Heaven's Gate (film)/Trivia

• Box Office Bomb: As exorbitant as the final $44m budget was, this wasn't actually the all-time most expensive film at the time of its release, as is commonly reported (Superman: The Movie and Star Trek the Motion Picture both had budgets just shy of $50m, and Cleopatra was nearly twice as expensive if you adjust for inflation). Unfortunately, it didn't make even a tenth of its budget back, making it inarguably the biggest box-office bomb that Hollywood had seen until that point.
• Creator Killer: Killed both Cimino's reputation and contributed to the collapse of United Artists.
  • Disaster Dominoes: Not only did it kill Michael Ciminos's reputation, collapse United Artists, and essentially put an end to the Auteur era of New Hollywood, but the loss of money also made it impossible for UA to run an Oscar campaign for Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, possibly leading to one of the most notorious Best Picture snubs of the modern film era.
• The Danza: Jeff Bridges as John L. Bridges.
• Doing It for the Art: One of the few examples that just wasn't worth it.
• Executive Meddling: The only successful instance was the studio brass forcing Cimino to trim the film from its initial runtime of just over five hours to around three hours, forty-five minutes for its one-week run in New York. The theatrical cut ran about two-and-a-half-hours, and somehow managed to be far worse. (Today, the most frequently screened version is the three hour-plus cut.) All other attempts to enforce this trope were either considered, but later dropped, or rebuffed by Michael Cimino.
  • The studio brass did consider sacking Cimino and replace him with Norman Jewison (or even David Lean, as hinted in the Book "Final Cut"). However, Jewison wanted nothing to do with the film, so that never happened.
    • The theatrical cut is not quite an example of executive meddling...it was Cimino himself who asked that the film be withdrawn and re-edited after the disastrous New York opening.
• Follow Up Failure: Keep in mind that Cimino had just won two Oscars out of the five for The Deer Hunter.
• Genre Killer: Effectively destroyed the artistic credibility of The Western. In addition, this, and quite a few other films, marked the end of the "New Hollywood" era, causing studios to keep a much closer eye on directors to ensure they didn't go drastically over budget.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: This was the film debut of Willem Dafoe.
  • Jack McCoy is leading the farmers into war.
  • Wormtongue supports Averill in their attempt to drive the mercenaries back.
  • Ivan Vanko is the inexperienced friend of Gabriel. This also is the 2nd movie Mickey Rourke stared in.
  • Winston Smith supervises the mercenaries despite him disagreeing with the plan to kill 125 civilians.
  • Kris Kristofferson is the college friend of John Hurt and orchestrates the final - and much more successful - attack the civilians launch at the mercenaries.
  • The Dude is the best friend of the local sheriff.
  • Although only a minor role, this was the debut for Jake Slicker as well.
• Troubled Production: Originally budgeted at $11 million or so, events occurred that shot its budget up to around $35 million (although some claim it could be as high as $44 million!) Adjusting for inflation, that's over $100 million. For example, after an entire set of a town's main street was built to his exact specifications, Cimino decided that the street looked too narrow. He ordered the buildings on each side torn down and rebuilt three feet back from where they were, even after one crew member pointed out that it would be easier and cheaper to just tear one side down and rebuild it six feet back. The cost of this decision alone? $550,000. You know that something's wrong when, after six days of filming, the project's five days behind schedule.
  • Though as something of an exception, tensions reportedly weren't high on set at all and in fact a lot of people had good things to say about Cimino, some even commending him for his "artistic" efforts. Part of the problem however was that Cimino had closed sets off from the press. Eventually an undercover reporter wrote an article on how things were going having snuck in, choosing to paint a picture of chaos. Many consider the article a big Take That at Cimino that inevitably harmed the reputation of the film itself.