Cimino came out of the gate strong with 2 of my favorite movies – Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and The Deer Hunter.
With that start I thought he’d be one of America’s finest directors. Then he made Heaven’s Gate. Then he made Year of the Dragon with Mickey Roarke. Then I stopped paying attention. Now he’s dead.
Why did I call Cimino a weirdo?
This is what he looked like when he made The Deer Hunter.
Then the plastic surgeries began and it became clear he wanted to look like an Asian.
Cimino was a recluse, an egomaniac, and a bit of a jerk.Β He was thought to be 77, but even that is murky.
Thanks for 2 great movies. RIP.
Why on God’s Green Earth would anyone have plastic surgery to look like Yoko Ono?
Agree with you on the movies, Mr. Hat
I liked “The Deer Hunter.”
Never saw “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” or “Heaven’s Gate.”
If I saw “Year of the Dragon” it made no impression, whatsoever.
“A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste.”
RIP
izlamo delenda est …
I think most of Hollywood suffers from this weirdness. This dude is a real nutcase though.
I bought the Heaven’s Gate DVD, the movie that sunk UA studios. It’s not a bad movie, though they had to cut a few hours to get it to fit on a DVD.
Cimino really went nuts on that production. The cast was great, as were the filming locations, and the plot was not bad.
They filmed a big part of it on the Blackfeet reservation. Jeff Bridges bought a cabin used in the movie on Two Medicine lake, near Glacier National park in Montana.
The scenery in that movie is beautiful, but Cimino went overboard and drove United Artists into the ground in the process — they went broke and had to be rescued.
It a shame, that movie could have done very well if he hadn’t gone insane with the making of it. It is still worth the watch.
I liked “Deer Hunter”; it confirmed something I always suspected —
That the national pastime of Vietnam is Russian Roulette
I love watching bits and pieces of HEAVEN’S GATE from time to time. It’s got great actors, beautiful scenery, fabulous action, and lots of guns and horses. I only managed to watch the whole thing one damned time. This Western is what a jerk thought a Western should be, not what someone who ever read a book about the true West knew it should be like. It is so bad that it’s a successful catastrophe. This movie needed to be put down along with the director. This waste of film would never have happened back in John Ford’s time.
Anybody else think the ‘before’ picture looks like John Lovitz?
@Lowell, exactly!
Fweeeeeak!!!
If Yoko Ono and Roy Orbison had a baby.