by another man but loved by Steven nonetheless, marry in an Orthodox wedding. In the meantime, Mike contains his feelings for Nick's girlfriend Linda. At the wedding reception held at the local VFW bar, the guys get drunk, dance, sing, and have a good time, but then notice a soldier in a U.S. Army Special Forces uniform. Mike buys him a drink and tries starting a conversation with him to find out what Vietnam is like, but is ignored. After Mike explains that he, Steven, and Nick are going to Vietnam, the Green Beret raises his glass and says "fuck it".
The soldier again toasts them with "fuck it". After being restrained by the others from starting a fight, Mike goes back to the bar and in a mocking jest to the soldier, raises his glass and toasts him with "fuck it". The soldier then glances over at Mike and grins. Later, Steven and Angela drink from conjoined goblets, this being a traditional ceremony, and it is believed that if they drink without spilling any wine, they will have good luck for life. A drop of blood-red wine is unknowingly spilled on her wedding gown, foreshadowing the coming events.
After Linda catches the bouquet of flowers thrown by Angela, Nick asks her to marry him, and she agrees. Later that night, a drunken Mike runs through the town, stripping himself naked along the way. After Nick chases him down he begs Mike not to leave him "over there" if anything happens. The next day, Mike, Nick, Stanley, John and Axel go deer hunting one last time, and Michael again kills a deer with "one shot".
Act II[edit]
The film then jumps abruptly to a war-torn village, where U.S. helicopters attack a Communist occupied Vietnamese village with napalm. A North Vietnamese soldier throws a stick grenade into a hiding place full of civilians. An unconscious Mike (now a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Special Forces) wakes up to see the NVA soldier shoot a woman carrying a baby. In revenge, Mike kills him with a flame thrower. Meanwhile, a unit of UH-1 "Huey" helicopters drops off several U.S. infantrymen, Nick and Steven among them. Michael, Steven and Nick unexpectedly find each other just before they are captured and held together in a riverside prisoner of war camp with other U.S. Army and ARVN prisoners.
For entertainment, the sadistic guards force their prisoners to play Russian roulette and gamble on the outcome. All three friends are forced to play. Steven plays against Mike, who offers moral support, but he breaks down and loses control of the gun, grazing himself with the bullet when it discharges. As punishment, the guards put Steven into an underwater cage, full of rats and the bodies of others who earlier faced the same fate. Mike and Nick end up playing against each other, and Michael convinces the guards to let them play with three bullets in the gun. After a tense match, they kill their captors and escape.
Mike earlier argued with Nick about whether Steven could be saved, but after killing their captors, he rescues Steven. The three float downriver on a tree branch. An American helicopter accidentally finds them, but only Nick is able to climb aboard. The weakened Steven falls back into the water, and Mike plunges in the water to rescue him. Mike helps Steven to reach the river bank, but his legs are crippled, so Mike carries him through the jungle to friendly lines. Approaching a caravan of locals escaping the war zone, he stops a South Vietnamese military truck and places the wounded Steven on it, asking the soldiers to take care of him.
Nick, who is psychologically damaged, recuperates in a military hospital in Saigon with no knowledge on the status of his friends. After being released, he aimlessly stumbles through the red-light district at night. At one point, he encounters Julien Grinda, a champagne-drinking friendly Frenchman outside a gambling den where men play Russian roulette for money. Grinda entices the reluctant Nick to participate, and leads him into the den. Mike is present in the den, watching the game, but the two friends do not notice each other at first. When Mike does see Nick, he is unable to get his attention. When Nick is introduced into the game, he grabs the gun, fires it at the current contestant, and then again at his own temple, causing the audience to riot in protest. Grinda hustles Nick outside to his car to escape the angry mob. Mike cannot catch up with Nick and Grinda as they speed away.
Act III[edit]
Back in the U.S., Mike returns home but maintains a low profile. He tells the cab driver to drive past the house where all his friends are assembled, as he is embarrassed by the fuss made over him by Linda and the others. He visits Linda and grows close to her but only because of the friend they both think they have lost. Mike is eventually told about Angela, whom he goes to visit at the home of Steven's mother. Angela is apathetic and barely responsive. When asked by Mike about Steven's whereabouts, she writes a phone number on a scrap of paper, which leads Mike to the local veterans' hospital where Steven has been for several months.
Mike goes hunting with Axel, John and Stan one more time, and after tracking a deer across the woods, takes his "one shot" but pulls the rifle up and fires into the air. He then sits on a rock escarpment and yells out, "OK?" which echoes back at him from the opposing rock faces leading down to the river, signifying his fight with his mental demons over losing Steven and Nick. He also berates Stan for carrying around a small revolver and waving it around, not realizing it is still loaded. Mike visits Steven, who has lost both of his legs and is partially paralyzed. Steven reveals that someone in Saigon has been mailing large amounts of money to him, and Mike is convinced that it is Nick. Mike brings Steven home to Angela and then travels to Saigon just before its fall in 1975.
He tracks down Grinda, who has made a lot of money from the Russian roulette-playing Nick. He finds Nick in a crowded roulette club, but Nick appears to have no recollection of his friends or his home in Pennsylvania. Mike realizes that Nick thinks that he and Steven are dead, since Nick was the only one who made it back on the helicopter. Mike enters himself in a game of Russian roulette against Nick, hoping to jog Nick's memory and persuade him to come home, but Nick's mind is gone. Mike grabs Nick's arms to keep him from taking another turn, which are covered in scars (implied from using heroin). At the last moment, after Mike's attempts to remind him of their hunting trips together, he finally breaks through, and Nick recognizes Mike and smiles. Nick then tells Mike, "one shot", raises the gun to his temple, and pulls the trigger. The bullet is in the gun's top chamber, and Nick kills himself. Horrified, Mike tries reviving him, but to no avail.
Epilogue[edit]
Back home in 1975, there is a funeral for Nick, whom Michael brings home, good to his promise. The film ends with everyone at John's bar, singing "God Bless America". Mike toasts in Nick's honour.
Cast[edit]
Robert De Niro as S/Sgt. Michael "Mike" Vronsky. Producer Deeley pursued De Niro for The Deer Hunter because he felt that he needed De Niro's star power to sell a film with a "gruesome-sounding storyline and a barely known director".[4] "I liked the script, and [Cimino] had done a lot of prep," said De Niro. "I was impressed."[5] De Niro prepared by socializing with steelworkers in local bars and by visiting their homes. Cimino would introduce De Niro as his agent, Harry Ufland. No one recognized him.[6] De Niro claims this was his most physically exhausting film. He explained that the scene where Michael visits Steve in the hospital for the first time was the most emotional scene that he was ever involved with.[7]
Christopher Walken as Cpl. Nikanor "Nick" Chevotarevich. His performance garnered his first Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actor.
John Savage as Cpl. Steven Pushkov. Savage was a last-minute replacement for Roy Scheider, who dropped out of the production two weeks before the start of filming due to "creative differences"; Universal managed to keep Scheider to his three-picture contract by forcing him into doing Jaws 2.[8]
John Cazale as Stan ("Stosh"). All scenes involving Cazale, who had terminal cancer, had to be filmed first. Because of his illness, the studio initially wanted to get rid of him, but Streep, with whom he was in a relationship, and Cimino threatened to walk away if they did.[9][10] He was also uninsurable, and according to Streep, De Niro paid for his insurance because he wanted him in the film. This was his last film, as he died shortly after filming wrapped. Cazale never saw the finished film.[9]
Meryl Streep as Linda. Prior to The Deer Hunter, Streep was seen briefly in Fred Zinnemann's Julia and the eight-hour miniseries Holocaust.[11] "I've hardly ever seen a person so devoted to someone who is falling away like John was," said Pacino. "To see her in that act of love for this man was overwhelming."[12] In the screenplay, Streep's role was negligible. Cimino explained the set-up to Streep and suggested that she write her own lines.[13]
George Dzundza as John Welsh
Shirley Stoler as Steven's mother
Chuck Aspegren as Peter "Axel" Axelrod. Aspegren was not an actor; he was the foreman at an East Chicago steelworks visited early in pre-production by De Niro and Cimino. They were so impressed with him that they offered him the role. He was the second person to be cast in the film, after De Niro.[6]
Rutanya Alda as Angela Ludhjduravic-Pushkov
Amy Wright as Bridesmaid
Joe Grifasi as Bandleader
While producer Deeley was pleased with the revised script, he was still concerned about being able to sell the film. "We still had to get millions out of a major studio," wrote Deeley, "as well as convince our markets around the world that they should buy it before it was finished. I needed someone with the calibre of Robert De Niro."[14] De Niro was one of the biggest stars at that time, coming off Mean Streets, The Godfather Part II, and Taxi Driver. In addition to attracting buyers, Deeley felt De Niro was "the right age, apparently tough as hell, and immensely talented."[4]
Hiring De Niro turned out to be a casting coup because he knew nearly every actor in New York. De Niro brought Meryl Streep to the attention of Cimino and Deeley. With Streep came John Cazale, Streep's romantic partner at the time, who was already very sick with cancer and would die shortly afterwards.[11] De Niro also accompanied Cimino to scout locations for the steel-mill sequence as well as rehearse with the actors to use the workshops as a bonding process.[15]
Each of the six principal male characters carried a photo in their back pockets depicting them all together as children so as to enhance the sense of camaraderie amongst them. In addition to this, director Cimino instructed the props department to fashion complete Pennsylvania IDs for each of them, including driver's licenses, medical cards and various other pieces of paraphernalia, in order to enhance each actor's sense of his character.[16]
Pre-production[edit]
There has been considerable debate, controversy, and conflicting stories about how The Deer Hunter was initially developed and written.[5] Director and co-writer Michael Cimino, writer Deric Washburn, producers Barry Spikings and Michael Deeley all have different versions of how the film came to be.
Development[edit]
In 1968, the record company EMI formed a new company called EMI Films, headed by producers Barry Spikings and Michael Deeley.[5] Deeley purchased the first draft of a spec script called "The Man Who Came to Play", written by Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker, for $19,000.[17] The spec script was about people who go to Las Vegas to play Russian Roulette.[5] "The screenplay had struck me as brilliant," wrote Deeley, "but it wasn't complete. The trick would be to find a way to turn a very clever piece of writing into a practical, realizable film."[18] When the movie was being planned during the mid-1970s, Vietnam was still a taboo subject with all major Hollywood studios.[17] According to producer Michael Deeley, the standard response was "no American would want to see a picture about Vietnam".[17]
After consulting various Hollywood agents, Deeley found writer-director Michael Cimino, represented by Stan Kamen at the William Morris Agency.[18] Deeley was impressed by Cimino's TV commercial work and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.[18][19] Cimino himself was confident that he could further develop the principal characters of The Man Who Came to Play without losing the essence of the original. After Cimino was hired, he was called into a meeting with Garfinkle and Redeker at the EMI office. According to Deeley, Cimino questioned the need for the Russian roulette element of the script and Redeker made such a passionate case for it that he ended up literally on his knees. Over the course of further meetings, Cimino and Deeley discussed the work needed at the front of the script and Cimino believed he could develop the stories of the main characters in twenty minutes of film.[19]
Screenplay[edit]
Cimino worked for six weeks with Deric Washburn on the script.[6] Cimino and Washburn previously collaborated with Stephen Bochco on the screenplay for Silent Running. According to producer Spikings, Cimino said he wanted to work again with Washburn.[5] According to producer Deeley, he only heard from office rumor that Washburn was contracted by Cimino to work on the script. "Whether Cimino hired Washburn as his sub-contractor or as a co-writer was constantly being obfuscated," wrote Deeley, "and there were some harsh words between them later on, or so I was told."[19]
Cimino's claim[edit]
According to Cimino, he would call Washburn while on the road scouting for locations and feed him notes on dialogue and story. Upon reviewing Washburn's draft, Cimino said, "I came back, and read it and I just could not believe what I read. It was like it was written by some body who was ... mentally deranged." Cimino confronted Washburn at the Sunset Marquis in LA about the draft and Washburn supposedly replied that he couldn't take the pressure and had to go home. Cimino then fired Washburn. Cimino would later claim to have written the entire screenplay himself.[6] Washburn's response to Cimino's comments were, "It's all nonsense. It's lies. I didn't have a single drink the entire time I was working on the script."[5]
Washburn's claim[edit]
According to Washburn, he and Cimino spent three days together in L.A. at the Sunset Marquis, hammering out the plot. The script eventually went through several drafts, evolving into a story with three distinct acts. Washburn did not interview any veterans to write The Deer Hunter nor do any research. "I had a month, that was it," he explains. "The clock was ticking. Write the fucking script! But all I had to do was watch TV. Those combat cameramen in Vietnam were out there in the field with the guys. I mean, they had stuff that you wouldn't dream of seeing about Iraq." When Washburn was finished, he says, Cimino and Joann Carelli, an associate producer on The Deer Hunter who would go on to produce two more of Cimino's films, took him to dinner at a cheap restaurant off the Sunset Strip. He recalls, "We finished, and Joann looks at me across the table, and she says, 'Well, Deric, it's fuck-off time.' I was fired. It was a classic case: you get a dummy, get him to write the goddamn thing, tell him to go fuck himself, put your name on the thing, and he'll go away. I was so tired, I didn't care. I'd been working 20 hours a day for a month. I got on the plane the next day, and I went back to Manhattan and my carpenter job."[5]
Deeley's reaction to the revised script[edit]
Deeley felt the revised script, now called The Deer Hunter, broke fresh ground for the project. The protagonist in the Redeker/Garfinkle script, Merle, was an individual who sustained a bad injury in active service and was damaged psychologically by his violent experiences, but was nevertheless a tough character with strong nerves and guts. Cimino and Washburn's revised script distilled the three aspects of Merle's personality and separated them out into three distinct characters. They became three old friends who grew up in the same small industrial town and worked in the same steel mill, and in due course would be drafted together to Vietnam.[20] In the original script, the roles of Merle (later renamed Mike) and Nick were reversed in the last half of the film. Nick returns home to Linda, while Mike remains in Vietnam, sends money home to help Steven, and meets his tragic fate at the Russian roulette table.[21]
A Writers Guild arbitration process awarded Washburn sole "Screenplay by" credit.[5] Garfinkle and Redeker were given a shared "Story by" credit with Cimino and Washburn. Deeley felt the story credits for Garfinkle and Redeker "did them less than justice."[19] Cimino contested the results of the arbitration. "In their Nazi wisdom," added Cimino, "[they] didn't give me the credit because I would be producer, director and writer."[22] All four writers---Cimino, Washburn, Garfinkle and Redeker---received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for this film.[23]
Filming[edit]
The Deer Hunter began principal photography on June 20, 1977.[5] This was the first feature film depicting the Vietnam War to be filmed on location in Thailand. All scenes were shot on location (no sound stages). "There was discussion about shooting the film on a back lot, but the material demanded more realism," says Spikings.[5] The cast and crew viewed large amounts of news footage from the war to ensure authenticity. The film was shot over a period of six months. The Clairton scenes comprise footage shot in eight different towns in four states: West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Ohio.[5] The initial budget of the film was $8.5 million.[15]
Before the beginning of principal photography began, Deeley had a meeting with the film's appointed line producer Robert Relyea. Deeley hired Relyea after meeting him on the set of Bullitt and was impressed with his experience. However Relyea told Deeley that he would not be able to be the producer on Deer Hunter. Relyea refused to disclose the reasons why.[15] Deeley suspected that Relyea sensed in director Cimino something that would have made production difficult. As a result, Cimino was acting without day-to-day supervision of a producer.[24]
Because Deeley was busy overseeing in the production of Sam Peckinpah's Convoy, he hired John Peverall to oversee Cimino's shoot. Peverall's expertise with budgeting and scheduling made him a natural successor to Relyea and knew enough about the picture to be elevated to producer status. "John is a straightforward Cornishman who had worked his way up to become a production supervisor," wrote Deeley, "and we employed him as EMI's watchman on certain pictures."[24]
The wedding scenes[edit]



St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Cleveland. Site of the wedding scene.
The wedding scenes were filmed at the historic St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.[5] The wedding took five days to film. An actual priest was cast as the priest at the wedding.[16] The reception scene was filmed at nearby Lemko Hall. The amateur extras lined up for the crowded wedding-dance sequences drank real liquor and beer.[25] The scenes were filmed in the summer, but were set in the fall.[16] To accomplish a look of fall, individual leaves were removed from deciduous trees.[26][27] Zsigmond also had to desaturate the colors of the exterior shots, partly in camera and in the laboratory processing.[27][28]
The production manager asked each of the Russian immigrant extras to bring to the location a gift-wrapped box to double for wedding presents. The manager figured if the extras did this, not only would the production save time and money, but the gifts would also look more authentic. Once the unit wrapped and the extras disappeared, the crew discovered to their amusement that the boxes weren't empty but filled with real presents, from china to silverware. "Who got to keep all these wonderful offerings," wrote Deeley "is a mystery I never quite fathomed."[25]
Cimino originally claimed that the wedding scene would take up 21 minutes of screentime. In the end, it took 51 minutes. Deeley believes that Cimino always planned to make this prologue last for an hour, and "the plan was to be advanced by stealth rather than straight dealing."[29]
At this point in the production, nearly halfway through principal photography, Cimino was already overbudget, and producer Spikings could tell from the script that shooting the extended scene could sink the project.[5]
The bar and the steel mill[edit]
The bar was specially constructed in an empty storefront in Mingo Junction, Ohio for $25,000; it later became an actual saloon for local steel mill workers.[16] U.S. Steel allowed filming inside its Cleveland mill, including placing the actors around the furnace floor, only after securing a $5 million insurance policy.[13][16] Other filming took place in Pittsburgh. [1]
Hunting the deer[edit]
The first deer to be shot was not actually harmed, despite the "gruesome close-up", but hit with a tranquilizer dart.[25][29] The stag which Michael allows to get away later was actually the same one used on TV commercials for the Connecticut Life Insurance Company.[25]
Vietnam and the Russian roulette scenes[edit]
The Viet Cong Russian roulette scenes were shot in real circumstances, with real rats and mosquitoes, as the three principals (De Niro, Walken, and Savage) were tied up in bamboo cages erected along the River Kwai. The woman tasked with casting the extras in Thailand had much difficulty finding a local to play the vicious individual who runs the Russian roulette game. The first actor hired turned out to be incapable of slapping De Niro in the face. The caster thankfully knew a local Thai man with a particular dislike of Americans and cast him accordingly. De Niro suggested that Walken be slapped for real by one of the guards without any forewarning. The reaction on Walken's face was genuine. Producer Deeley has said that Cimino shot the brutal Vietcong Russian roulette scenes brilliantly and more efficiently than any other part of the film.[25][30]
De Niro and Savage performed their own stunts in the fall into the river, filming the 30 ft drop 15 times in two days. During the helicopter stunt, the runners caught on the ropes of the suspension bridge and as the helicopter rose, it threatened to seriously injure De Niro and Savage. The actors gestured and yelled furiously to the crew in the helicopter to warn them. Footage of this is included in the film.[31]
According to Cimino, De Niro requested a live cartridge in the revolver for the scene in which he subjects John Cazale's character to an impromptu game of Russian roulette, to heighten the intensity of the situation. Cazale agreed without protest,[6] but obsessively rechecked the gun before each take to make sure that the live round wasn't next in the chamber.[16]
While appearing later in the film, the first scenes shot upon arrival in Thailand are the hospital sequences between Walken and the military doctor. Deeley believes that this scene was "the spur that would earn him an Academy Award."[32][a 1]
In the final scene in the gambling den between Mike and Nick, Cimino had Walken and De Niro improvise in one take. His direction to his actors: "You put the gun to your head, Chris, you shoot, you fall over and Bobby cradles your head."[27]
Filming locations[edit]

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 Lemko HallSt. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral, in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. The name plaque is clearly visible in one scene.[34]
Lemko Hall, Cleveland, Ohio. Also located in Tremont, the wedding banquet was filmed here. The name is clearly visible in one scene.[35]
US Steel Central Furnaces in Cleveland, Ohio. Opening sequence steel mill scenes.[36]
Patpong, Bangkok, Thailand, the area used to represent Saigon's red light district.
Sai Yok, Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand
North Cascades National Park, Washington, mountain scenes.[37]
Steubenville, Ohio, for some mill and neighborhood shots.
Struthers, Ohio, for external house and long-range road shots. Also including, the town's bowling alley is the Bowladrome Lanes, located at 56 State Street, Struthers, Ohio.
Weirton, West Virginia, for mill and trailer shots.[38]
River Kwai, Thailand, Prison camp and initial Russian roulette scene.[39]
Post-production[edit]
By this point, The Deer Hunter had cost $13 million and the film still had to go through an arduous post-production.[28] Film editor Peter Zinner was given 600,000 feet of printed film to edit, a monumental task at the time.[40] Producers Spikings and Deeley were pleased with the first cut, which ran for three-and-a-half hours. "We were thrilled by what we saw," wrote Deeley, "and knew that within the three and a half hours we watched there was a riveting film."[41]
Executives from Universal, including Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg, were not very enthusiastic.[5][41] "I think they were shocked," recalled Spikings. "What really upset them was 'God Bless America'. Sheinberg thought it was anti-American. He was vehement. He said something like 'You're poking a stick in the eye of America.' They really didn't like the movie. And they certainly didn't like it at three hours and two minutes."[5] Deeley wasn't surprised by the Universal response: "The Deer Hunter was a United Artists sort of picture, whereas Convoy was more in the style of Universal. I'd muddled and sold the wrong picture to each studio."[41] Deeley did agree with Universal that the film needed to be shorter, not just because of pacing but also to ensure commercial success.[42] "A picture under two and a half hours can scrape three shows a day," wrote Deeley, "but at three hours you've lost one third of your screenings and one third of your income for the cinemas, distributors, and profit participants."[42]
Thom Mount, president of Universal at the time, said, "This was just a fucking continuing nightmare from the day Michael finished the picture to the day we released it. That was simply because he was wedded to everything he shot. The movie was endless. It was The Deer Hunter and the Hunter and the Hunter. The wedding sequence was a cinematic event all unto its own."[5] Mount says he turned to Verna Fields, Universal's then-head of post-production. "I sicked Verna on Cimino," Mount says. "Verna was no slouch. She started to turn the heat up on Michael, and he started screeching and yelling."[5]
Zinner eventually cut the film down to 18,000 feet.[40] Zinner was later fired by Cimino when he discovered that Zinner was editing down the wedding scenes.[26][43] Zinner eventually won Best Editing Oscar for The Deer Hunter. Regarding the clashes between him and Cimino, Zinner replied "Michael Cimino and I had our differences at the end, but he kissed me when we both got Academy Awards."[40] Cimino would later comment in The New York Observer, "[Zinner] was a moron ... I cut Deer Hunter myself."[22]
Sound design[edit]
The Deer Hunter was Cimino's first film to use Dolby noise-reduction system. "What Dolby does," replied Cimino, "is to give you the ability to create a density of detail of sound—a richness so you can demolish the wall separating the viewer from the film. You can come close to demolishing the screen." The film took five months to mix the soundtrack. One short battle sequence—200 feet of film in the final cut—took five days to dub. Another sequence recreated the 1975 American evacuation of Saigon; Cimino brought the film's composer, Stanley Myers, out to the location to listen to the auto, tank, and jeep horns as the sequence was being photographed. The result, according to Cimino: Myers composed the music for that scene in the same key as the horn sounds, so the music and the sound effects would blend with the images to create one jarring, desolate experience.[44]
Previews[edit]
Both the long and short versions were previewed to Midwestern audiences, although there are different accounts among Cimino, Deeley and Spikings as to how the previews panned out.[5] Director Cimino claims he bribed the projectionist to interrupt the shorter version, in order to obtain better reviews of the longer one.[6] According to producer Spikings, Wasserman let EMI's CEO Bernard Delfont decide between the two and chose Cimino's longer cut.[5] Deeley claims that the two-and-a-half hour version tested had a better response.[45]
Soundtrack[edit]

The Deer Hunter

Soundtrack album by Stanley Myers

Released
1990
Recorded
1978
Genre
Film score
Label
Capitol
The soundtrack to The Deer Hunter was released on audio CD on October 25, 1990.[46]
Selected tracks[edit]
Stanley Myers's "Cavatina" (also known as "He Was Beautiful"), performed by classical guitarist John Williams, is commonly known as "The Theme from The Deer Hunter". According to producer Deeley, he discovered that the song was originally written for a film called The Walking Stick (1970) and, as a result, had to pay the original purchaser an undisclosed sum.[47]
"Can't Take My Eyes Off You", a 1967 hit song, sung by Frankie Valli.[a 2] It is played in John's bar when all of the friends sing along and at the wedding reception. According to Cimino, the actors sang along to a recording of the song as it was played instead of singing to a beat track, a standard filmmaking practice. Cimino felt that would make the sing-along seem more real.[16]
During the wedding ceremonies and party, the Eastern Orthodox Church songs such as "Slava" and Russian folk songs such as "Korobushka" and "Katyusha" are played.
Russian Orthodox funeral music is also employed during Nick's funeral scene, mainly "Vechnaya Pamyat", which means "eternal memory".[48]
Release[edit]
The Deer Hunter debuted at one theater each in New York and Los Angeles for a week on December 8, 1978.[5][49][50] The release strategy was to qualify the film for Oscar consideration and close after a week to build interest.[51] After the Oscar nominations, Universal widened the distribution to include major cities, building up to a full-scale release on February 23, 1979, just following the Oscars.[49][51] This film was important for helping massage release patterns for so-called prestige pictures that screen only at the end of the year to qualify for Academy Award recognition.[52] The film eventually grossed $48.9 million at the US box office.[3]
CBS paid $3.5 million for three runs of the film. The network later cancelled the acquisition on the contractually permitted grounds of the film containing too much violence for US network transmission.[53]
Analysis[edit]
Controversy over Russian roulette[edit]





Robert De Niro pulls the trigger in the game of Russian roulette that takes place in the Viet Cong prison scene.
One of the most talked-about sequences in the film, the Vietcong's use of Russian roulette with POWs, was criticized as being contrived and unrealistic since there were no documented cases of Russian roulette in the Vietnam War.[5][54][55] Associated Press reporter Peter Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the war, wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "In its 20 years of war, there was not a single recorded case of Russian roulette ... The central metaphor of the movie is simply a bloody lie."[5] Director Cimino was also criticized for one-sidedly portraying all the North Vietnamese as despicable, sadistic racists and killers. Cimino countered that his film was not political, polemical, literally accurate, or posturing for any particular point of view.[54] He further defended his position by saying that he had news clippings from Singapore that confirm Russian roulette was used during the war (without specifying which article).[6]
During the 29th Berlin International Film Festival in 1979, the Soviet delegation expressed its indignation with the film which, in their opinion, insulted the Vietnamese people in numerous scenes. Other socialist states also voiced their solidarity with the "heroic people of Vietnam". They protested against the screening of the film and insisted that it violated the statutes of the festival, since it in no way contributed to the "improvement of mutual understanding between the peoples of the world". The ensuing domino effect led to the walk-outs of the Cubans, East Germans, Bulgarians, Poles and Czechoslovakians, and two members of the jury resigned in sympathy.[56]
Critics' response[edit]
In his review, Roger Ebert defended the artistic license of Russian roulette, arguing "it is the organizing symbol of the film: Anything you can believe about the game, about its deliberately random violence, about how it touches the sanity of men forced to play it, will apply to the war as a whole. It is a brilliant symbol because, in the context of this story, it makes any ideological statement about the war superfluous."[57]
Film critic and biographer David Thomson also agrees that the film works despite the controversy: "There were complaints that the North Vietnamese had not employed Russian roulette. It was said that the scenes in Saigon were fanciful or imagined. It was also suggested that De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage were too old to have enlisted for Vietnam (Savage, the youngest of the three, was 28). Three decades later, 'imagination' seems to have stilled those worries ... and The Deer Hunter is one of the great American films."[58]
In her review, Pauline Kael wrote, "The Vietcong are treated in the standard inscrutable-evil Oriental style of the Japanese in the Second World War movies ... The impression a viewer gets is that if we did some bad things there we did them ruthlessly but impersonally; the Vietcong were cruel and sadistic."[5]
In his Vanity Fair article "The Vietnam Oscars", Peter Biskind wrote that the political agenda of The Deer Hunter was something of a mystery: "It may have been more a by-product of Hollywood myopia, the demands of the war-film genre, garden-variety American parochialism, and simple ignorance than it was the pre-meditated right-wing road map it seemed to many."[5]
Cast and crew response[edit]
According to Christopher Walken, the historical context wasn't paramount: "In the making of it, I don't remember anyone ever mentioning Vietnam!" De Niro added to this sentiment: "Whether [the film's vision of the war] actually happened or not, it's something you could imagine very easily happening. Maybe it did. I don't know. All's fair in love and war." Producer Spikings, while proud of the film, regrets the way the Vietnamese were portrayed. "I don't think any of us meant it to be exploitive," Spikings said. "But I think we were ... ignorant. I can't think of a better word for it. I didn't realize how badly we'd behaved to the Vietnamese people ..."[5]
Producer Deeley, on the other hand, was quick to defend Cimino's comments on the nature and motives of the film: "The Deer Hunter wasn't really 'about' Vietnam. It was something very different. It wasn't about drugs or the collapse of the morale of the soldiers. It was about how individuals respond to pressure: different men reacting quite differently. The film was about three steel workers in extraordinary circumstances. Apocalypse Now is surreal. The Deer Hunter is a parable ... Men who fight and lose an unworthy war face some obvious and unpalatable choices. They can blame their leaders.. or they can blame themselves. Self-blame has been a great burden for many war veterans. So how does a soldier come to terms with his defeat and yet still retain his self-respect? One way is to present the conquering enemy as so inhuman, and the battle between the good guys (us) and the bad guys (them) so uneven, as to render defeat irrelevant. Inhumanity was the theme of The Deer Hunter's portrayal of the North Vietnamese prison guards forcing American POWs to play Russian roulette. The audience's sympathy with prisoners who (quite understandably) cracked thus completes the chain. Accordingly, some veterans who suffered in that war found the Russian roulette a valid allegory."[59]
Director Cimino's autobiographical intent[edit]
Cimino frequently referred to The Deer Hunter as a "personal" and "autobiographical" film, although later investigation by journalists like Tom Buckley of Harper's revealed inaccuracies in Cimino's accounts and reported background.[60]
Coda of "God Bless America"[edit]
The final scene in which all the main characters gather and sing "God Bless America" became a subject of heated debate among critics when the film was released. It raised the question of whether this conclusion was meant ironically or not – "as a critique of patriotism or a paean to it".[5]
Reception[edit]
The film's initial reviews were largely enthusiastic. It was hailed by many critics as the best American epic since Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather.[33][60][61] The film was praised for its depiction of working-class settings and environment; Cimino's direction of the performances by De Niro, Walken, Streep, Savage, Dzundza and Cazale; the symphonic shifts of tone and pacing in moving from America to Vietnam; the tension during the Russian roulette scenes; and the themes of American disillusionment.[62]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars and called it "one of the most emotionally shattering films ever made."[57] Gene Siskel from the Chicago Tribune praised the film, saying, "This is a big film, dealing with big issues, made on a grand scale. Much of it, including some casting decisions, suggest inspiration by The Godfather."[63] Leonard Maltin also gave the film four stars, calling it a "sensitive, painful, evocative work".[64] Vincent Canby of the New York Times called The Deer Hunter "a big, awkward, crazily ambitious motion picture that comes as close to being a popular epic as any movie about this country since The Godfather. Its vision is that of an original, major new filmmaker."[61] David Denby of New York called it "an epic" with "qualities that we almost never see any more — range and power and breadth of experience."[65][66] Jack Kroll of Time asserted it put director Cimino "right at the center of film culture."[66] Stephen Farber pronounced the film in New West magazine as "the greatest anti-war movie since La Grande Illusion."[66]
However, The Deer Hunter was not without critical backlash, especially in light of the film's controversial use of Russian roulette at its center. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote a positive review with some reservations: "[It is] a small minded film with greatness in it ... with an enraptured view of common life ... [but] enraging, because, despite its ambitiousness and scale, it has no more moral intelligence than the Eastwood action pictures."[66] Andrew Sarris wrote that the film was "massively vague, tediously elliptical, and mysteriously hysterical ... It is perhaps significant that the actors remain more interesting than the characters they play."[5] John Simon of New York wrote: "For all its pretensions to something newer and better, this film is only an extension of the old Hollywood war-movie lie. The enemy is still bestial and stupid, and no match for our purity and heroism; only we no longer wipe up the floor with him -- rather, we litter it with his guts."[67]
The film holds a metascore of 73 on Metacritic, based on 7 reviews, and 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 48 reviews. The RT summary reads:

Its greatness is blunted by its length and one-sided point of view, but the film's weaknesses are overpowered by Michael Cimino's sympathetic direction and a series of heartbreaking performances from Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken.[68]
Top-ten lists[edit]
3rd - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times.[69] Ebert also placed Deer Hunter on his list of the best films of the 1970s.[70]
3rd - Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune[71]
Academy Award-winning film director Miloš Forman and Academy Award-nominated actor Mickey Rourke consider The Deer Hunter to be one of the greatest films of all time.[72][73]
Revisionism following Heaven's Gate[edit]
Cimino's next film, Heaven's Gate, debuted to lacerating reviews and took in only $3 million in ticket sales, effectively leaving United Artists bankrupt. The failure of Heaven's Gate led several critics to revise their positions on The Deer Hunter. Canby said in his famous review of Heaven's Gate, "[The film] fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter, and the Devil has just come around to collect."[74] Andrew Sarris wrote in his review of Heaven's Gate, "I'm a little surprised that many of the same critics who lionized Cimino for The Deer Hunter have now thrown him to the wolves with equal enthusiasm."[75] Sarris added, "I was never taken in ... Hence, the stupidity and incoherence in Heaven's Gate came as no surprise since very much the same stupidity and incoherence had been amply evident in The Deer Hunter."[75] In his book Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven's Gate, Steven Bach wrote, "critics seemed to feel obliged to go on the record about The Deer Hunter, to demonstrate that their critical credentials were un-besmirched by having been, as Sarris put it, 'taken in.'"[75]
More recently, BBC film critic Mark Kermode challenged the film's status among generally praised film classics: "There is an unwritten rule in film criticism that certain films are beyond rebuke. Citizen Kane, Some Like It Hot, 2001, The Godfather Part II... all these are considered to be classics of such universally accepted stature ... At the risk of being thrown out of the 'respectable film critics' circle, may I take this opportunity to declare officially that in my opinion The Deer Hunter is one of the worst films ever made, a rambling self indulgent, self aggrandizing barf-fest steeped in manipulatively racist emotion, and notable primarily for its farcically melodramatic tone which is pitched somewhere between shrieking hysteria and somnambulist sombreness."[76]
However, many critics maintain that The Deer Hunter is still a great film whose power hasn't diminished, including David Thomson[62] and A. O. Scott.[77]
Awards[edit]

Academy Awards record
1. Best Supporting Actor, Christopher Walken
2. Best Director, Michael Cimino
3. Best Editing, Peter Zinner
4. Best Picture, Barry Spikings, Michael Deeley, Michael Cimino, John Peverall
5. Best Sound, Richard Portman, William L. McCaughey, Aaron Rochin, C. Darin Knight
Golden Globe Awards record
1. Best Director, Michael Cimino
BAFTA Awards record
1. Best Cinematography, Vilmos Zsigmond
2. Best Editing, Peter Zinner
Lead-up to awards season[edit]
Film producer and "old-fashioned mogul" Allan Carr used his networking abilities to promote The Deer Hunter. "Exactly how Allan Carr came into The Deer Hunter's orbit I can no longer remember," recalled producer Deeley, "but the picture became a crusade to him. He nagged, charmed, threw parties, he created word-of-mouth – everything that could be done in Hollywood to promote a project. Because he had no apparent motive for this promotion, it had an added power and legitimacy and it finally did start to penetrate the minds of the Universal's sales people that they actually had in their hands something a bit more significant than the usual."[47] Deeley added that Carr's promotion of the film was influential in positioning The Deer Hunter for Oscar nominations.[51]
On the Sneak Previews special "Oscar Preview for 1978", Roger Ebert correctly predicted that The Deer Hunter would win for Best Picture while Gene Siskel predicted that Coming Home would win. However, Ebert incorrectly guessed that Robert De Niro would win for Best Actor for Deer Hunter and Jill Clayburgh would win for Best Actress for An Unmarried Woman while Siskel called the wins for Jon Voight as Best Actor and Jane Fonda as Best Actress, both for Coming Home. Both Ebert and Siskel called the win for Christopher Walken receiving the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.[33]
According to producer Deeley, orchestrated lobbying against The Deer Hunter was led by Warren Beatty, whose own picture Heaven Can Wait had multiple nominations.[78] Beatty also used ex-girlfriends in his campaign: Julie Christie, serving on the jury at the Berlin Film Festival where Deer Hunter was screened, joined the walkout of the film by the Russian jury members. Jane Fonda also criticized The Deer Hunter in public. Deeley suggested that her criticisms partly stemmed from the competition between her film Coming Home vying with The Deer Hunter for Best Picture. According to Deeley, he planted a friend of his in the Oscar press area behind the stage to ask Fonda if she had seen The Deer Hunter.[43] Fonda replied she had not seen the film, and to this day she still has not.[5][43]
As the Oscars drew near, the backlash against The Deer Hunter gathered strength. When the limos pulled up to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on April 9, 1979, they were met by demonstrators, mostly from the Los Angeles chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The demonstrators waved placards covered with slogans that read "No Oscars for racism" and "The Deer Hunter a bloody lie" and thrust pamphlets berating Deer Hunter into long lines of limousine windows.[5][43] Washburn, nominated for Best Original Screenplay, claims his limousine was pelted with stones. According to Variety, "Police and The Deer Hunter protesters clashed in a brief but bloody battle that resulted in 13 arrests."[5]
De Niro was so anxious that he did not attend the Oscars ceremony. He asked the Academy to sit out the show backstage, but when the Academy refused, De Niro stayed home in New York.[79] Producer Deeley made a deal with fellow producer David Puttnam, whose film Midnight Express was nominated, that each would take $500 to the ceremony so if one of them won, the winner would give the loser the $500 to "drown his sorrows in style."[78]
51st Academy Awards[edit]
The Deer Hunter won five Oscars at the 51st Academy Awards in 1979:
Best Picture - Barry Spikings, Michael Deeley, Michael Cimino, and John Peverall (John Wayne's final public appearance was to present the award)[23]
Best Director - Michael Cimino
Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Christopher Walken
Best Film Editing - Peter Zinner
Best Sound - Richard Portman, William McCaughey, Aaron Rochin, and Darin Knight.[23][54][80]
In addition, the film was nominated in four other categories:
Best Actor in a Leading Role - Robert De Niro (lost to Jon Voight for Coming Home)
Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Meryl Streep (lost to Maggie Smith for California Suite)
Best Cinematography - Vilmos Zsigmond (lost to Néstor Almendros for Days of Heaven)
Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen - Michael Cimino, Deric Washburn, Louis Garfinkle, and Quinn Redeker[23][54] (lost to Robert C. Jones, Waldo Salt, and Nancy Dowd for Coming Home)
Golden Globes[edit]
Cimino won the film's only Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Other nominations the film included Best Motion Picture – Drama, De Niro for Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama, Walken for Best Motion Picture Actor in a Supporting Role, Streep for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Supporting Role, and Washburn for Best Screenplay – Motion Picture.
Complete list of awards[edit]

Award
Category
Recipients and nominees
Result
51st Academy Awards Academy Award for Best Picture Barry Spikings, Michael Deeley, Michael Cimino, John Peverall Won
Academy Award for Best Director Michael Cimino Won
Academy Award for Best Actor Robert De Niro Nominated
Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, Louis Garfinkle, Quinn K. Redeker Nominated
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Christopher Walken Won
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Meryl Streep Nominated
Academy Award for Best Cinematography Vilmos Zsigmond Nominated
Academy Award for Best Film Editing Peter Zinner Won
Academy Award for Best Sound Richard Portman, William McCaughey, Aaron Rochin, Darin Knight Won
American Cinema Editors American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic Peter Zinner Won
American Movie Awards Best Film  Nominated
Best Director Michael Cimino Won
Best Actor Robert De Niro Nominated
Best Supporting Actor Christopher Walken Nominated
Best Supporting Actress Meryl Streep Won
33rd British Academy Film Awards BAFTA Award for Best Film Barry Spikings, Michael Deeley, Michael Cimino, John Peverall Nominated
BAFTA Award for Best Direction Michael Cimino Nominated
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role Robert De Niro Nominated
BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Meryl Streep Nominated
BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, Louis Garfinkle, Quinn K. Redeker Nominated
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role Christopher Walken Nominated
BAFTA Award for Best Editing Peter Zinner Won
BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography Vilmos Zsigmond Won
BAFTA Award for Best Sound Richard Portman, William McCaughey, Aaron Rochin, Darin Knight Nominated
Directors Guild of America Awards 1978 Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film Michael Cimino Won
36th Golden Globe Awards Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama Barry Spikings Nominated
Golden Globe Award for Best Director Michael Cimino Won
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama Robert De Niro Nominated
Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay Deric Washburn Nominated
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture Christopher Walken Nominated
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Meryl Streep Nominated
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 1978 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Director Michael Cimino Won
National Society of Film Critics Awards 1978 National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film  2nd place
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor Christopher Walken 3rd place
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress Meryl Streep Won
1978 New York Film Critics Circle Awards New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film  Won
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor Robert De Niro 3rd place
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor Christopher Walken Won
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress Meryl Streep 3rd place
Writers Guild of America Award Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, Louis Garfinkle, Quinn K. Redeker Nominated
Legacy[edit]
The Deer Hunter was one of the first, and most controversial, major theatrical films to be critical of the American involvement in Vietnam following 1975 when the war officially ended. While the film opened the same year as Hal Ashby's Coming Home, Sidney Furie's The Boys in Company C, and Ted Post's Go Tell the Spartans, it was the first film about Vietnam to reach a wide audience and critical acclaim, culminating in the winning of the Oscar for Best Picture. Other films released in the late 1970s and 1980s that illustrated the 'hellish', futile conditions of bloody Vietnam War combat included:[54]
Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979)
Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986)
Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987)
John Irvin's Hamburger Hill (1987)
Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989)
Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994)
David Thomson wrote in an article titled "The Deer Hunter: Story of a scene" that the film changed the way war-time battles were portrayed on film: "The terror and the blast of firepower changed the war film, even if it only used a revolver. More or less before the late 1970s, the movies had lived by a Second World War code in which battle scenes might be fierce but always rigorously controlled. The Deer Hunter unleashed a new, raw dynamic in combat and action, paving the way for Platoon, Saving Private Ryan and Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima films."[81]
The deaths of approximately twenty-five people who died playing Russian roulette were reported as having been influenced by scenes in the movie.[82]
Honors and recognition[edit]
In 1996, The Deer Hunter was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[83]
The film ranks 467th in the Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time,[84] noting:

Cimino's bold, powerful 'Nam epic goes from blue-collar macho rituals to a fiery, South East Asian hell and back to a ragged singalong of America The Beautiful. De Niro holds it together, but Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep and John Savage are unforgettable.[84]
Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran who became a counselor with the U.S. Department of Labor, thought of the idea of building a National Memorial for Vietnam Veterans after seeing a screening of the film in March 1979, and he established and operated the memorial fund which paid for it.[85] Director Cimino was invited to the memorial's opening.[6]
In popular culture[edit]
The Deer Hunter was the catharsis of a track on the 1981 comedy album Bob & Doug McKenzie: The Great White North titled "The Beerhunter". It's a beer-drinking game where one takes a beer out of six-pack, shakes it, and mixes it up with the other beers. Everyone takes one of the beers and holds it to their head: Russian roulette with beer. Those that don't get their head soaked drink the beer. Bob was tricked by Doug into opening the shaken can. He makes a wethead three times on the album.
American Film Institute recognition[edit]
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – #79[86]
AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – #30[87]
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #53[88]
AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs: "God Bless America" – Nominated
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes: "This is this." – Nominated
AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains: Michael Vronsky – Nominated Hero[89]

Home media[edit]
The Deer Hunter has twice been released on DVD in America. The first 1998 issue was by Universal, with no extra features and a non-anamorphic transfer, and has since been discontinued.[90] A second version, part of the "Legacy Series", was released as a two-disc set on September 6, 2005, with an anamorphic transfer of the film. The set features a cinematographer's commentary by Vilmos Zsigmond, deleted and extended scenes, and production notes.[91] The Region 2 version of The Deer Hunter, released in the UK and Japan, features a commentary track from director Michael Cimino.[92]
The film was released on HD DVD on December 26, 2006.[93] StudioCanal released the film on the Blu-ray format in countries other than the United States on March 11, 2009.[94] It was released on Blu-ray in the U.S. on March 6, 2012.[95]
See also[edit]
The Deer Hunter (novel)
The Last Hunter – An Italian film originally made as an unofficial sequel
References[edit]
Annotations[edit]
1.Jump up ^ A clip from the scene between Walken and the military doctor was shown on an Sneak Previews special "Oscar Preview for 1978", in which critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert correctly predicted that Walken would win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.[33]
2.Jump up ^ While featured prominently in the film, "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" does not appear on The Deer Hunter's soundtrack.[46]
Notes[edit]
1.Jump up ^ "THE DEER HUNTER (X)". British Board of Film Classification. 1978-11-15. Retrieved 2013-02-01.
2.Jump up ^ "The Deer Hunter (1978)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2010-05-26.
3.^ Jump up to: a b "The Deer Hunter, Box Office Information". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved May 26, 2014.
4.^ Jump up to: a b Deeley, p. 168
5.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad Biskind, Peter (March 2008). "The Vietnam Oscars". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 2010-09-17.
6.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h Realizing The Deer Hunter: An Interview with Michael Cimino. Blue Underground. Interview on the The Deer Hunter UK Region 2 DVD and the StudioCanal Blu-Ray. First half of video on YouTube
7.Jump up ^ De Niro, Robert (actor) (June 12, 2003). AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Robert De Niro. [Television Production] American Film Institute.
8.Jump up ^ Kachmar 2002, p. 73
9.^ Jump up to: a b Parker, p. 129
10.Jump up ^ "Richard Shepard Talks John Cazale Doc, Plus The Trailer For 'I Knew It Was You'". The Playlist. June 1, 2010. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
11.^ Jump up to: a b Deeley, p. 170
12.Jump up ^ Fretts, Bruce. "Unfortunate Son". Entertainment Weekly. Feb. 21, 2003.
13.^ Jump up to: a b Parker, p. 128
14.Jump up ^ Deeley, p. 167
15.^ Jump up to: a b c Deeley, p. 171
16.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g DVD commentary by director Michael Cimino and film critic F. X. Feeney. Included on The Deer Hunter UK region 2 DVD release and the StudioCanal Blu-Ray.
17.^ Jump up to: a b c Deeley, p. 2
18.^ Jump up to: a b c Deeley, p. 163
19.^ Jump up to: a b c d Deeley, p. 164
20.Jump up ^ Deeley, p. 166
21.Jump up ^ Wasburn, Deric The Deer Hunter script (Unspecified draft). DailyScript.com. Retrieved 2011-05-30.
22.^ Jump up to: a b Griffin, Nancy (February 10, 2002). "Last Typhoon Cimino Is Back". The New York Observer 16 (6): pp. 1+15+17. Retrieved 2010-09-18.
23.^ Jump up to: a b c d "All the Oscars: 1979 - 51st Annual Academy Awards"[dead link]. theOscarSite.com. Retrieved 2010-05-26.
24.^ Jump up to: a b Deeley, p. 172
25.^ Jump up to: a b c d e Deeley, p. 174
26.^ Jump up to: a b Shooting The Deer Hunter: An interview with Vilmos Zsigmond. Blue Underground. Interview with the cinematographer, located on The Deer Hunter UK Region 2 DVD and StudioCanal Blu-Ray. First half of video on YouTube.
27.^ Jump up to: a b c Deeley, p. 177
28.^ Jump up to: a b Deeley, p. 178
29.^ Jump up to: a b Deeley, p. 173
30.Jump up ^ Deeley, p. 175
31.Jump up ^ Playing The Deer Hunter: An interview with John Savage. Blue Underground. Interview with the actor Savage, located on the UK Region 2 DVD and StudioCanal Blu-Ray. First half of video on YouTube
32.Jump up ^ Deeley, p. 176
33.^ Jump up to: a b c Ebert, Roger & Siskel, Gene (hosts); Flaum, Thea & Solley, Ray (producers); Denny, Patterson (director). (1979). Sneak Previews: Oscar Preview for 1978. [Television Production]. Chicago, IL: WTTW.
34.Jump up ^ The Deer Hunter (1978) - Filming locations
35.Jump up ^ http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=LH1
36.Jump up ^ The Deer Hunter (1978) - Filming locations
37.Jump up ^ http://filminglocationsdetectives.com/films/Deer_Hunter_page3.htm
38.Jump up ^ http://www.wvculture.org/history/entertainment/deerhunter01.html
39.Jump up ^ http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/d/deerhunter.html
40.^ Jump up to: a b c "Peter Zinner - Times Online Obituary". The Times. November 20, 2007. Retrieved 2010-09-18.
41.^ Jump up to: a b c Deeley, p. 179
42.^ Jump up to: a b Deeley, p. 192
43.^ Jump up to: a b c d Deeley, p. 4
44.Jump up ^ Schreger, Charles (April 15, 1985). "Altman, Dolby, and the Second Sound Revolution". In Belton, John; Weis, Elisabeth. Film Sound: Theory and Practice (Paperback ed.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. p. 351. ASIN 0231056370. ISBN 0-231-05637-0.
45.Jump up ^ Deeley, p. 193
46.^ Jump up to: a b "The Deer Hunter: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2010-12-25.
47.^ Jump up to: a b Deeley, p. 195
48.Jump up ^ "Researching the Brothers Karamazov - Guest lectures/ Sheehan".[not in citation given] Dartmouth.edu. Retrieved 2010-05-17.
49.^ Jump up to: a b "The Deer Hunter (1978) - Release dates". IMDb. Retrieved 2010-07-25.
50.Jump up ^ Bach, p. 166
51.^ Jump up to: a b c Deeley, p. 196
52.Jump up ^ Chaffin-Quiray, Garrett (writer); Schnider, Steven Jay (general editor) (2003). 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (2003 ed.). London, England: Quintet Publishing. p. 642. ISBN 0-7641-5701-9.
53.Jump up ^ Deeley, p. 181
54.^ Jump up to: a b c d e Dirks, Tim. "The Deer Hunter (1978)". Greatest Films. Retrieved 2010-05-26.
55.Jump up ^ Auster, Albert; Quart, Leonard (2002). "The seventies". American film and society since 1945. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 120–1. ISBN 978-0-275-96742-0.
56.Jump up ^ "1979 Yearbook". Berlin International Film Festival. Retrieved 2011-12-17.
57.^ Jump up to: a b Ebert, Roger (March 9, 1979). "The Deer Hunter". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
58.Jump up ^ Thomson, David (October 14, 2008). "Have You Seen ... ?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films. New York, NY: Random House. p. 209. ISBN 978-0-307-26461-9.
59.Jump up ^ Deeley, p. 198
60.^ Jump up to: a b Deeley, p. 197
61.^ Jump up to: a b Canby, Vincent (December 15, 1978). "Movie Review: The Deer Hunter (1978)". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-09-20.
62.^ Jump up to: a b Thomson, David (October 26, 2010). The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Fifth Edition, Completely Updated and Expanded (Hardcover ed.). Knopf. p. 178. ISBN 978-0-307-27174-7.
63.Jump up ^ Siskel, Gene (March 9, 1979). "The Deer Hunter". Chicago Tribune.
64.Jump up ^ Maltin, Leonard (August 2008). Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide (2009 ed.). New York, NY: Penguin Group p. 338. ISBN 978-0-452-28978-9.
65.Jump up ^ Bach, p. 167
66.^ Jump up to: a b c d Bach, p. 168
67.Jump up ^ Simon, John (February 16, 1979). New York. Anthologized in the collection Reverse Angle (1982).
68.Jump up ^ "The Deer Hunter (1978)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2009-09-23.
69.Jump up ^ Ebert, Roger (December 15, 2004). "Ebert's 10 Best Lists: 1967-present". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 2010-10-20.
70.Jump up ^ Ebert, Roger (host); Siskel, Gene (host) (December 20, 1979) Sneak Previews: Best Films of the 1970s. [Television Production] Chicago, IL: WTTW. Retrieved 2011-04-28.
71.Jump up ^ "Siskel and Ebert Top Ten Lists (1969–1998)". Innermind.com. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
72.Jump up ^ "Top Ten Poll 2002 - Milos Forman". Sight & Sound. "5. The Deer Hunter (Cimino)". Retrieved 2010-10-06.
73.Jump up ^ Presentation of the film by Mickey Rourke. Video located on The Deer Hunter Blu-ray.
74.Jump up ^ Canby, Vincent (November 19, 1980). "'Heaven's Gate,' A Western by Cimino". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
75.^ Jump up to: a b c Bach, p. 370
76.Jump up ^ Kermode, Mark. "Oh deer, oh deer, oh deer". Film4. Retrieved 2010-05-27.
77.Jump up ^ Critics' Picks: The Deer Hunter on YouTube by New York Times film critic A.O. Scott on YouTube.
78.^ Jump up to: a b Deeley, p. 3
79.Jump up ^ Deeley, p. 1
80.Jump up ^ "The 51st Academy Awards (1979) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-10-06.
81.Jump up ^ Thomson, David (October 19, 2010). "The Deer Hunter: Story of a scene". Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-12-07.
82.Jump up ^ "The Deer Hunter and Suicides". Snopes.com. Retrieved 2010-06-12.
83.Jump up ^ "Films Selected to The National Film Registry 1989–2008". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2010-06-11.
84.^ Jump up to: a b "The 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time". Empire. Retrieved 2010-06-02.
85.Jump up ^ Scruggs, Jan C.; Swerdlow, Joel L. (April 1985). To Heal a Nation: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial. New York, NY: Harpercollins. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-06-015404-2.
86.Jump up ^ "AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies". American Film Institute. "79. The Deer Hunter 1978". Retrieved 2010-12-25.
87.Jump up ^ "AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Thrills". American Film Institute. "30. The Deer Hunter 1978". Retrieved 2010-12-25.
88.Jump up ^ "AFI'S 100 Years ... 100 Movies - 10th Anniversary Edition". American Film Institute. "53. The Deer Hunter 1978". Retrieved 2010-09-18.
89.Jump up ^ AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains Nominees
90.Jump up ^ "The Deer Hunter (1978) - DVD details". IMDb. Retrieved 2010-08-12.
91.Jump up ^ "The Deer Hunter (Universal Legacy Series)". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2010-08-12.
92.Jump up ^ "View topic - The Deer Hunter (DVD vs. BD — Scandinavia) ADDED". The Rewind Forums. Retrieved 2010-09-18.
93.Jump up ^ "The Deer Hunter HD-DVD". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2010-05-18.
94.Jump up ^ "Achetez le Blu-Ray Voyage au bout de l'enfer" (in French). StudioCanal.com. Retrieved 2011-12-17.
95.Jump up ^ "The Deer Hunter Blu-ray". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2012-03-09.
Bibliography[edit]
Bach, Steven (September 1, 1999). Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists (Updated 1999 ed.). New York, NY: Newmarket Press. ISBN 1-55704-374-4.
Deeley, Michael (April 7, 2009). Blade Runners, Deer Hunters, & Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: My Life in Cult Movies (Hardcover ed.). New York, NY: Pegasus Books. ISBN 978-1-60598-038-6.
Kachmar, Diane C. (2002). Roy Scheider: a film biography. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1201-1.
Parker, John (2009). Robert De Niro: Portrait of a Legend. London, England: John Blake Publishing ISBN 978-1-84454-639-8.
Further reading[edit]
McKee, Bruce (1997). Story (Hardcover ed.). New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. pp. 126, 296-7, 308. ISBN 0-06-039168-5.
Mitchell, Robert (writer); Magill, Frank N. (editor) (1980). "The Deer Hunter". Magill's Survey of Cinema: A-Eas. 1. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Salem Press pp. 427–431. ISBN 0-89356-226-2.
External links[edit]
The Deer Hunter at the Internet Movie Database
The Deer Hunter at the TCM Movie Database
The Deer Hunter at AllMovie
The Deer Hunter at Box Office Mojo
The Deer Hunter at Rotten Tomatoes
The Deer Hunter at Metacritic
The Deer Hunter on Facebook


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Heaven's Gate (film)
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Heaven's Gate
Heavens gate post.jpg
Theatrical release poster by Tom Jung[1]

Directed by
Michael Cimino
Produced by
Joann Carelli
Written by
Michael Cimino
Starring
Kris Kristofferson
Christopher Walken
Isabelle Huppert
Jeff Bridges
John Hurt
Music by
David Mansfield
Cinematography
Vilmos Zsigmond
Edited by
Lisa Fruchtman
Gerald Greenberg
William Reynolds
 Tom Rolf
Production
   company
Partisan Productions
Distributed by
United Artists
Release date(s)
November 19, 1980

Running time
149 minutes[2]
 219 minutes[3] (Restored cut)
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$44 million[4]
Box office
$3,484,331[5]
Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film written and directed by Michael Cimino. Loosely based on the Johnson County War, it portrays a fictional dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s. The cast includes Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Joseph Cotten, Geoffrey Lewis, David Mansfield, Richard Masur, Terry O'Quinn, Mickey Rourke, and Willem Dafoe in his first film role.
There were major setbacks in the film's production due to cost and time overruns, negative press, and rumors about Cimino's allegedly overbearing directorial style. It is generally considered one of the biggest box office bombs of all time, and in some circles has been considered to be one of the worst films ever made. It opened to poor reviews and earned less than $3 million domestically (from an estimated budget of $44 million),[6] eventually contributing to the near collapse of its studio, United Artists, and effectively destroying the reputation of Cimino, previously one of the ascendant directors of Hollywood owing to his celebrated 1978 film The Deer Hunter, which had won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director in 1979.[7] Cimino had an expansive and ambitious vision for the film and pushed it about four times over its planned budget. The movie's financial problems and United Artists' consequent demise led to a move away from director-driven film production in the American film industry and a shift toward greater studio control of films.[8]
As time has progressed, a number of substantial assessments have become more nuanced and in some cases more positive,[9][10] and now some critics have described Heaven's Gate as a "modern masterpiece" whose 1980 re-edit after poor press screenings was characterized as "one of the greatest injustices of cinematic history."[11]


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot summary 1.1 1870, Harvard
1.2 1890, Johnson County, Wyoming
1.3 1903, Newport, Rhode Island
2 Cast
3 Differences from actual history
4 Production 4.1 Shooting demands, overruns, and endless retakes
4.2 The workprint cut and eventual plans for release
5 Reception 5.1 Initial reactions
5.2 Reassessments
5.3 2012–13 re-release and acclaim
6 Controversy 6.1 Impact on the U.S. film industry
6.2 Accusations of cruelty to animals
7 Versions of the film 7.1 Workprint cut, premiere cut and an alternative cut
7.2 149-minute cut
7.3 The 2005 radical cut
7.4 The 2012 digitally restored Director's Cut
7.5 "The Butcher's Cut"
8 Accolades
9 See also
10 References
11 External links

Plot summary[edit]
1870, Harvard[edit]
In 1870, two young men, Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson) and William "Billy" Irvine (John Hurt), are graduating from Harvard College. The Reverend Doctor (Joseph Cotten) speaks to the graduates on the association of "the cultivated mind with the uncultivated," and the importance of "the education of a nation." Irvine, brilliant but obviously intoxicated, follows this with his opposing, irreverent views. A celebration is then held after which the male students serenade the women present, including Averill's girlfriend.
1890, Johnson County, Wyoming[edit]
Twenty years later, Averill is passing through the booming town of Casper, Wyoming, on his way north to Johnson County, where he is now a marshal. Poor European immigrants new to the region are in conflict with wealthy, established cattle barons organized as the Wyoming Stock Growers Association; the newcomers sometimes steal their cattle for food. Nate Champion (Christopher Walken), Averill's friend and an enforcer for the stockmen, kills a settler for suspected rustling and dissuades another from stealing a cow. At a formal board meeting, the head of the Association, Frank Canton (Sam Waterston), tells members, including a drunk Irvine, of plans to kill 125 named settlers, or "thieves and anarchists" as Canton calls them. Irvine voices his objections to these plans. While the other members vote in favor of the plan, Irvine leaves the meeting, encounters Averill, and tells him of the Association's "death list". As Averill leaves, he exchanges bitter words with Canton and punches him. That night, Canton begins recruiting men to kill the targeted settlers.
Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert), a Johnson County bordello madam from Quebec who accepts stolen cattle as payment for use of her prostitutes, is infatuated with both Averill and Champion. Averill and Watson skate in a crowd, then dance alone, in an enormous roller skating rink called "Heaven's Gate", built by local entrepreneur John L. Bridges (Jeff Bridges). Averill gets a copy of the Association's death list from a baseball-playing U.S. Army captain and later reads the names aloud to the settlers, who are thrown into terrified turmoil. Cully (Richard Masur), a station master and a friend of Averill's, sees the train with Canton's posse heading north and rides off to warn the settlers, but is murdered en route. Later, a group of men come to Ella's bordello and rape her; Averill shoots and kills all but one of them. Champion, realizing his landowner bosses seek to eliminate Ella, goes to Canton's camp and shoots the remaining rapist, then refuses to participate in the slaughter.
Canton and his men encounter one of Champion's friends, Trapper (Geoffrey Lewis), leaving a cabin. Canton tells Trapper he has only a minute to warn Champion and his protege Nick Ray (Mickey Rourke) that Canton and his men are waiting outside. Trapper runs back to the cabin to warn the two men. Trapper then emerges from the cabin and is shot, and a gun battle ensues. Attempting to save Champion, Ella arrives in her wagon and shoots one of the hired guns before escaping on horseback. Champion and Nick are trapped inside before Nick is shot and killed. Canton's men push a burning wagon towards the cabin and set it afire, trapping Champion. Champion writes a last note to Ella and Jim. Champion then emerges from the burning cabin, shooting at Canton's men before being gunned down. Ella warns the settlers of Canton's approach at another huge, chaotic gathering at the "Heaven's Gate" rink. The agitated settlers decide to fight back, with Bridges leading the attack on Canton's gang. With the hired invaders now surrounded, both sides suffer casualties (including a drunken, poetic Irvine) as Canton leaves to bring help. Ella and Averill return to Champion's charred and smoking cabin and discover his body along with a handwritten letter documenting his last minutes alive.
The next day, Averill reluctantly joins the settlers, with their cobbled-together siege machines and explosive charges, in an attack against Canton's men and their own makeshift fortifications. Again both sides suffer heavy casualties before the U.S. Army, with Canton in the lead, arrives to stop the fighting and save the remaining besieged mercenaries. Later, at Ella's cabin, Bridges, Ella, and Averill prepare to leave for good but are ambushed by Canton and two others who shoot and kill Bridges and Ella. After killing Canton and his men, a grief-stricken Averill holds Ella's body in his arms.
1903, Newport, Rhode Island[edit]
Thirteen years later, in the new century, a well-dressed, beardless, but older-looking Averill walks the deck of his yacht off Newport, Rhode Island. He goes below, where an attractive middle-aged woman is sleeping in a luxurious boudoir. Averill watches her, saying nothing. The woman, his old Harvard girlfriend (perhaps now his wife), awakens and asks him for a cigarette. Silently he complies. Then, as he prepares to go back topside, he pauses at the door and quietly looks at her. She doesn't notice his stare. But his chin trembles with emotion, as though he realizes that, for all his wealth and class, he has lost so very, very much in those bloody events in Wyoming. Then, wordlessly, he returns to the deck as the yacht steams onward.
Cast[edit]
Kris Kristofferson as James Averill
Christopher Walken as Nathan D. "Nate" Champion
John Hurt as William C. "Billy" Irvine
Sam Waterston as Frank Canton
Brad Dourif as Mr. Eggleston
Isabelle Huppert as Ella Watson
Joseph Cotten as The Reverend Doctor
Jeff Bridges as John L. Bridges
Geoffrey Lewis as Trapper Fred
Paul Koslo as Mayor Charlie Lezak
Richard Masur as Cully
Ronnie Hawkins as Major Wolcott
Terry O'Quinn as Captain Minardi
Tom Noonan as Jake
Mickey Rourke as Nick Ray
Roseanne Vela as Beautiful Girl
Nicholas Woodeson as Small Man
Willem Dafoe appears in the film as an uncredited extra.[12]
Differences from actual history[edit]
Apart from being set in Wyoming and the fact that many of the characters have the names of key figures in the Johnson County War, the plot and the characters themselves have almost no relation to the actual historical people and events.[13]
While there were certainly small numbers of settlers arriving in northern Wyoming, there were not hordes of poor European immigrants streaming en masse,[14] let alone killing rich men's cattle out of hunger. Secondly, far from being an "enforcer" for the stockmen and a murderer, Nate Champion was a well-liked small rancher[13] in Johnson County, whom the rich stockmen dubbed "king of the rustlers" because he stood up against their tactic of claiming all unbranded young cattle on the range.[13]
Jim Averell was also a small-time rancher, about a hundred miles southwest of Johnson County. Along with his common-law wife Ellen (or Ella) Watson, he was murdered by rich stockmen two years before the Johnson County War began. Stockmen spread a story that Ella had exchanged sexual favors for stolen cattle, but this was false, and she was certainly not a bordello madam as portrayed in the film. It is unlikely that Watson or Averell ever knew Nate Champion. There are numerous additional ways in which the film bears little or no resemblance to real-life people or events.[15]
The true events of the Johnson County War transpired as follows: In April 1892, some of Wyoming's biggest cattlemen hired 23 killers from Texas[13][15] and (along with a very sympathetic newspaper reporter[13]) "invaded" north-central Wyoming to kill "rustlers". They had a hit list of 70 local people to be murdered,[13] including the sheriff and many other prominent citizens of Buffalo. The big stockmen were upset because, as more small-time ranches were established in the region, the major landholders were no longer able to use this land for their own gigantic cattle herds. Immediately after the invaders killed Nate Champion and his friend Nick Ray, Buffalo's citizens were alerted to the situation by a neighbor who had witnessed this event. The citizens quickly mobilized and eventually turned the tables, surrounding the intruders at a local ranch, where they intended to capture them. An appeal for help by Wyoming's Acting Governor (who was in collusion with the cattlemen[15]) convinced President Benjamin Harrison to call out the United States Army from nearby Fort McKinney, and after an all-night ride the soldiers arrived just in time to save the invaders. Though taken as prisoners to Cheyenne, they later avoided prosecution through witness intimidation, the manipulation of public opinion by shrewd partisan journalism, and cunning legal maneuvers.[13]
Production[edit]


 This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2013)
In 1971, rising Hollywood film director Michael Cimino submitted an original script for Heaven's Gate (then called The Johnson County War) to United Artists executives; the project was shelved when it failed to attract big-name talent. In 1979, after two hit films in a row – 1974's Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (filmed in Montana), and on the eve of winning two Academy Awards (Best Director and Best Picture) for 1978's The Deer Hunter – Cimino, now one of the hottest directors in Hollywood, used his "star power" to convince the studio to resurrect the project with Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, and Christopher Walken as the three main characters. He was given an initial budget, but his shrewdly-written contract also provided him carte blanche and many other fiscal allowances never given to any filmmaker before, making him one of the most lawsuit-proof directors to have ever worked on a movie.[citation needed]
Shooting demands, overruns, and endless retakes[edit]
The film began shooting on April 16, 1979, in Glacier National Park, east of Kalispell, Montana, with the majority of the town scenes filmed in the Two Medicine area, north of the village of East Glacier Park. Shooting also included the town of Wallace, Idaho in the summer of 1979. The project had a December 14 projected release date and $11.6 million budget and promptly fell behind schedule.[citation needed]
According to legend, by the sixth day of filming the project was already five days behind schedule. As an example of Cimino's fanatical attention to detail, a street built to his precise specifications had to be torn down and rebuilt because it reportedly "didn't look right'. The street in question needed to be six feet wider; the set construction boss said it would be cheaper to tear down one side and move it back six feet, but Cimino insisted that both sides be dismantled and moved back three feet, then reassembled.[citation needed]
Cimino's reported numerous retakes of one of the wealthy landowners showing his contempt for the immigrants by baring his rump towards them was another example of his excessiveness, supposedly requiring up to 15 takes. As one witness recounted, "How many ways can a guy drop his pants? You'd think three or four takes would be enough, but Michael – jerk that he was – wouldn't quit until he was satisfied."[citation needed]
According to one actor, his character was to "walk past a cock fight", but when he arrived at the shooting location, he learned the scene had already been filmed two weeks before.[citation needed]
An entire tree was cut down, moved in pieces, and relocated to the courtyard where the Harvard 1870 graduation scene was shot.[citation needed]
In yet another egregious example, Cimino had an irrigation system built under the land where the major battlefield scene would unfold, so that it would remain vividly green, to contrast with the red color it would later be awash with after the bloody carnage.[16]
Cimino shot more than 1.3 million feet (nearly 220 hours) of footage, costing the studio in salary, locations, and acting fees approximately $200,000 per day. Privately, it was said Cimino had expressed his wish to surpass Francis Ford Coppola's mark of shooting one million feet of footage for Apocalypse Now (1979).[citation needed]
Despite going over budget by some $13 million, Cimino was not financially penalized (as was the common practice at the time) because he had a contract with United Artists to the effect that all money spent "to complete and deliver the picture in time for a Christmas 1979 release shall not be treated as overbudget expenditures."[citation needed]
Cimino's obsessive behavior soon earned him the nickname "The Ayatollah". Production fell behind schedule as rumors spread of Cimino's demanding up to 50 takes of individual scenes and delaying filming until a cloud that he liked rolled into the frame.[17]
As a result of the numerous delays, several of the musicians originally brought to Montana to work on the film for only three weeks ended up stranded, waiting to be called for shoots to materialize, and simply sat there for six months. The experience, as the Associated Press put it, "was both stunningly boring and a raucous good time, full of jam sessions, strange adventures and curiously little actual shooting." The jam sessions served as the beginning of numerous musical collaborations between Bridges and Kristofferson; they would later reunite for the film Crazy Heart (2009) and for Bridges's eponymous album (2011).[18]
As production staggered forward, United Artists seriously considered firing Cimino and replacing him with another director.[citation needed] Steven Bach, VP in charge of production of UA at the time, described the first time he saw the film's dailies: "It's like David Lean decided to make a Western", impressed with the wide vistas of beauty that Cimino had filmed and had carefully selected to show to him. This was a way of assuaging the executive that Cimino had been spending the money wisely. When, in later months, events had turned for the worse and firing Cimino was again being seriously considered by UA, Bach visited a well-known director whom he kept anonymous in his book, Final Cut.[citation needed] The book goes on to say this director rejected the job because he might have been infringing the Director's Guild of America's rules and regulations by even discussing replacing another director who had yet to be fired from a production. However, it is suggested that the director was Lean himself, as Bach wrote that he had said to the person: "It looks like you decided to make a Western."[citation needed]
Actor John Hurt spent so long waiting around on the production for something to do, he went off and made The Elephant Man (1980) for David Lynch in the interim, and then came back to shoot more scenes on Heaven's Gate.[19]
Heaven's Gate finished shooting in March 1980, having cost nearly $30 million.[citation needed] During post-production, Cimino changed the lock to the studio's editing room, prohibiting studio executives from seeing the movie until he completed the editing. Working with Oscar-winning editor William H. Reynolds, Cimino slaved over his project. Reynolds complained how much of his own work would later be undone by the director, who was convinced this Western epic would be a masterpiece.[citation needed] According to an anonymous studio insider, "The level of pretension in that editing room was only matched by the level of disaster later on."[citation needed]
The workprint cut and eventual plans for release[edit]
On June 26, 1980, Cimino previewed a work print for executives at United Artists that reportedly ran a staggering five hours and twenty-five minutes (325 minutes), which Cimino said was "about 15 minutes longer than the final cut would be."[20]
The executives flatly refused to release the film at that length and once again contemplated firing Cimino.[20] However, Cimino promised them he could re-edit the film and spent the entire summer and fall of 1980 doing so, finally paring it down to its original premiere length of 3 hours and 39 minutes (219 minutes). The original wide-release opening on Christmas of 1979 had come and gone, so UA and Cimino finally set up a release date in the early winter of 1980.[citation needed]
Reception[edit]
Initial reactions[edit]
The final cut finally premiered at New York's Cinema 1 theater on November 19, 1980. The premiere was, by all accounts, a disaster. During the intermission, the audience was so subdued that Cimino was said to have asked why no one was drinking the champagne. He was reportedly told by his publicist, "Because they hate the movie, Michael."[20]
New York Times critic Vincent Canby panned the film, calling it "an unqualified disaster," comparing it to "a forced four-hour walking tour of one's own living room."[21] Canby went even further by stating that "[i]t fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter and the Devil has just come around to collect."[21]
After a sparsely attended one-week run, Cimino and United Artists quickly pulled the film from any further releases, completely postponing a full worldwide release.[9]
In April 1981 in Los Angeles, the film resurfaced in a "director's cut" two-hour twenty-nine minute (149 minute) version that Cimino had recut for a third time.[9] Reviewing the shorter cut in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert criticized the film's formal choices and its narrative inconsistencies and incredulities, concluding that the film was "[t]he most scandalous cinematic waste I have ever seen, and remember, I've seen Paint Your Wagon."[22] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times issued a dissenting opinion when he reviewed the shortened film, becoming one of its few American champions, calling it "a true screen epic".[9]
The film closed after the second week, having grossed only $1.3 million total on its $44 million budget.[9]
Reassessments[edit]
In subsequent years, some critics have come to the film's defense, beginning with European critics who praised it after the film played at the Cannes Film Festival.[9][10] Robin Wood was an early champion of Heaven's Gate and its reassessment, calling it "one of the few authentically innovative Hollywood films...It seems to me, in its original version, among the supreme achievements of the Hollywood cinema."[23][24] David Thomson calls the film "a wounded monster" and argues that it takes part in "a rich American tradition (Melville, James, Ives, Pollock, Parker) that seeks a mighty dispersal of what has gone before. In America, there are great innovations in art that suddenly create fields of apparent emptiness. They may seem like omissions or mistakes at first. Yet in time we come to see them as meant for our exploration."[25] Martin Scorsese has said that the film has many overlooked virtues.[26] Some of these critics have attempted to impugn the motives of the earliest reviewers. Robin Wood noted, in his initial review of the film, reviewers tended to pile on the film, attempting to "outdo [one an]other with sarcasm and contempt."[23] Several members of the cast and crew have complained that the initial reviews of the film were tainted by its production history and that daily critics were reviewing it as a business story as much as a motion picture.[9] In April 2011, the staff of Time Out London selected Heaven's Gate as the 12th greatest Western.[27]
Beyond this, much of the critical estimation of the film continues to be low; in 2008, film critic Joe Queenan of The Guardian named Heaven's Gate the worst film ever made.[7] It holds a 56% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, although several of the 39 reviews aggregated there were published for the film's initial release.[28]
2012–13 re-release and acclaim[edit]
In the fall of 2012, the film was re-released to "soak up acclaim" as a 216-minute "director's cut" at the 69th Venice Film Festival[29][30][31] on August 30 in the presence of Cimino, followed one month later by screening at the New York Film Festival,[11] and then at the Festival Lumière in France. Venice Festival director Alberto Barbera described the film as an "absolute masterpiece" that had disappeared, and whose 1980 cutting was characterized as a "massacre" by nervous producers and had been "one of the greatest injustices of cinematic history" that had destroyed careers (Cimino and Kristofferson) following "annihilat[ing]" critical reviews.[11]
In March 2013, the new director's cut was again featured back in New York City in a week-long run screening at the Film Forum. A major article by New York Times critic Manohla Dargis opined that the film's "second coming ... brightens a murky, legendary work of art" in a restoration that also "reveals the contradictions of a great flop."[16]
Controversy[edit]
Impact on the U.S. film industry[edit]
The film's unprecedented $44-million cost (equivalent to about $122 million as of 2012) and poor performance at the box office ($3,484,331 gross in the United States) generated more negative publicity than actual financial damage, causing Transamerica Corporation, United Artists' corporate owner, to become anxious over its own public image and abandon film production altogether.
Transamerica then sold United Artists to MGM, which effectively ended the studio's existence. MGM would later revive the name "United Artists" as a subsidiary division. While the money loss due to Heaven's Gate was considerable, United Artists was still a thriving studio with a steady income provided by the James Bond, Pink Panther and Rocky franchises. But many movie insiders have argued that UA was already struggling at the time after box office flops like Cruising, Foxes and Roadie, that were released earlier in 1980 (though the first film was not even produced by UA).
The fracas had a wider effect on the American film industry. During the 1970s, relatively young directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, George Lucas, William Friedkin, and Steven Spielberg had been given unprecedentedly large budgets with very little studio control (see New Hollywood). The studios evolved away from the director-driven film and eventually led to the new paradigm of the high concept feature, epitomized by Jaws and Star Wars. However, the directors' power lessened considerably, as a result of disappointing box-office performers such as both Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977) and Cruising (1980), and culminating in Coppola's One from the Heart and Cimino's Heaven's Gate. As the new high-concept paradigm of filmmaking became more entrenched, studio control of budgets and productions became tighter, ending the free-wheeling excesses that had begotten Heaven's Gate.
The very poor box office performance of the film had an especially negative impact on Western films, which had enjoyed a revival in the late 1960s. From that point on, very few Western films were released by major studios, save for a brief revival in the 1990s thanks to the Oscar-winning hits Dances with Wolves (1991) and Unforgiven (1992).
Accusations of cruelty to animals[edit]
The film was marred by accusations of cruelty to animals during production. One assertion was that live horses were bled from the neck without giving them pain-killers so that their blood could be collected and smeared upon the actors in a scene. The American Humane Association (AHA) asserted that four horses were killed and many more injured during a battle scene. It was claimed that one of the horses was blown up by dynamite. This footage appears in the final cut of the film.
The AHA was barred from monitoring the animal action on the set. According to the AHA, the owner of an abused horse filed a lawsuit against the producers, director, Partisan Productions, and the horse wrangler. The owner cited wrongful injury and breach of contract for willfully depriving her Arabian gelding of proper care. The suit cited "the severe physical and behavioral trauma and disfigurement" of the horse. The case was settled out of court.[32]
There were accusations of actual cockfights, decapitated chickens, and a group of cows disemboweled to provide "fake intestines" for the actors.[32] The outcry prompted the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to contractually authorize the AHA to monitor the use of all animals in all filmed media.[32]
The film is listed on AHA's list of unacceptable films.[32] The AHA protested the film by distributing an international press release detailing the assertions of animal cruelty and asking people to boycott it. AHA organized picket lines outside movie theaters in Hollywood while local humane societies did the same across the USA. Though Heaven's Gate was not the first film to have animals killed during its production, it is believed that the film was largely responsible for sparking the now common use of the "No animals were harmed ..." disclaimer and more rigorous supervision of animal acts by the AHA, which had been inspecting film production since the 1940s.[33]
Versions of the film[edit]
There were several version of the film.
1.Workprint cut 325-minutes Print for studio executives, early 1980
2.Initial "Premiere" Release: 219-minutes Cinema release, November 1980, aborted after 1 week
Shown on Z Channel cable, 1982, as "The Directors cut"
Released on VHS and LaserDisc by MGM as "The Legendary Uncut Version"
3.Director's Second edit: 149-minutes Wide cinema release, April 1981
Released on DVD in France
4.Radical Cut: 219-minute 2005 special screening in Paris and New York Reassembled by MGM with available high quality footage (using alternative footage where required)

5.Digitally restored Directors Cut: 216 minutes Restored in 2012 for the 69th Venice Film Festival, followed by a BD & DVD release. Based on the initial release with the intermission removed, and slightly shortened.

6.The Butchers cut: 108-minutes Unreleased "fan edit" in 2006 (published 2014) by a professional director fan of the film

Workprint cut, premiere cut and an alternative cut[edit]
Notwithstanding the five hour and twenty-five minute (325 minute) "workprint" cut shown to executives in early 1980, Cimino had rushed through post-production and editing in order to meet his contractual requirements to United Artists, and to qualify for the 1980 Academy Awards.[9] The version screened at the November, 1980 premiere ran 3 hours and 39 minutes (219 minutes). Bridges joked that Cimino had worked on the film so close to the premiere that the print screened was still wet from the lab.[9]
After the aborted one-week premiere run in New York, Cimino and United Artists pulled the film; Cimino wrote an open letter to the studio that was printed in several trade papers blaming unrealistic deadline pressures for the film's failure.[34] United Artists reportedly also hired its own editor to try to edit Cimino's footage into a releasable film with no real success.[34]
Ultimately, Cimino's second edited version, a 149-minute version, premiered in April 1981 and was the only cut of the film screened in wide release. This cut of the film is not just shorter but differs radically in placement of scenes and selection of takes.[23] This version, after leaving theaters, was not released on home video of any kind in the United States, but was later released on DVD in France ("la Porte du Paradis").
In 1982, Z Channel aired the 219-minute 1980 premiere version of the film on cable television – the first time that the longer version was widely exhibited – and which Z Channel dubbed the "director's cut." As critic F.X. Feeney noted in the documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, Z Channel's broadcast of Heaven's Gate first popularized the concept of a "director's cut."[35]
When MGM (which acquired the rights to United Artists's catalog after its demise) released the film on VHS and videodisc in the 1980s, it released Cimino's 219-minute cut with the tagline "Heaven's Gate ... The Legendary Uncut Version." Subsequent releases on LaserDisc and DVD have contained only the 219-minute cut.
Due to the wide availability of the 219-minute 1980 premiere version of "Heaven's Gate" and its frequent labeling as either "uncut" or the "director's cut," Cimino has insisted that the so-called "original version" did not fully correspond to his intentions, and that he was under pressure to bring it out for the predetermined date and did not consider the film ready, making even the 219-minute version essentially an "unfinished" film.[23]
The 216-minute version showed in Venice is quite similar to the 219 one, but with no intermission. Some shots in the second part are slightly shorter and a shot with a single line has been cut (just after John Hurt is beaten by Sam Waterson).
149-minute cut[edit]
In the 149-minute version of Heaven's Gate released in 1981, the following scenes are cut:[citation needed]
Irvine's speech at the Harvard graduation
The co-ed circle dancing immediately following graduation
Averill beating up the brute enforcer (who beats up the immigrant in front of his wife and kids)
Averill passing the beaten man's widow in the carriage, asking her how she's doing
The spitting fight between the two immigrant landowners in the cockfight scene
The entire roller skating dance scene
Some female immigrants carrying a load up the hill
Champion almost shooting the stock grower that insults Ella Watson
The scene where Ella Watson first leaves Champion to return to Averill
The introductory part of the scene where Averill reads the names on the "death list" (the edited version starts with John Bridges firing the gun in the air, to restore order)
Averill weeping to Bridges that he "hates getting old", while looking at the old photo of himself and his girlfriend
The immigrants being informed that Averill quit his post, and Watson warning them the stock growers have arrived
The last five or so minutes of the second battle scene, including the footage of the character crushed under the wagon and the woman killing him in mercy
That same woman killing herself, post-battle, and Bridges and Averill surveying the carnage
The 2005 radical cut[edit]
In 2005, MGM released the film in selected cinemas in the United States and Europe.[36] The 219-minute cut was reassembled by MGM archivist John Kirk, who reported that large portions of the original negative had been discarded, making this an all-new radical version using whatever alternative available scenes that could be found.[36] The restored print was screened in Paris and presented to a sold-out audience at New York's Museum of Modern Art with a live introduction by Isabelle Huppert.[37] Because the project was commissioned by then-MGM executive Bingham Ray, who was ousted shortly thereafter, the budget for the project was cut and a planned wider release and DVD never materialized and probably never will.[36]
The 2012 digitally restored Director's Cut[edit]
In 2012, MGM released yet another version, digitally restored and 216 minutes long. It premiered at the 2012 Venice Film Festival as part of the Venice Classics series.[38][39]
The Criterion Collection released the restored 216 minute version on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on November 20, 2012. This "Director's Cut" was personally supervised by Michael Cimino and Joann Carelli. Cimino explains in the special features portion of the DVD that this is his preferred version of the film, and he feels it is the complete version he intended to make.[citation needed]
"The Butcher's Cut"[edit]
In 2006, director Steven Soderbergh re-edited the film in a 108 minute so-called "Butcher's Cut." This version of the film was released on April 21, 2014 to Soderbergh's website Extension 765. [2] The website previously released a mashup (video) of the 1960 and 1998 versions of Psycho in February 2014, [3] and the recut of Cimino's film appears to have been made in the same spirit. The print used for this version seems to be derived from MGM's original DVD release, with none of the revised color timing and sound-mixing from the Criterion Collection release. An intertitle at the beginning of the film reads:
"I acknowledge that what I have done with this film is both immoral and illegal."
Soderbergh's version omits entire sequences of the film, including the opening credits, and severely truncates the roller-skating sequence, the waltz between Averill and Ella, a scene of a cockfight, and a number of scenes of the Eastern European townsfolk of Johnson County. The opening prologue at Harvard, featuring Hurt and Kristofferson as young men, is moved to the back of the film, immediately following the standoff between the authorities and the townsfolk. The original final scenes of the film, which took place in 1903, are entirely omitted, and Soderbergh ends his version as the Harvard class waltzes to Johann Strauss II's The Blue Danube, which carries over to the credits. A scene where Harvard students engage in a brawl is cut into the final credits. While Cimino's writing credit and possessory credit remain intact, his directorial credit is removed.
In a statement on his website, and credited under his editorial pseudonym Mary Ann Bernard, Soderbergh notes:
"As a dedicated cinema fan, I was obsessed with HEAVEN'S GATE from the moment it was announced in early 1979, and unfortunately history has shown that on occasion a fan can become so obsessed they turn violent toward the object of their obsession, which is what happened to me during the holiday break of 2006. This is the result."
The running time of this new cut is exactly half the length of the 216 minute Director's Cut. Consequently, many performances, such as those by Joseph Cotten and Brad Dourif are reduced drastically.[40][41][42]
Accolades[edit]
54th Academy Awards[43][44]
Nominated: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Tambi Larsen, James L. Berkey)1981 Cannes Film Festival[43]
In Competition: Palme d'Or (Michael Cimino)2nd Golden Raspberry Awards[43]
Won: Worst Director – Michael CiminoNominated: Worst PictureNominated: Worst Screenplay - Michael CiminoNominated: Worst Musical ScoreNominated: Worst Actor – Kris Kristofferson
See also[edit]
1980 in film
List of box office bombs
List of films considered the worst
Revolution (1985) - an historical epic film, starring Al Pacino, that was also made by a high profile director (Hugh Hudson); it, too, was a failure on release and led to problems for its studio (Goldcrest Films). Since then, it, too received a new cut that was more positively reviewed.
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ "Heaven's Gate – Poster #1". IMP Awards. Retrieved October 12, 2010.
2.Jump up ^ "HEAVEN'S GATE (X)". British Board of Film Classification. 1981-07-03. Retrieved 2013-04-07.
3.Jump up ^ "HEAVEN'S GATE (15) (!)". British Board of Film Classification. 2013-03-27. Retrieved 2013-04-07.
4.Jump up ^ Hughes, p.170
5.Jump up ^ "Heaven's Gate (1980)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved August 15, 2011.
6.Jump up ^ Eller, Claudia,"The costliest box office flops of all time", Los Angeles Times (January 15, 2014)
7.^ Jump up to: a b Queenan, Joe (March 21, 2008). "From Hell". The Guardian. Retrieved September 3, 2009.
8.Jump up ^ Biskind, Peter (1998). Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock-'n'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York City: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80996-6. pp. 401–403.
9.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i Epstein, Michael (2004). Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate (television). Viewfinder Productions.
10.^ Jump up to: a b Khan, Omar. "Heaven's Gate (1981)"
11.^ Jump up to: a b c Hoyle, Ben (October 1, 2012). "Heaven's Gate: Box Office Turkey That Sank a Studio Is a Modern Masterpiece". The Times. p. 4. Retrieved October 1, 2012.
12.Jump up ^ "Spalding Gray's Tortured Soul". The New York Times Magazine. October 6, 2011. p. 5 of online version. Retrieved November 6, 2011.
13.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g Davis, John W. (2010). Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion of Johnson County. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-4106-0.
14.Jump up ^ Larson, T.A. (1990). History of Wyoming. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-7936-0.
15.^ Jump up to: a b c The Johnson County War: 1892 Invasion of Northern Wyoming
16.^ Jump up to: a b Dargis, Manohla (17 March 2013). "The Second Coming of 'Heaven's Gate'". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 March 2013.
17.Jump up ^ "The 15 Biggest Box Office Bombs -> Heaven's Gate #8". CNBC. Retrieved October 12, 2010.
18.Jump up ^ Talbott, Chris (August 17, 2011). "Jeff Bridges Chases Different Muse with New Album". The Buffalo News.
19.Jump up ^ http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/heavens-gate/29865/10-stories-of-excess-from-the-production-of-heavens-gate
20.^ Jump up to: a b c Bach, Steven (1985, 1999). Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists (New edition ed.). New York, NY: Newmarket Press.
21.^ Jump up to: a b Canby, Vincent (November 19, 1980). "'Heaven's Gate,' A Western by Cimino". The New York Times. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
22.Jump up ^ Ebert, Roger (1981). "Heaven's Gate review". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved March 13, 2012.
23.^ Jump up to: a b c d Wood, Robin (1986). Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 267, 269, 283. ISBN 0-231-12966-1.
24.Jump up ^ "Top Ten Lists by Critics and Filmmakers". Combustible Celluloid. Retrieved November 25, 2010.
25.Jump up ^ Thomson, David (October 14, 2008). "Have You Seen ...?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films. New York City: Random House. p. 363. ISBN 978-0-307-26461-9.
26.Jump up ^ LaGravenese, Richard (director); Demme, Ted (director). (2003). A Decade Under the Influence: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. [Film]. IFC.
27.Jump up ^ "The 50 greatest westerns". Time Out (London). April 2011. Retrieved April 17, 2011.
28.Jump up ^ "Heaven's Gate Review". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
29.Jump up ^ Lim, Dennis (August 31, 2012). "Venice Film Festival: Michael Cimino Revisits 'Heaven's Gate'". The New York Times (ArtBeats). Retrieved October 28, 2012.
30.Jump up ^ Sotinel, Thomas (August 31, 2012). "Venise 2012: Michael Cimino retrouve la clé du paradis". Le Monde (in French). Retrieved October 28, 2012.
31.Jump up ^ Crousse, Nicolas (August 31, 2012). "Mostra de Venise : Cimino est (enfin) au paradis". Le Soir (in French). Retrieved October 28, 2012.
32.^ Jump up to: a b c d "Heaven's Gate". American Humane Association. Retrieved March 19, 2013.[dead link]
33.Jump up ^ "Cruel Camera". The Fifth Estate. CBC Television. May 5, 1982 and January 16, 2008. Retrieved October 12, 2010.
34.^ Jump up to: a b Egan, Jack (December 8, 1980). "Bombs Away". New York (via Google Books). p. 16. Retrieved March 13, 2012.
35.Jump up ^ Cassavetes, Xan (director), Feeney, F.X. (critic). (2004). Z: A Magnificent Obsession. [Film]. IFC.
36.^ Jump up to: a b c Macnab, Geoffrey (February 23, 2005). "Heaven Can Wait". The Guardian. Retrieved March 13, 2012.
37.Jump up ^ "Michael Cimino – Paris Heaven's Gate Master class". ecranlarge.com. Retrieved November 18, 2010.
38.Jump up ^ Drees, Rich (August 31, 2012). "Cimino Premiers 216-Minute Cut of Heaven's Gate at Venice Film Festival". FilmBuffOnline. Retrieved September 6, 2012.
39.Jump up ^ Lang, Brett (July 26, 2012). "Venice Film Festival Unveils Line-Up with Films from Malick, De Palma and Demme". The Wrap. Retrieved July 27, 2012.
40.Jump up ^ Extension 765 (April 21, 2014). [1]. Extension 765.com. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
41.Jump up ^ Adams, Sam (April 22, 2014). "Steven Soderbergh Cuts "Heaven's Gate" Down to Size". Indiewire. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
42.Jump up ^ "Steven Soderbergh Takes A Cleaver To Michael Cimino With HEAVEN'S GATE: THE BUTCHER'S CUT!". Ain't It Cool News. April 21, 2014. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
43.^ Jump up to: a b c "Heaven's Gate (1980) – Awards". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
44.Jump up ^ "Heaven's Gate". The New York Times. Retrieved December 31, 2008.
BibliographyBach, Steven (September 1, 1999). Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists (Updated ed.). New York, NY: Newmarket Press. ISBN 97815570437440.
Biskind, Peter (1998). Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock-'n'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80996-6.
Hughes, Howard (2009). Aim for the Heart. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84511-902-7.
External links[edit]
Heaven's Gate at the American Film Institute Catalog
Heaven's Gate at Box Office Mojo
Heaven's Gate at the Internet Movie Database
Heaven's Gate at Rotten Tomatoes
Review of Heaven's Gate at TVGuide.com
Trailer for Heaven's Gate on YouTube
"The Johnson County War: 1892 Invasion of Northern Wyoming". Wyohistory.org.


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Films directed by Michael Cimino


Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) ·
 The Deer Hunter (1978) ·
 Heaven's Gate (1980) ·
 Year of the Dragon (1985) ·
 The Sicilian (1987) ·
 Desperate Hours (1990) ·
 Sunchaser (1996)
 

 


Categories: 1980 films
English-language films
1980s Western (genre) films
American films
American epic films
American Western (genre) films
Films directed by Michael Cimino
Animal cruelty incidents
Films about immigration
Films about race and ethnicity
Films set in 1870
Films set in 1890
Films set in 1903
Films set in Wyoming
Films shot in Idaho
Films shot in Montana
Johnson County, Wyoming
Pinewood Studios films
United Artists films
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