Movie Notes

The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino dies at 77

by Charlie Smith on July 2nd, 2016 at 10:13 PM
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      An American director who created one of the most memorable films of the late 1970s is dead.

      Michael Cimino is best known for The Deer Hunter, which won five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director in 1978. He also earned the award for best director that year from the Directors Guild of America, the Hollywood foreign press, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

      Cimino was born in New York City and passed away today at the age of 77.

      Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux informed the world of Cimino's death over Twitter.

      The Deer Hunter focused on three Russian-American friends from Pennsylvania (played by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage) whose lives were turned upside down by the Vietnam War.

      One of the most stunning scenes involved the trio being forced to play Russian roulette by their captors. It sent shivers down the spines of moviegoers around the world.

      Michael Cimino created one of the most riveting scenes in Hollywood history.

      Walken's character eventually goes insane and the actor ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

      During the filming, studio executives chafed as Cimino went over budget, but The Deer Hunter was a box-office hit and generated a large profit.

      Cimino followed that up with Heaven's Gate, a western set in Wyoming starring Kris Kristofferson, Walken, Isabelle Huppert, and Jeff Bridges.

      Cimino wanted to release a much longer version, but the studio re-edited it and issued a much shorter film.

      It wound up as one of the worst box-office failures in Hollywood history up to that point, generating just $3.5 million on a $44-million budget. And it helped bring down United Artists.

      In 2004, the Cinematheque theatre in Vancouver showed Cimino's original longer version of Heaven's Gate. This 216-minute director's cut was also shown at the Venice Film Festival in 2012, earning widespread critical acclaim.

      Cimino's other films included Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Dogs of War, Year of the Dragon, The Sicilian, Desperate Hours, and Sunchaser.

      Year of the Dragon, a well-regarded crime thriller, was partially filmed in Vancouver and starred Mickey Rourke and John Lone.

      Cimino cowrote the script with Oliver Stone for the movie, which focused on a cop obsessed with taking down Chinese organized crime in New York City.

      In 1996, Stone talked to Creative Screenwriting magazine about how Cimino kept encouraging him to make Platoon.

      "So, when Michael said ttake less money on Dragon and I will produce Platoon at a low budget with you directing it, you can do your own movie,' that was very generous of him, having come from Deer Hunter and that success," Stone recalled at the time. "And I said, 'I don’t think that’s going to work. Who cares about Vietnam? It’s over. Apocalypse Now did it, Deer Hunter…' And he said, 'No. It’s going to come back.' " 

      Stone's Platoon, which was based on his experiences in Vietnam, won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director in 1986.

      Today over Twitter, Cimino's work has received glowing praise from directors Jason Reitman and William Friedkin, as well as from The Deer Hunter's Savage.

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