Posted on 07/02/2016 7:28:22 PM PDT by EveningStar
Michael Cimino, who won Oscars as director and a producer of "The Deer Hunter" before "Heaven's Gate" destroyed his career and sped up the demise of 60-year-old United Artists, has died. He was believed to be 77.
(Excerpt) Read more at variety.com ...
I had completely forgotten that John Hurt and Sam Waterston are in it. Apparently, Mickey Rourke is in it, too, which I missed on my second viewing.
I thought the movie was OK, but I'll probably wait another 35 years to watch it again.
Speaking of Sam Waterston, I saw “Three” (1969) just a couple days after I watched “Heaven's Gate” again.
“Three” was an indie classic in college film classes in the early 1970s, and I had no recollection of Waterston being in that, either.
Condolences to family and friends of Michael Cimino.
“This...is THIS!”
It was just part of that period's campaign to distort the record of those of us who were there, like Apocalypse Now and Platoon.
Hope Cimino is someplace where the temperature setting is "deep fat fry".
I was 12 when Heaven’s Gate came out. I never saw the movie but remember how mercilessly the critics pilloried it. James Cameron freaked out over small details while filming “Titanic”. Cameron has nothing on Cimino during the filming of “Heaven’s Gate”, aided by copious amounts of cocaine. For example, Cimino insisted upon custom made non-ball bearing roller skates for one scene. He ordered whole street sets to be redone because the street width was off by a few inches. Cmino is blamed for ending the “New Hollywood” period where studios gave directors carte blanche.
Me too!
I thought The Deer Hunter was pretty good. The main thing I disliked about the movie was casting Meryl Streep, she’s homely and off-putting. I would have thought her character could have been a little more attractive. I think she was the weak link in that film. Walken was outstanding.
Don’t know about the authenticity as compared to the reality of the war but it was, after all, fiction.
It was not a documentary. Neither was AN. Both were imaginative visions and completely gripping. AN is very popular with modern day soldiers btw.
I don’t think you have a clue: their “imaginative vision” was a filthy lie to discredit our fight and us. The scumbag communists have always controlled Hollywood and their whole emphasis was getting the enemy to win - and smear the real fighters in the process.
You think those idiot movies are gripping? You should have been where we were.
Fiction never lies. John Millius is a communist? He cowrote AN. Both films are American classics taught in film school.
Do you think Sands of Iwo Jima was ‘what it was really like’? Do you think old westerns were realistic? Movies are fantasies. And btw both films were made after American involvement in Vietnam was over.
You ignore the central point. Those films present lies at their core: we were depicted as demented atrocity- committing criminals - or just as hapless nitwits. At least the Sands of Iwo Jima portrayed the combatants favorably, however unrealistic the movie might be. (All war movies, without exception are unrealistic).
I don’t expect a bystander like you understand but I still resent the swines who made their bucks with propaganda flicks disguised as entertainment. I was and am proud of the men who served with me in Vietnam and I’m damn sick of the insulting cartoons made by dope-sniffing, draft-dodging, enemy sympathizers.
Maybe “they’re taught at film schools” but so is Michael Moore.
They aren't?
I saw the uncut version of “Heavens Gate” at an “art theater” a while back. It was not a bad movie. It was just too long. It was about 3-1/2 hours long, with long slow looks at mountains, flowers, long closeups of the stars, etc. The story could have been told in two hours (not cut after the fact) and it would have been a better film.
John Millius is conservative. You’re conflating a bunch of unrelated filmmakers and ideologies. Francis Coppola was no hippie draft dodger and neither was Michael Cimino. The central characters in both films are meant to be sympathetic. Look at the wedding sequence in the Deerhunter. And no Moore is not taught anywhere.
I saw it when it came out. The waltz scene was particularly mesmerizing it caught the true feeling of the dance. If you’ve ever spent some time in a country and western dance hall you’ll know what I mean.
Sure, he was a “conservative”: he helped the enemy, anyway, didn’t he? His depiction of us was just another nail in the coffin to sway public opinion against us. The truth was that we were solid, competent, deadly and the VC and NVA knew better than stand and fight in anything close to even odds. All of the Vietnam war movies were lousy and deliberately so. Milieus was just one of the many who made his money making us look bad.
In every other war, the movies were unrealistic but at least supported the American fighting man. Not our war - and Milius just added to the pile of deceptive characatures we’ve had to live with.
I’m starting to think you haven’t seen these films. Neither remotely makes the enemy look good. I’m quite sure that ‘The Deer Hunter’ has never been shown in Vietnam. It was protested by people like Jane Fonda for its depiction of the Viet Cong. Robert Duvall’s portrayal of a steadfast Colonel in AN is iconic. Duvall is a Marine btw.
Oh, I saw them alright. The point you can’t comprehend is that in all of the movies about Vietnam, we are portrayed as cartoons, nothing even remotely resembling who we really were or how we operated. The depiction of us as dope-smoking, whining incompetents or as an over-the-top weirdo that “loves the smell of napalm in the morning” was meant to satisfy the masses who either avoided the war for their own cowardly reasons or actively supported the enemy.
During the war, we had nothing but a stream of garbage about us - there were scores of TV serials with Vietnam Vets going crazy and of course imbecilic movies with us as either blundering, blubbering dopers and/or crazed war criminals. The whole point was to convince the public that we were somehow completely unworthy of support.
The reality was that we were the best our country had to offer. We were well-led, competent and we didn’t wear costumes, like Rambo. Nobody in any previous or subsequent war ever had to put up junk like that.
Apocalypse Now was an idiotic cartoon from start to finish and even a non-serving civilian should understand the difference.
The end result was that when we came home and as we tried to blend back in with society, we were often shunned. I had a waitress refuse to wait on me and my family because I was in uniform - and many more incidents.
Your research is faulty: Robert Duvall was in the army between Korea and Vietnam, advancing to PFC in the process.
The films we’re talking about were made after the war was over and had been for years. During the American involvement in SE Asia, there were hardly any films about it at all actually. ‘The Green Berets’ is the only one I can think of.
If by cartoon you mean ‘unrealistic’ and ‘heightened’ then yes. Realism isn’t always the goal. It certainly wasn’t in these films. I’m guessing you dislike ‘First Blood’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket’ too. These aren’t ‘Time-Life Books’ coffee table tomes or ‘The World At War’ style documentaries. AN, which is an adaptation of ‘Heart of Darkness’, taps into all sorts of mythic archetypes about quests and the human psyche. The Deer Hunter is about what an external force (war) does to a tight knit community. No one involved with those films set out to slander Vietnam Vets.
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