Final Cut – Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate

"Heaven’s Gate was not just a flop, it collapsed United Artists – the studio that was founded by DW Griffiths, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, and it’s ridiculous that one man and one movie could do that. For its faults, the studio system wouldn’t have let that happen. Steven Bach, the author of this book, was the head of production at United Artists and he writes just beautifully: you can’t believe he was a movie executive. It’s a forensic account of how they take a gamble on this one guy [director Michael Cimino] on a movie that was originally budgeted at six million dollars and ended up costing 39 million dollars. Shooting went over schedule by at least a year and the final cut of the movie was four hours long. It’s extraordinary, because when you open the book you think, I can’t wait to see what this guy’s got to say, because how could it be anyone’s fault but his? But it’s a story of just getting in deeper and deeper and it speaks a lot for the atmosphere of the times that this kind of stuff seemed rational. It’s one of those things which is incremental, when each time something happens it seems rational, but Bach is so clever at stepping outside of the times and saying, looking back this was obviously ridiculous. It’s a great anatomy of the most famous flop in movie history, and to have a guy on site who can write like this! He’s very good at creating this mood around every decision that’s taken. But this was a time when a lot of these studios were starting to be owned by conglomerates – United Artists was owned by an airline – and people who are obviously not movie people start to be in charge. As a result many studios, particularly MGM, were slow to pick up on the threat and potential of television. Hollywood looked down on it as a medium in the same way, slightly ironically, as the snobs on the East Coast had originally looked down on their medium – they thought it slightly vulgar. In my view we’re living in a golden age now where actors want to be in TV dramas, and you sense that Steven Spielberg would actually rather be making Band of Brothers than Saving Private Ryan , because it’s 12 hours of story, and that’s probably more interesting for him than getting a film off the ground, which is inevitably shorter."