Steven Bach was the Senior Vice President of United Artists at the moment when Michael Cimino became the hottest director in Hollywood. His film The Deer Hunter (1978) was proclaimed a masterpiece by many and won five Oscars, including Best Picture – and Bach was desperate to sign Cimino’s next project, a Western of grand thematic scope that was known initially as The Johnson County War. That film turned out to be Heaven’s Gate and it sank United Artists. In fact, I don’t quite trust our narrator either. He seems like the only rational human being in the book, which rings warning bells for me, but hey, he tells a great story so I’m going to go along with it. He’s particularly good at recounted, reconstructed conversations, and the small details that make the past seem so real: the tree that sheds unsightly brown leaves in the office; the dress sense of some executive who doesn’t know he’s out of favour; the way the leading lady curls up in a chair as they fight over her casting. If Bach did invent it rather than recall it, he did a really good job of it. If ever you needed proof that the film industry is all about money, here it is. It also makes the argument that directors need to be controlled, for the freedom to run wild (Cimino had a particularly strange contract that gave him no penalties for running over budget) leads to disaster, which I suppose is to be expected, considering the experience of the writer. But there are also moments in which the love of film, as art and as entertainment regardless of financial considerations, shines through. For instance, United Artists had a long relationship with Woody Allen and Bach’s admiration for his films lifts the book at times when things become heavy-going. Whether Allen’s films made any money really did seem to be beside the point for UA – and this was part of what led to the problem with Cimino. Allen suffered no interference from executives, and nearly always delivered his films on time and on budget; Cimino, extended the same courtesy and treated as an auteur, managed no such feat. Heaven’s Gate is one of those films that comes up for critical re-evaluation every now and again, as people re-edit. There has been a Director’s Cut of 216 minutes, and a few more versions besides, including Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Butcher’s Cut’ which is only 108 minutes long. As an example of excess, it continues to fascinate. Does a great film lurk within, either by extending or reducing? Some critics now call the Director’s Cut an “absolute masterpiece”. It just goes to show how opinions can change; I wonder if this has anything to do with public perceptions of that difficult relationship between Director and Studio. When you read Final Cut I don’t suppose it really matters what you think of the film itself, although it might impinge on your perception of Cimino as a director. It’s interesting to wonder what effect this critical turnaround might have had on the book if it was written nowadays rather than in 1985. I think we might have lost a lot of that brilliant detail; not because of fading memory, but because it wouldn’t suit modern sensibilities. There are moments in the book in which the executives have the kind of conversations that you have to hope happen less now. For instance, the decision of whether to make a new Raquel Welch picture depends entirely on whether she will get out her ‘boobies’ or not. But this is a community to whom everyone – not just women – is an object. For every picture mooted the same names are bandied about. Redford, Newman, McQueen, Eastwood: these are the objects of desire in the motion picture business. The question of whether or not it’s really any different now, or if it just might pretend to be different more convincingly, is what kept coming to mind. Next time Kaci will be reviewing John Scalzi’s Lock In on Monday the 1st of December. We’d love to hear what you think about Final Cut – please feel free to leave a comment or tweet us! Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
