John Bleasdale Writes On Film
Writers on Film
Charles Elton talks Michael Cimino
0:00
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -1:08:38
-1:08:38

Charles Elton talks Michael Cimino

Read the book Cimino here.

The first biography of critically acclaimed then critically derided filmmaker Michael Cimino—and a reevaluation of the infamous film that destroyed his career

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


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

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/writers-on-film.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Discussion about this podcast

John Bleasdale Writes On Film
Writers on Film
<p>The only podcast to focus on film books and to talk to the best authors working in the area of cinema. From Making ofs to biographies, studies to novelisations, I'm fascinated by where the written word intersects with the world of the big screen. </p><p>Support this show <a target="_blank" rel="payment" href="http://supporter.acast.com/writers-on-film">http://supporter.acast.com/writers-on-film</a>.</p><br /><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>