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Heaven's Gate is a 1980 western movie, which depicts a fictionalized account of the Johnson County War, a violent dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s. The director, Michael Cimino, had an expansive and ambitious vision for the film and pushed the film way over its planned budget. The movie's financial problems and United Artists' subsequent demise led to a move away from director-driven film production in the American film industry and a shift toward greater studio control of films. The film's actors included Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Joseph Cotten, Geoffrey Lewis, Richard Masur, Terry O'Quinn, Mickey Rourke, and Willem Dafoe.
Plot
Ella Watson (Huppert), a bordello madam who accepts stolen cattle as payment for use of her prostitutes, is in love with Averill and Champion, and she helps teach the illiterate Champion how to read and write. She finds herself caught between the two as it's revealed that the Association has composed a list of more than one hundred settlers ("thieves and anarchists," as Canton calls them)--Ella included--who will be killed by a number of men from Texas who are hired by the Association. Averill gets a copy of the list from Captain Minardi (Terry O'Quinn) of the U.S. Army and later reads the names on the list to the settlers, who are shocked and begin to argue about what to do, with one becoming enraged enough to shoot the mayor (Paul Koslo) in the ear. Cully (Richard Masur), a train conductor and friend of Averill's, sees the train containing Canton's posse and rides off to warn the settlers, but is later murdered by the posse after stopping to sleep during his journey. Later, a group of men come to Ella's bordello and rape her, but all of them except one are shot and killed by Averill. Champion arrives and after realizing that his landowner bosses seek to eliminate Ella, he goes to Canton's camp and shoots the remaining rapist, after which he and Canton become enemies because of Champion's refusal to participate in the slaughter. "Trapper" (Geoffrey Lewis)--one of Champion's friends--is walking away from the cabin he and Champion share when he encounters Canton and possibly Canton's entire posse. He is given one minute to go back to the cabin and warn Champion and their friend Nick Ray (Mickey Rourke) and then come back to safety. However, as soon as Lewis emerges from the door he is shot, and the gun battle begins. Ella arrives in a wagon and shoots one of the hired guns but doesn't stay, escaping on her horse. Champion and Nick Ray bravely fight on but are outnumbered and are killed. Meanwhile, Ella makes it to town and warns the settlers that Canton's men are nearby, and the settlers decide to fight back. Averill then leads the settlers to attack Canton's gang (after he and Ella discover the bodies of Nate and Nick Ray) and both sides suffer casualties (Billy Irvine is one) before the U.S. Army stops the fighting. Later, John Bridges (Jeff Bridges) meets Ella and Averill at Ella's cabin, as all three are going to leave the area. However, while preparing to leave they are ambused by Canton and two others. Bridges and Averill kill Canton and one of the men, but both Bridges and Ella are killed in the shootout. Averill then mourns Ella as he holds her in his arms, as the film fades out. The film then shows a title, "Newport, Rhode Island, 1903," as a yacht at sea is in the background. A well-dressed, mustachioed Averill is revealed to be the yacht's owner, walking on the deck. Going down into the yacht, he enters a room and an attractive lady (who apparently is one of two women who eyed Averill during the Harvard graduation years earlier) sleeps on a chaise lounge. Averill sits in a chair and looks at her, saying nothing. Eventually the woman comes to and she asks Averill for a cigarette, who then sits on an ottoman closer to her and unemotionally offers her one and lights it without saying a word, barely moving from his ottoman seat. They look at each other, and soon Averill gets up and goes towards the door. Exchanging looks with her one last time, Averill then peers at the rest of the room and then leaves. The film ends with a shot in the distance of Averill roaming the yacht's deck. Spoilers end here.
Production and Reception
The project fell behind schedule almost immediately; Cimino eventually shot more than 1.3 million feet (nearly 220 hours) of footage, in the process incurring approximately $200,000 in production cost per day. Despite going overbudget, Cimino was not financially penalized because he had obtained a contract from United Artists to the effect that all money spent "to complete and deliver the picture in time for a Christmas 1979 release shall not be treated as overbudget expenditures." The film finished shooting in March 1979, having cost nearly 30 million dollars. During postproduction, after months of delays, last minute changes, and cost overruns, Cimino delivered his version which ran 5 hours and 25 minutes (325 minutes) long; United Artists executives forced Cimino to edit the film down to 3 hours and 39 minutes (219 minutes). Cimino pulled that version from release after only one screening: its premiere in New York City on November 19, 1980. A subsequent review by New York Times critic Vincent Canby called Heaven's Gate "an unqualified disaster," comparing it to "a forced four-hour walking tour of one's own living room". Canby went even further by stating that "It fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter and the Devil has just come around to collect". Heaven's Gate resurfaced six months later in a 2 hour and 29 minute (149 minute) version attempting to recoup some of its losses. Awards and nominationsAlthough the film is praised by some prominent critics in the 1990s and 2000s, it received a number of poor reviews upon its first release.
Effects on the U.S. film industryThe movie's unprecedented $40 million cost (equivalent to about $107 million as of 2006) and poor performance at the box office ($3,484,331 gross in the United States) generated more negative publicity than actual financial damage, causing Transamerica Corporation (United Artists' corporate owner at the time) to become anxious over its own public image and withdraw from film production altogether. This in turn caused United Artists to be sold to and absorbed by MGM, which effectively ended the existence of the studio. MGM would later revive the name "United Artists" as a subsidiary division. While the money loss due to Heaven's Gate was considerable, United Artists was still a thriving studio with a steady income provided by the James Bond and Rocky franchises. Many have also argued that United Artists was already struggling at the time with the box offices flops of Cruising and Foxes. (Both released earlier in 1980.) The fracas had a wider effect on the American film industry at the time. During the 1970s, relatively young directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and William Friedkin were given unprecedentedly large budgets with very little studio control (New Hollywood). The studio largesse eventually led to the new paradigm of the high concept feature, epitomized by Jaws and Star Wars. But it also led to less successful films as Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977), and culminating in Coppola's One from the Heart and Cimino's Heaven's Gate, among other money-losers. As the new high-concept paradigm of film making became more entrenched, studio control of budgets and productions became tighter, ending the free-wheeling excesses that begat Heaven's Gate. The very poor box office performance of the film also had a huge impact on the western genre of films which had a revival in the late 1960s. From this point on, very few western films were released by major studios. Director's cutDespite these setbacks, the movie was salvaged by an unlikely source. The Z Channel, a cable TV channel that in its peak (mid-1980s) served 100,000 of Los Angeles's most influential film professionals, was the only network showing uncut movies on television. After the failed release of the re-edited and shortened Heaven's Gate, Jerry Harvey, the channel's programmer, decided to play Cimino's 219 minute cut. The re-assembled movie received admiring reviews and coined the term "director's cut." When MGM home video released the film on VHS in the 1980's, they released Cimino's 219 minute cut, using the tagline "Heaven's Gate...The Legendary Uncut Version". Subsequent releases on laserdisc and DVD have been the 219 minute cut. The 149 minute cut has never been released on home video in the United States. Interestingly, this second cut of the film, released in 1981 is not just shorter but markedly different in many places (placement of scenes - different takes, etc.) and is now very hard to see or get access to. "The whole idea of a director's cut being something you could actually market came out of Jerry Harvey's rescue of Heaven's Gate," notes F.X. Feeney, a film critic who contributed heavily to Z Channel's programming guide. "It's an important measure, because home video, home viewing via pay TV, these things have really revolutionized how we perceive movies." In October 2004, an uncut version of the film was again shown in selected art-house cinemas in the US and Australia, along with Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, a documentary about Z Channel. In 2005, the original uncut version of Heaven's Gate was re-released in Paris. It was also shown to a sold out audience at New York's Museum of Modern Art with a live appearance by Isabelle Huppert to introduce the film. See also
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