| Michael Cimino |
| Born |
(1939-02-03) February 3, 1939 (age 73)
New York City, New York, United States |
| Education |
Yale (BFA in Painting, 1961, and MFA in Painting, 1963) |
| Occupation |
Film Director, Screenwriter, Producer, Author |
| Style |
Striking visual style, controversial subject matter |
| Influenced by |
Clint Eastwood, John Ford, Luchino Visconti, Akira Kurosawa |
| Influenced |
Quentin Tarantino |
Michael Cimino (pronounced [ˈtʃamɪnəʊ], "chi-MĒ-nō",[1] born February 3, 1939) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for directing, producing and co-writing the 1978 Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven's Gate. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject matter.
Michael Cimino was born in New York City on February 3, 1939.[2][a 1] A third-generation Italian-American,[4][5] Cimino grew up in Old Westbury, Long Island.[6] He was regarded as a prodigy at the private schools his parents sent him to, but rebelled against his parents by consorting with lowlifes, getting into fights and coming home drunk.[7] Of this time, Cimino described himself as "always hanging around with kids my parents didn't approve of. Those guys were so alive. When I was fifteen I spent three weeks driving all over Brooklyn with a guy who was following his girlfriend. He was convinced she was cheating on him, and he had a gun, he was going to kill her. There was such passion and intensity about their lives. When the rich kids got together, the most we ever did was cross against a red light."[8]
His father was a music publisher.[7] Cimino says his father was responsible for marching bands and organs playing pop music at football games.[9] "When my father found out I went into the movie business, he didn't talk to me for a year," Cimino said.[7] “He was very tall and thin [...] His weight never changed his whole life and he didn’t have a gray hair on his head. He was a bit like a Vanderbilt or a Whitney, one of those guys. He was the life of the party, women loved him, a real womanizer. He smoked like a fiend. He loved his martinis. He died really young. He was away a lot, but he was fun. I was just a tiny kid.”[9] His mother, a costume designer,[9] once told him after The Deer Hunter that she knew he was famous because his name was in the New York Times crossword puzzle.[7]
Cimino graduated from Westbury High School on Long Island in 1956. After graduating, he entered Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. At Michigan State, Cimino majored in graphic arts, was a member of a weight-lifting club and a group that welcomed incoming students. He graduated in only three years with honors and won the Harry Suffrin Advertising Award. He was described in the 1959 Red Cedar Log yearbook as having tastes that included blonds, Thelonious Monk, Chico Hamilton, Mort Sahl, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, and "drinking, preferably vodka".[10]
In Cimino's final year at Michigan State, he became art director, and later managing editor, of the school's humor magazine Spartan. Steven Bach wrote of Cimino's early magazine work: "It is here that one can see what are perhaps the first public manifestations of the Cimino visual sensibility, and they are impressive. He thoroughly restyled the Spartan's derivative Punch look, designing a number of its strikingly handsome covers himself. The Cimino-designed covers are bold and strong, with a sure sense of space and design. They compare favorably to professional work honored in, say, any of the Modern Publicity annuals of the late fifties and are far better than the routine work turned out on Madison Avenue. The impact and quality of his work no doubt contributed to his winning the Harry Suffrin Advertsing Award at MSU and perhaps to his acceptance at Yale."[10]
At Yale, Cimino continued to study painting as well as architecture and art history and became involved in school dramatics.[11] In 1962, while still at Yale, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve.[3][6] He trained for five months at Fort Dix, New Jersey and had a month of medical training in Fort Sam Houston, Texas.[3][7] Cimino graduated from Yale University, receiving his BFA in 1961 and his MFA in 1963, both in painting.[3][7]
A still from Cimino's "Take Me Along" commercial.
[12]
After graduating from Yale, Cimino moved to Manhattan to work in Madison Avenue advertising and became a star director of television commercials.[7][13] He shot ads for L'Eggs hosiery, Kool cigarettes, Eastman Kodak, United Airlines, and Pepsi, among others.[7][12] "I met some people who were doing fashion stuff-commercials and stills. And there were all these incredibly beautiful girls," Cimino said. "And then, zoom-the next thing I know, overnight, I was directing commercials."[7] For example, Cimino directed the 1963 United Airlines commercial "Take Me Along", a musical extravaganza in which a group of ladies sing "Take Me Along" to a group of men, presumably their husbands, to take them on a flight. The commercial is filled with dynamic visuals, American symbolism and elaborate set design that would become Cimino's trademark. "The clients of the agencies liked Cimino," remarked Charles Okun, Cimino's production manager from 1964-'78. "His visuals were fabulous, but the amount of time it took was just astronomical. Because he was so meticulous and took so long. Nothing was easy with Michael."[12] It was through his commercial work that Cimino met Joann Carrelli, then a commercial director representative, beginning a 30-year on-again-off-again relationship.[7]
In 1971, Cimino moved to Los Angeles to start a career as a screenwriter.[8] According to Cimino, it was Carrelli that got him into screenwriting: "[Joann] actually talked me into it. I'd never really written anything ever before. I still don't regard myself as a writer. I've probably written thirteen to fourteen screenplays by [1978] and I still don't think of myself that way. Yet, that's how I make a living."[14] Cimino added, "I started writing screenplays principally because I didn't have the money to buy books or to option properties. At that time you only had a chance to direct if you owned a screenplay which some star wanted to do, and that's precisely what happened with Thunderbolt and Lightfoot."[4][15] Cimino gained representation from Stan Kamen of William Morris Agency.[16] He co-wrote two scripts before moving on to film directing: the science fiction film Silent Running and Clint Eastwood's second Dirty Harry film, Magnum Force.[6] Cimino's work on Magnum Force impressed Eastwood enough to buy Cimino's spec script called Thunderbolt and Lightfoot for Eastwood's production company, Malpaso.
[edit] Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Cimino moved up to directing on the feature Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974).[13] The film stars Eastwood as a Korean War vet named "Thunderbolt" who takes a young drifter named "Lightfoot", played by Jeff Bridges, under his wing. When Thunderbolt's old partners try to find him, he and Lightfoot make a pact with them to pull one last big heist at Montana Armory. Eastwood was originally slated to direct it himself, but Cimino impressed Eastwood enough to change his mind. The film became a solid box office success at the time, making $25,000,000 at the box office with a budget of $4,000,000.[17]
[edit] The Deer Hunter
With the success of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Cimino says he "got a lot of offers, but decided to take a gamble. I would only get involved with projects I really wanted to do." He rejected several offers before pitching an ambitious Vietnam War film to EMI executives in November 1976. To Cimino's surprise, EMI accepted the film.[8] Cimino went on to direct, co-write, and co-produce The Deer Hunter (1978). The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage as three buddies in a Pennsylvania steel mill town who fight in the Vietnam War and rebuild their lives in the aftermath. The film went over-schedule and over-budget,[18] but it became a massive critical and commercial success,[19] and won five Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture for Cimino.[20]
[edit] Heaven's Gate
On the basis of this track record, Cimino was given free rein by United Artists for his next film, Heaven's Gate (1980). The film came in several times over budget. After its release, it proved to be a financial disaster that nearly bankrupted the studio. Heaven's Gate became the lightning rod for the industry perception of the loosely controlled situation in Hollywood at that time. The film's failure marked the end of the New Hollywood era. Transamerica Corporation sold United Artists, having lost confidence in the company and its management.[21]
Heaven's Gate was such a devastating box office and critical bomb that public perception of Cimino's work was tainted in its wake; the majority of his subsequent films achieved neither popular nor critical success.[22] Many critics who had originally praised The Deer Hunter became far more reserved about the picture and about Cimino after Heaven's Gate. The story of the making of the movie, and UA's subsequent downfall, was documented in Steven Bach's book Final Cut. Cimino's film was somewhat rehabilitated by an unlikely source: the Z Channel, a cable pay TV channel that at its peak in the mid-1980s served 100,000 of Los Angeles's most influential film professionals. After the unsuccessful release of the re-edited and shortened Heaven's Gate, Jerry Harvey, the channel's programmer, decided to play Cimino's original 219 minute cut on Christmas Eve 1982. The re-assembled movie received admiring reviews.[23]
[edit] Year of the Dragon
Cimino directed a 1985 crime drama, Year of the Dragon, which he and Oliver Stone adapted from Robert Daley's novel. However, Year of the Dragon was also nominated for five Razzie awards, including Worst Director and Worst Screenplay.[24] The film was sharply criticized for providing offensive stereotypes about Chinese Americans.[9]
[edit] The Sicilian
Cimino directed The Sicilian from a Mario Puzo novel in 1987. The film bombed at the box office, costing an estimated $16 million[a 2] but grossing $5 million domestically.[26]
[edit] Desperate Hours
Cimino directed a remake of the Humphrey Bogart film The Desperate Hours in 1990, starring Anthony Hopkins and Mickey Rourke. Rourke also appeared in Heaven's Gate and Year of the Dragon. The film was another box office disappointment, grossing less than $3 million.[27]
[edit] Sunchaser
Cimino's last feature-length film was 1996's Sunchaser with Woody Harrelson and Jon Seda. While nominated for the Palme d'Or at that year's Cannes Film Festival,[28] the film was a box office bomb, grossing less than $30,000.[29]
Cimino's films are often marked by their striking visual style[7][22] and controversial subject matter.[30][31][32] Elements of Cimino's visual sensibility include shooting in widescreen (in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio),[33] deliberate pacing[7] and big set-piece/non-dialogue sequences.[34] The subject matter in Cimino's films frequently focuses on aspects of American history and culture, notably the disillusionment over the American Dream.[35][36][37] His films are considered controversial for his one-sided storytelling and lack of factual accuracy.[38] Other trademarks include:
Cimino frequently credits Clint Eastwood, John Ford,[41][a 3] Luchino Visconti and Akira Kurosawa[a 4] as his cinematic influences.[39][42] Cimino has said that if it wasn't for Eastwood, he would not be in the movies: "I owe everything to Clint."[39] Cimino also gave his literary references as Nabokov, Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Gore Vidal, Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy, the classics of Islamic literature, Frank Norris and Steven Pinker.[43]
Since the beginning of his film career, Cimino has been attached to many projects that either fell apart in pre-production or were jettisoned due to his reputation following Heaven's Gate. Steven Bach wrote that despite setbacks in Cimino's career, "he may yet deliver a film that will make his career larger than the cautionary tale it often seems to be or, conversely, the story of genius thwarted by the system that is still popular in certain circles."[44] Film historian David Thomson added to this sentiment: "The flimsy nastiness of his last four pictures is no reason to think we have seen the last of Cimino. [...] If he ever emerges at full budgetary throttle, his own career should be his subject."[36] Cimino claims he has written at least 50 scripts overall[9] and was briefly considered to helm The Godfather Part III.[45]
Among the Cimino projects that have stalled in development or given to other directors include:
[edit] The Fountainhead
Cimino's dream project has been an adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. He wrote script in between Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and The Deer Hunter.[53]
[edit] Crime and Punishment
Cimino's other dream project has been an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.[7]
[edit] Perfect Strangers
Cimino spent a year and a half working on a script entitled Perfect Strangers, a political love story. "[...] It bears some resemblance to Casablanca (1942)," said Cimino, "involving the romantic relationship of three people. Someone called it a romantic Z (1969). I was very close to doing it. In fact, we'd already shot two weeks of pre-production stuff, but because of various political machinations at the studio, the project fell through. This was just before David Picker left. He was the producer. There were internal difficulties, that's all. Nevertheless, I'd spent a year and a half of my life on something. It had been a difficult time. My father passed away while I was writing the screenplay. I kept working..."[46]
[edit] The Life And Dreams of Frank Costello
After Perfect Strangers fell through, Cimino spent two and a half years working with James Toback on The Life and Dreams of Frank Costello, a biopic on the life of mafia boss Costello, for 20th Century Fox. "We got a good screenplay together," said Cimino, "but again, the studio, 20th Century Fox in this case, was going through management changes and the script was put aside." Cimino added, "Costello took a long time because Costello himself had a long, interesting life. The selection of things to film was quite hard.[46]
Cimino wrote a biography on Janis Joplin called Pearl while working on the Costello biopic, both for 20th Century Fox.[7][46] "It's almost a musical," replied Cimino, "I was working with Bo Goldman on that one and we were doing a series of rewrites."[46]
[edit] Conquering Horse
Cimino also wanted to write and direct Conquering Horse.[47]
In 1984, after being unable to finalize a deal with director Herbert Ross, Paramount Pictures offered the job of directing Footloose to Cimino. According to screenwriter Dean Pitchford, Cimino was at the helm of Footloose for four months, making more and more extravagant demands in terms of set construction and overall production. Paramount realized that it potentially had another Heaven's Gate on its hands. Cimino was fired and Ross was brought on to direct the picture.[49]
[edit] The Pope of Greenwich Village
Cimino was scheduled work on Pope and would have reunited him with actor Mickey Rourke from Heaven's Gate. After Rourke and Eric Roberts signed on as the leads, Cimino wanted to finesse the screenplay with some rewriting and restructuring. However, the rewriting would have taken Cimino beyond the mandated start date for shooting, so Cimino and MGM parted ways. Stuart Rosenberg was hired as a result.[51] The film, while receiving admiring reviews, bombed at the box office.
[edit] Hand-Carved Coffins
Cimino attempted an adaptation of Truman Capote's Hand-Carved Coffins.[50]
[edit] The Yellow Jersey
Cimino was in talks to direct The Yellow Jersey, with a script by Carl Foreman and starring Dustin Hoffman.[6]
[edit] Michael Collins
In 1987, Cimino attempted to make an epic saga of the 1920s Irish rebel Michael Collins, but the film had to be abandoned due to budget, weather and script problems. The film was to have been funded by Nelson Entertainment.[50]
[edit] Santa Ana Wind
Shortly after the Michael Collins biopic was cancelled, Cimino quickly started pre-production work on Santa Ana Wind, a contemporary romantic drama is set in L.A. The start date for shooting was to have been early December 1987. The screenplay was written by Floyd Mutrux and the film was to be bankrolled by Nelson Entertainment, which also backed Collins. Cimino's reperesentative added that the film was "about the San Fernando Valley and the friendship between two guys" amd "more intimate" than Cimino's previous big-budget work like Heaven's Gate and the yet-to-be-released The Sicilian.[50] However, Nelson Holdings International Ltd. cancelled the project after disclosing that its banks, including Security Pacific National Bank, had reduced the company's borrowing power after Nelson failed to meet certain financial requirements in its loan agreements. A spokesman for Nelson said the cancellation occurred "in the normal course of business," but declined to elaborate. The film had been budgeted at about $15 million and was to have begun production shortly. The film, intended for distribution by Columbia, didn't feature any major stars.[54]
[edit] The Dreaming Place
Cimino was attached to direct The Dreaming Place in the 1997.[55] The film, which was in the early stages of development, was to be a male vigilante story, along the lines of Paramount's Eye for an Eye. Rodney Vaccaro wrote the screenplay under the supervision of Cimino, and Jonathon Komack Martin was to exec produce. The planned budget was not revealed.[52]
[edit] Man's Fate
Cimino has written an three-hour long adaptation of André Malraux’s 1933 novel about the early days of the Chinese Revolution.[7][43] The story will focus on several Europeans living in Shanghai during the tragic turmoil that characterized the onset of China's Communist regime.[56] “The screenplay, I think, is the best one I’ve ever done,” adding that he has “half the money; [we’re] trying to raise the other half.”[9] The roughly $25 million project is to be filmed wholly on location in Shanghai and will benefit from the support of China's government, which has said it will provide some $2 million worth of local labor costs.[56] Cimino has been scouting locations in China since 2001.[7][18][43] "There was never a better time to try to do Man's Fate," Cimino said, "because Man's Fate is what it's all about right now. It's about the nature of love, of friendship, the nature of honor and dignity. How fragile and important all of those things are in a time of crisis." Martha De Laurentiis, who with her husband Dino helped produce Year of the Dragon and Desperate Hours with Cimino, read his script for Man's Fate and passed on it. "If you edit it down, it could be a very tight, beautiful, sensational movie," she said, "but violent, and ultimately a subject matter that I don't think America is that interested in."[7]
In 2001, Cimino published his first novel, Big Jane. Later that year, the French Minister of Culture decorated him Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres[7] and the Prix Littéraire Deauville 2001, an award that previously went to Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal.[9] “Oh, I’m the happiest, I think, I’ve ever been!” replied Cimino.[9] Cimino also wrote a book called Conversations en miroir with Francesca Pollock in 2003.[57]
Interviews with Cimino are rare: He declined all interviews with American journalists for 10 years following Heaven's Gate[9] and he gives his part in the making of that film little discussion. George Hickenlooper's book Reel Conversations and Peter Biskind's highly critical book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls deal with the film and resulting scandal.[58] Hickenlooper's book includes one of the few candid discussions with Cimino; Biskind focuses on events during and after the production as a later backdrop for the sweeping changes made to Hollywood and the movie brat generation. Steven Bach, a former UA studio executive, wrote Final Cut (1985), which describes in detail how Heaven's Gate brought down United Artists. Cimino has called Bach's book a “work of fiction” by a “degenerate who never even came on the set.”[9]
While Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Hackman, Sidney Lumet and Robert De Niro all gave interviews for the 2009 John Cazale documentary I Knew It Was You, Cimino refused to do so.
However, the European DVD release of The Deer Hunter contains an audio commentary[40] with Cimino as does the American DVD release of Year of the Dragon.[39]
After Cimino's success with The Deer Hunter, he was considered a "Second Coming" among critics.[18] In 1985, author Michael Bliss described Michael Cimino as a unique American filmmaker after only three films: "Cimino occupies an important position in today's cinema... a man whose cinematic obsession it is to extract, represent, and investigate those essential elements in the American psyche..."[35] Frequent collaborator Mickey Rourke has frequently praised Cimino for his creativity and dedication to work. On Heaven's Gate, Rouke has said, "I remember thinking this little guy [Cimino] was so well organized. He had this huge production going on all around him yet he could devote his absolute concentration on the smallest of details."[59]
Film director/screenwriter Quentin Tarantino has also expressed great admiration and praise for Cimino's The Deer Hunter, especially with regards to the Vietnamese POW Russian roulette sequence: "The Russian roulette sequence is just out and out one of the best pieces of film ever made, ever shot, ever edited, ever performed. [...] Anybody can go off about Michael Cimino all they want but when you get to that sequence you just have to shut up."[60] Tarantino also loved Cimino's Year of the Dragon and listed its climax as his favorite killer movie moment in 2004.[61]
Cimino is frequently criticized by colleagues and critics as vain, self-indulgent, egotistical, megalomaniacal and an enfant terrible.[9][62] Producers and critics have tended to be harsher on Cimino than his fellow collaborators. Critics like Pauline Kael,[63] John Simon[64] and John Powers[65] have also noted and criticized these qualities in many of the films he has written and directed. Cimino has also been known to give exaggerated, misleading and conflicting stories about himself, his background and his filmmaking experiences.
In writing about his experience working on The Sicilian, producer Bruce McNall described Cimino as "one part artistic genius and one part infantile egomaniac."[66] In his book, Blade Runners, Deer Hunters and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off, producer Michael Deeley described his experience with Cimino on Deer Hunter a "travail",[67] adding "the only flaw I find in my Oscar [for The Deer Hunter] is that Cimino's name is also engraved on it."[68] Deeley went on to criticize Cimino further for his deceit and lack of professional respect: "Cimino was selfish. [...] Selfishness, in itself, is not necessarily a flaw in a director, unless it swells into ruthless self-indulgence combined with a total disregard for the terms in which the production has been set."[69] Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond has said that Cimino is hard to work with but extremely talented visually.[70]
Critics like Pauline Kael, John Simon and John Powers have viciously attacked Cimino's abilities as a filmmaker and storyteller. His failure with Heaven's Gate has led many commentators to joke and/or suggest that he give back his Oscars for The Deer Hunter. John Powers wrote in reference to Cimino's Year of the Dragon: "If dementia has a name, it must be Michael Cimino."[65] Pauline Kael of The New Yorker succinctly criticized Cimino's storytelling abilities in her review of Year of the Dragon:
As I see it, Michael Cimino doesn't think in terms of dramatic values: he doesn't know how to develop characters, or how to get any interaction among them. He transposes an art-school student's approach from paintings to movies, and make visual choices: this is a New York movie, so he wants a lot of blue and harsh light and a realistic surface. He works completely derivatively, from earlier movies, and his only idea of how to dramatize things is to churn up this surface and get it rolling. The whole thing is just material for Cimino the visual artist to impose his personality on. He doesn't actually dramatize himself—it isn't as if he tore his psyche apart and animated the pieces of it (the way a Griffith or a Peckinpah did). He doesn't animate anything.[63]
John Foote questioned whether or not Cimino deserved his Oscars for The Deer Hunter: "It seemed in the spring of 1979, following the Oscar ceremony, there was a sense in the industry that if the Academy could have taken back their votes — which saw “The Deer Hunter” and director Michael Cimino winning for Best Picture and Best Director — they would have done so."
Cimino has also been known to give exaggerated, misleading and conflicting (or simply tongue-in-cheek) stories about himself, his background and his filmmaking experiences. “When I’m kidding, I’m serious, and when I’m serious, I’m kidding,” responded Cimino. “I am not who I am, and I am who I am not.”[9] Subsequent research by journalists and authors have revealed how and where Cimino has given false information.
Cimino has given various dates for his birth, usually shaving a couple of years off to seem younger, including February 3, 1943, November 16, 1943,[55] and February 3, 1952.[9] Many biographies about Cimino, like the Michael Cimino entries in David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film[36] and Ephraim Katz's Film Encyclopedia,[11] simply list his year of birth as 1943.[13][49] However, his real birthdate is most likely February 3, 1939. In reference to Cimino's interview with Leticia Kent on December 10, 1978, Steven Bach said, "Cimino wasn't thirty-five but a few months shy of forty."[3]
Cimino claimed he got his start in documentary films following his work in academia and nearly completed a doctorate at Yale.[72] Some of these details are repeated in a lot of Cimino's official bios.[11][49] Steven Bach refuted those claims in his book Final Cut: "[Cimino] had done no work toward a doctorate and he had become known in New York as a maker not of documentaries but of sophisticated television commercials".[3]
During the production of The Deer Hunter, Cimino had given co-workers (such as cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and associate producer Joann Carelli) the vague impression that much of the storyline was biographical, somehow related to the director’s own experience and based on the experiences of men he had known during his service in Vietnam. Just as the film was about to open, Cimino gave an interview to The New York Times in which he claimed that he had been “attached to a Green Beret medical unit" at the time of the Tet Offensive of 1968. When the Times reporter, who had not been able to corroborate this, questioned the studio about it, studio executives panicked and fabricated “evidence” to support the story.[18] Universal Studios president Thom Mount commented at the time, "I know this guy. He was no more a medic in the Green Berets than I’m a rutabaga."[18] Tom Buckley, a veteran Vietnam correspondent for the Times, corroborated that Cimino had done a stint as an Army medic, but that the director had never been attached to the Green Berets. Cimino's active service – just six months in 1962 – had been as a reservist who was never deployed to Vietnam.[73] Cimino’s publicist reportedly said that he intended to sue Buckley, but Cimino never did.[18]
Due to changes in his appearance,[a 5] rumors about Cimino having a sex change persisted for a long time.[9][74] In June 1997, Variety columnist Army Archerd devoted an item to dispelling unspecified “reports” that “he’d changed his name to ‘Michelle’ Cimino” and that he was “changing his gender via surgery.” The item only served to give the rumor more currency.[9] Cimino has said that he has not had nor intends to have a sex change and is not a cross-dresser.[7][9] He suspects a former girlfriend, whom he did not name, to have started it in a drug-induced haze.[9]
He explained that his change in appearance is due to weight fluctuations: “In the editing room, garbage comes in by the cartload. Doughnuts in the morning. Pizza comes rolling in in the afternoon. They’re always ordering food. You’re in there for 20 hours a day, seven days a week, getting no sleep, and you look like shit.” On the set of Heaven’s Gate, he says, he went from his old wrestling weight of 120 pounds to 185, noting, “I looked like a face pasted on a fucking balloon!” With the help of Sunchaser star Woody Harrelson he began fasting and lost about 85 pounds. “I took off a whole person!”[9]
Cimino's friends also refute the rumor. "I roared with laughter," said film critic F. X. Feeney, in response to the rumor. "I know him well enough to know it's never going to happen. You are talking about an internationally renowned perfectionist. If he can't come out looking like Catherine Deneuve, forget it." When asked by Gore Vidal if the rumors were true, Cimino replied, "Oh, really? My doctors are going to be very surprised when I go to take a physical for the next movie. It's going to be a big shock."[7]
| Year |
Title |
Box Office |
Contribution |
Notes |
| 1972 |
Silent Running |
|
Co-Writer |
Screenwriting debut |
| 1973 |
Magnum Force |
$39,768,000[75] |
Co-Writer |
|
| 1974 |
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot |
$21,700,000[76] |
Director/Writer |
Directorial debut |
| 1978 |
The Deer Hunter |
$48,979,328[77] |
Director/Co-Writer/Co-Producer |
Oscar win for Best Picture and Best Director |
| 1979 |
The Rose |
$29,174,648[78] |
Writer (uncredited)[13][79] |
|
| 1980 |
Heaven's Gate |
$3,484,331[80] |
Director/Writer |
|
| 1981 |
The Dogs of War |
$5,484,132[81] |
Writer (uncredited)[13][79] |
|
| 1985 |
Year of the Dragon |
$18,707,466[82] |
Director/Co-Writer |
|
| 1987 |
The Sicilian |
$5,406,879[26] |
Director |
|
| 1990 |
Desperate Hours |
$2,742,912[27] |
Director |
|
| 1996 |
The Sunchaser |
$21,508[29] |
Director |
Final feature film |
| 2007 |
No Translation Needed |
|
Director |
Segment in To Each His Own Cinema |
- ^ Cimino has given various dates for his birth, but his real birthdate is most likely February 3, 1939. In reference to Cimino's interview with Leticia Kent on December 10th 1978, Bach said, "Cimino wasn't thirty-five but a few months shy of forty."[3]
- ^ Estimate for The Sicilian film budget based on: "Total American gross at the box office was $5.5 million, about a third of our production costs." (3 x 5.5 = 16.5).[25]
- ^ Three of Ford's films, They Were Expendable, The Searchers, and My Darling Clementine, are on Cimino's list of the ten best films of all time according to the 1992 Sight and Sound poll of directors.
- ^ Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is also on Cimino's list of the ten best films of all time.
- ^ Peter Biskind described Cimino of '76 as, "He was small and chubby, with long curly hair. He looked a bit like an Italian Garry Shandling and carried all the baggage of a short man."[18]
- ^ Say How? A Pronunciation Guide to Names of Public Figures. Library of Congress. Retrieved 2010-08-27.
- ^ a b Heard, p. 26.
- ^ a b c d e f Bach, p. 170
- ^ a b Andrews, p. 249.
- ^ Lawton, Ben (2001). "America Through Italian/American Eyes: Dream or Nightmare?". From the Margins: Writing in Italian Americana. Purdue University. [Cimino is said to be Italian/American]
- ^ a b c d e Bliss, p. 268
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Griffin, Nancy (February 10, 2002). "Last Typhoon Cimino Is Back". The New York Observer 16 (6): pp. 1+15+17.
- ^ a b c Wakeman, John (1988). World Film Directors (2). The H. W. Wilson Company. pp. 214-219.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Garbarino, Steve (March 2002). "Michael Cimino's Final Cut". Vanity Fair (499): pp. 232-235+250-252. Retrieved 2010-08-27.
- ^ a b Bach, p. 171
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- Woolland, Brian (1995). "Class Frontiers: The View through Heaven's Gate." The Book of Westerns. Ed. Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York: Continuum
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Films directed by Michael Cimino
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| Persondata |
| Name |
Cimino, Michael |
| Alternative names |
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| Short description |
American film director and screenwriter |
| Date of birth |
February 3, 1939 |
| Place of birth |
New York City, New York, United States |
| Date of death |
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| Place of death |
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![The Deer Hunter (1978) — Trailer [1080p ᴴᴰ]](http://web.archive.org./web/20130106040017im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qkMK2a9CoY0/default.jpg "The Deer Hunter (1978) — Trailer [1080p ᴴᴰ]")
![[무비리뷰] Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)](http://web.archive.org./web/20130106040017im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/I39reLhXSY4/default.jpg "[무비리뷰] Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)")
![A still from Cimino's "Take Me Along" commercial.[12]](http://web.archive.org./web/20130106040017/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_Arlines_Commercial_-_%22Take_Me_Along%22.png){kind=link}