Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven's Gate

433 Pages·1985·183.057 MB·English

by  Steven Bach

Dreams and Disaster
Making of
m the
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HEA GATE
Bach_é
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Steven
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Heaven's Cale is probably the most
discussed, least seen film in modern
movie history. Its notoriety is so great
that it has become a generic term for
disaster, for ego run rampant, for epic
mismanagement, for wanton extrava-
gance. It was also the watershed film
of the decade-—not for its cinematic
qualities, but for its effect on Holly-
wood aud the way movies will and
will not be made in the future. For
Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate did
not merely fail (failure is forgivable,
sometimes even embraced in the
strange labyrinths of the Hollywood
psyche), Heaven's Gate did the un-
thinkable: lt sank a studio. Less than
a month after the picture's second
release, United Artists—the company
founded by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary
Pickford, D. W. Griffith and Charlie
Chaplin—for all practical purposes
ceased to exist. What happened? Why?
flow?
llow does a movie budgeted for
$7.5 million end up costing $36 mil-
lion? How does one begin to coor-
dinate an enterprise when decisions,
;’"“*“'{,'I
often mutually exclusive, are made
(continued an back flap)
FINAL CUT
FINAL
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DREAMS
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AND
DISASTER
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THE
MAKING
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HEA VEN'S GA TE
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by Steven Bach
J
Wilharn Morrow and Company. Inc. New York
Copyright 0 I985 by Outpost Productions, Inc.
Portions ofthis book have appeared in Vanity Fair and American Film.
Selections from The Cattle Barims' Rebellion Against law and Order: Firxt Eyewitness Accounts ofthe
Johnson County War in Wyornirig I892 appear here courtesy of the Rare Boolts and Manuscripts
Division. New Yotlt Public Library. Astor. Lenmt and Tilden Foundations.
Selections as noted from The New York Times reprinted here by permission. Copyright O I978.
I980. I98I. I984 by the New Yorlt Times Company.
From D. W. Griffith: An American Life by Richard Schicltel copyright O I984 by Gideon Produc-
tions. Inc. Reprinted by permission of Simon St Schuster. Inc.
From Adventures in the Screen Triule copyright 0 I983 by William Goldman. Published by Wamer
‘ Books.
Fmm “Michael Cimino's Battle to Malte a Great Movie" by jean Vallely. Reprinted from the
December I978 issue of Esquire. Copyright © I973 by Esquire Asociates.
From “Michael Cimino's Way West” by Rex McGee. reprinted by pennission of Amenciin Film
from the October I980 issue. Copyright O I980 by The American Film Institute.
From Taking It All In by Pauline Kael. Copyright © I980. I981. I982. I983. I984 by Pauline
Kael. reprinted by permission of Holt. Rinebart & Winston. Publishers.
From “Behind the Cameras on Heaven's Gate" by Vilmos Bigmonil. Copyright © I980 by
American Cinematographer. Reprinted by permission.
“Hollywood's War" by Tom Buckley appeared in the April I980 issue oiHarper’; magazine. Quota-
tions that appear here from the article are reprinted by permission of the author.
Line from “Me and Bobby McGee" by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster copyright O I969 Com-
bine Music Corporation. Intemational Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.
Selections as noted from The Lu; Angeles Times reprinted here by pemiission. Copyright Q I979.
I982. I983. The L0: Arigeles Times.
Selections from Claudia Cohen's column. which appeared in the November ZI. I980 issue of the
New York Daily News. are reprinted here by pennission. New Yotlt Daily News. Copyright 0 I950.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any lnrm or by any
means. electronic or mechanical. including photocopying, recording or by any infonnatitin storage
and retrieval system. without permission ll’\ writing {tom the Publisher. Inquiries should be ad-
dressed to Pennissions Department. William Morrow and Company. lnc.. I05 Madison Ave.. New
York. N.Y. IOOIG.
library ofClinll Cataloging in Publication Data
Bach. Steven.
Final cut.
Includes index.
I. l"leavcn's gate. I. Title.
l’NI997.H4l§1B) I985 'l9I.41'7Z 85-4983
ISBN 0-688-04382-8
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
aoox DEILZN av user u
Thb book isfor my motherandfather
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romswoao
l_\UT_|_'lOR'S
Orson Welles once observed that a poet needs a pen, a painter a brush,
and a lmmaker an army. This has never been more true (or more
expensive) than it is today; nor has the military analogy ever been more
apt. Wars, metaphorical and real, ate hell we know, not only for the
foot soldiers who slog through the trenches but also for the generals and
chiefs of staff who get the glory or the sack.
Heaven's Gale was a movie about a war and was one itself; it had
many battleelds. One was literal, in Montana; another was economic,
mainly in New York; some were political in both Hollywood and New
York; and all of them were informed by personality.
More than a little havoc was wreaked, and more than a little rubble
was left. Falling debris from the collapse of a once-great company dazed
participants and onlookers alike. including many civilian bystanders, as
unsure of what had happened as were those correspondents gamely
sending confused dispatches back to the motion-picture and nancial
and, eventually, worldwide press.
Rebecca West once said she wrote to nd out what she thought,
and in some measure the pages that follow are my attempt to nd out
what sense l can draw from events that seemed as senseless at times to
myself as they did to the press and the general public. As both partici-
pant and witness tn the non-sense l do not shrink from the admission
that I lobbed the occasional grenade into the chaos or participated in
skirmishes back on the home front that did nothing to improve condi-
tions in the theater of war. It is hoped that the tone is less “con-
8 AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
fessional" than frank and that the glimpses of life at staff headquarters
and in the trenches may reveal, now that the smoke has cleared, what
happened and how, and maybe even why.
These pages do not claim to be without personal viewpoint or to be
exhaustive. There is another war story that might well be written about
Heat/en's Gate by its chief general: that of the unwieldy war to create art
from technology and ambition and will. It's a tough battle to try to
touch the human spirit with money, machinery, and materiel. Victory
or defeat in that war is in the eye or the heart of the beholder, and the
reader as viewer can decide for himself.
ln the meantime, however, here are the spent shell casings, the
bombs exploded, the duds waiting or never to go off, the broad land-
scape of debris, the narrower one of souvenir, all collected by a once
shell-shocked observer and participant after sifting through the rubble.
,-
ACIWOWLEQIQPEHIS
When l rst went to work for United Artists in May I978, William
Goldman urged me to keep a diary. l took his advice, and his appear-
ance in those (and these) pages is therefore his own fault. Not so, many
others.
l also kept daily business joumals, notes on telephone calls, meet-
ings. and other professional miscellany, usually in the sort of spiral"
notebooks favored, appropriately enough, by students. The cost of my
education was high and bome by many.
My two secretaries—Rita loelson in the West and Anne Harkavy in
the East—devotedly maintained calendars, travel itineraries, and rec-
ords of phone calls made and received and saw to it that my personal
les covering the events narrated in this book were as orderly and as
l
complete as l would ever want them as memorabilia. l owe Anne and
l Rita much for their friendship and aid over the years, but for nothing so
much as their having unwittingly compiled the basic documentation on
which this book is based.
I owe others, too. These pages could not have been written without
the aid and support, both factual and friendly, of many who, like the
author, were participants in or witnesses to the events here related.
Some of them shared those years on condition they not be thanked by
name, a condition l hereby acknowledge and respect. They know who
i.
they are and also, l hope, my gratitude to them. Others, whose names
follow, were in varying ways helpful in clarifying issues, dates, mo-
l
ments, moods, and sometimes motives. They include from United Art-
ists and the movie: Andreas "Andy" Albeck, Joann Carelli, Bart
I
IO ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Farber, Joseph Farrell, Robert French, Gene Goodman, Tom Gray.
James Harvey, Allen Highll, Lehman Katz, Derek Kavanagh, Roz
Komack, Tambi Larsen, Nan Leonard, Charles Okun, Kathi Page,
Gerald Paonessa, Richard Parks, Gary Schrager, Robert Schwartz, Hy
Smith, Lois Smith, Dean Stolber, and Anthea Sylbert.
Others who were helpful include Tom Buckley, Les Gapay, Sabrina
Grigorian, Leticia Kent, Paul Schumach, Fred Schuler, Sybelle
Schuler, Gene Shalit, Kevin Thomas, Johannes Waltz, and Jim Wat-
ters. Special help and support came from Robert Doggett and James
Kellerhals, and my gratitude and debt to them are great.
Conversations are re-created in this book, reconstructed from mem-
ory, both mine and others, and from the basic research materials al-
ready cited. ln all but the obvious one or two l was either participant or
witness.
There are two important omissions to the sources utilized, both ma-
jor participants in the drama who chose not to cooperate in its chroni-
cling. David Field wrote me after long consideration that he did not
want to read or even to be in the book. Michael Cimino was unrespon-
sive to requests for interviews. Each of them would perhaps write a
substantially different account from the one found here.
l also wish to thank the following people and organizations for their
generous extensions of time and help: Dan Black and Frank Miele of
the Daily (Kalispell) lnterLal<e; William F. Conrod of the National Park
Service; Mary Corliss of the Museum of Modem Art Film Library; Dick
Harms of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan;
Kathleen Kimble of the (Montana) Missoulian; Carmelita Pope of the
American Humane Association; Chief Martin Stefanie of the Kalispell,
Montana, Police Department; and the staffs of the following libraries:
Amerika Haus in Munich; Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles; New York Public
Library, particularly the Rare Books department; and the Gster-
reichisches Filmmuseum in Vienna.
At William Morrow l am indebted to Sherry Arden, Lisa Drew,
Laurie Lister, and Deborah Baker for their encouragement and atten-
tiveness to this project. Robert J. Wunsch (without whom this book
would never have been written) not only led me to the typewriter, but
to my agent, Robert Lescher, who was both spiritual father to the book
and to its author as well.
And nally, for the kind of support, encouragement, patience, and
loyalty that go beyond denition and certainly beyond my ability to
repay, two people who lived through these events in different ways and
who shared the burdens and the occasional exultations: Maurice Pacini
and Wemer Rohr.