Dario Loce In 1980, the New Hollywood era—a decade-plus of unprecedented creative freedom for a new generation of visionary directors—came to a spectacular and calamitous end. The film that became the symbol of this collapse was Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, a sprawling, ambitious, and elegiac Western that was meant to be his magnum opus. Fresh off the stunning success of The Deer Hunter, which had won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, Cimino was given a virtual blank check and total creative control by United Artists.
What followed was a production of legendary excess, a film that became one of the most notorious box-office bombs in history, and a cautionary tale that sent a shockwave through the industry. The failure of Heaven’s Gate didn’t just bankrupt a studio; it became the final nail in the coffin for the auteur-driven system, effectively ending Hollywood’s most artistically daring era.
The Auteur’s Blank Check
The story of Heaven’s Gate is a perfect encapsulation of the New Hollywood ethos, both its brilliance and its hubris. United Artists (UA), a studio founded by artists and revitalized in the 1970s by financing director-driven hits like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Rocky, was the ideal home for a director like Cimino. After the triumph of The Deer Hunter, UA gave him an initial budget of $11.5 million and, crucially, final cut. It was the ultimate expression of the auteur theory in practice: a studio betting everything on the singular vision of a celebrated director. However, this power was unchecked. A recent exodus of experienced executives at UA’s parent company, Transamerica, had left a new, less seasoned team in charge, one that was ill-equipped to handle a director with Cimino’s perfectionism and ambition.
A Production of Legendary Excess
From the moment production began in Montana in 1979, it was clear that Cimino’s vision was boundless, and so was his spending. The shoot was plagued by a series of disasters and delays that have since become Hollywood legend.
- Perfectionism and Delays: Cimino, nicknamed “the Ayatollah” by his crew, was obsessed with historical authenticity and visual perfection, demanding countless retakes for even the smallest details. Lavish, historically accurate sets were built, only to be torn down and rebuilt because they weren’t to his exact liking. After just six days of shooting, the production was already five days behind schedule, having spent nearly a million dollars for a single minute of usable footage. The shoot, originally planned for a few months, ballooned to over a year. Actor John Hurt famously had enough time to leave the set, fly to London to shoot his role in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, and return to Montana for his next scene.
- Astronomical Costs: Cimino shot an astonishing 1.3 million feet of film—roughly 220 hours of footage. The production was burning through money at a rate of $200,000 a day, and the budget soared from its initial $11.5 million to a final cost of $44 million (equivalent to over $160 million today).
- Controversy and Bad Press: Barred from the set, the press grew hungry for stories of the film’s chaotic production. A freelance journalist hired himself as an extra and wrote a devastating exposé detailing Cimino’s excesses, allegations of animal cruelty, and the general mayhem on set, creating a cloud of negative publicity long before the film was ever released.
The Collapse: A Critical and Commercial Catastrophe
When Cimino finally delivered his film, it was a five-and-a-half-hour workprint that was eventually edited down to a 3-hour, 39-minute version for its premiere in November 1980. The reaction was immediate and savage. Critics, already primed by the negative press, savaged the film, calling it an incoherent, self-indulgent disaster. The backlash was so severe that United Artists pulled the film from theaters after only one week.
In a desperate attempt to salvage the picture, Cimino cut the film down to a 2.5-hour version, which was re-released in April 1981. It made no difference. The film was a catastrophic commercial failure, grossing a mere $3.5 million against its $44 million budget. The financial loss was so immense that it effectively destroyed United Artists. The once-proud studio was sold to MGM, ending its legacy as a haven for independent-minded filmmakers.
The End of an Era
The failure of Heaven’s Gate was more than just a financial disaster; it was a symbolic event that marked the end of an era. The New Hollywood movement was already waning, as the spectacular success of blockbusters like Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) had shown studios a new, far more profitable formula based on high-concept spectacle. The debacle of Heaven’s Gate was the final justification studios needed to reclaim creative control from the “movie brat” directors. The age of the empowered auteur was over, replaced by a new era of producer-driven, committee-made blockbusters. Cimino’s career never recovered; the director who had been on top of the world became a Hollywood pariah, a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked artistic ambition.
In the decades since, Heaven’s Gate has undergone a significant critical reappraisal, with many now viewing it as a flawed but beautiful and ambitious masterpiece, praising its stunning cinematography and elegiac tone. But its historical importance remains unchanged. It is the film that, for better or worse, stands as the grand, tragic tombstone of New Hollywood—an era of artistic freedom that burned brightly, and then, in a storm of mud, snow, and celluloid, spectacularly burned out.
