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| | Location: Home » Making Money » Final Cut : Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists | December 5, 2008 |
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| Final Cut : Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists | 
 enlarge | Author: Steven Bach
Publisher: Newmarket Press
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy New: $11.31
You Save: $7.64 (40%)
Buy New/Used from $9.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  (19 reviews)
Sales Rank: 176880
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 1557043744
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.4372
EAN: 9781557043740
ASIN: 1557043744
Publication Date: September 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Back in print with a new introduction and epilogue by the author, this modern classic is "one of the few indispensable books about Hollywood." --Jack Kroll, Newsweek. "What altered Hollywood irrevocably was the notorious 1980 film Heaven's Gate." --Irwin Winkler, The New York Times, 1/14/99. Heaven's Gate is probably the most discussed, least seen film in modern movie history. Its notoriety is so great that it has become a generic term for disaster, for ego run rampant, for epic mismanagement, for wanton extravagance. It was also the watershed film of the '80s--not for its cinematic qualities, but for its effect on Hollywood and the way movies were and were not made for years afterward. For Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate did not merely fail; the film did the unthinkable: it sank a studio. Less than a month after the picture's second release, United Artists--the company founded in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin--for all practical purposes ceased to exist. What happened? Why? How? In answering these questions, combining wit, extraordinary anecdotes, and historical perspective, Steven Bach has produced a landmark book on Hollywood and its people, and in so doing, tells a story of human absurdity that would have made Chaplin proud.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
The Making of a Hollywood Disaster, Unmaking of Company & Careers, in Vivid Detail. July 3, 2008
In "Final Cut", Stephen Bach presents his perspective on the making of "Heaven's Gate", the film that arguably unmade United Artists. The distribution company founded in 1919 by three actors and a director to allow artists to make the films they want would, ironically, be undone in 1981 by an out-of-control director and those who indulged him. Bach was one of those people. His first act as head of East Coast and European production for United Artists in 1978 was to make the deal that would ultimately convince parent company Transamerican to sell UA. He committed to make a movie called "The Johnson County War", written and directed by Michael Cimino, for $7.8 million. By the time it was released in November 1980, the film, retitled "Heaven's Gate", would cost UA $44 million.
After a whirlwind history of the company brings us up to speed on the condition of United Artists in 1978, Stephen Bach proceeds into a history of "The Johnson County War" project, acquired amid a product shortage, when UA had over 50 projects in some stage of development but few far down the pipeline. UA's first mistake in not realizing that it needed to pay more accrued charges to acquire the script was, perhaps, inauspicious. This was to be a medium-budget Western. But in perhaps the most blatantly stupid and self-destructive decision in movie history, UA approved unlimited cost overruns if Michael Cimino would try to get the film finished for a 1979 Christmas release, a schedule that was unlikely and against his interests anyway. That opened the floodgates on the budget.
Behind schedule and spending $200,000 a day to film in Montana, Michael Cimino ended up shooting 1.3 million feet of film, which he edited to a 5-hour-25 minute film, then to a 3-hour-39-minute film that critics hated, to its final 2-hour-25-minute box office bomb. "Final Cut" is obviously Stephen Bach's view of the "Heaven's Gate" debacle. He places the blame squarely on Michael Cimino. But, writing in 1985, Bach understood more of what went on at UA in retrospect than he saw at the time. He doesn't deny UA's responsibility for the absurd financing of "Heaven's Gate" or its unwillingness to seek a partnership deal or to fire the director until it was too late. Beyond the details of one of the film industry's most mind-boggling train wrecks, "Final Cut" is a fascinating look inside the movie business just as the studios were regaining power and directors' power was diminishing in the late 1970s to early 1980s.
 Good for a history lesson October 23, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is pretty helpful when trying to understand the film history and how it all changed through a single film.
 Destroy the Myth December 22, 2006
3 out of 19 found this review helpful
Myths and legends pervade and shade our light of the truth. Art is lost to commerce and business; the business of Hollywood, which rarely produces art. Michael Cimino became a leper of ill-repute based solely on negative reviews and publicity that shielded and prevented the public with seeing 'Heaven's Gate.' Do we know this, or do we still nurse the myth and legend? This film is a masterpiece along the lines of D.W. Griffith, David Lean, Akira Kurosawa, Francis Ford Coppola, and possibly, John Ford. Cimino's genius lies in 'The Deer Hunter' as well. 'Deer Hunter' is a powerful, masterful film. 'Heaven's Gate' parallels this mastery with its excessive beauty (excessive is used lightly in the bloated productions of 2006). This book should be destroyed as it only perpetuates the thought of a time when negative hype can wipe clean of any exposure to art on celluloid. Watch the film; ignore the ignorant past; embrace this director; watch his films. 'Year of the Dragon' is a fine film as well. Begin with 'Deer Hunter,' and then the film in question.
Worthwhile history of eighties Hollywood November 3, 2006
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
So much has been written about Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" that few people recall the film itself: a bloated, aimless, wandering and unfocused epic about the Johnson County "war" of the late eighteen hundreds. The book's story of wretched excess, greed, artistic ambition run amok and misguided faith in that ambition mirrors the story of the making of Fox's "Cleopatra" in 1961. Though "Heaven's Gate" has a devoted cult following today, such admiration is common to reviled works: people have a tendency to champion projects that "nobody else got" because it makes them feel elevated from the common wisdom, or a part of an exclusive culture of appreciation. Sadly, Cimino's film doesn't warrant such revisionist thinking. The book explains in excruciating detail the process by which a small, personal project became one of the grandest flops in the history of Hollywood. Equally culpable in this fiasco are the men and women who allowed this director to squander the millions spent, even after it became apparent that the film was a disappointment by the kindest standards. Far from being a lost opportunity (the story of the Johnson County war has been done several times, in films like "Shane") "Heaven's Gate" is probably the best known example of the kind of apalling waste that drove the film industry into the sad state it has fallen to. The author accepts his share of the blame, and is astonishingly fair to Cimino, defending the director's vision, his decisions, and his intentions. But the end result (known to every film buff) hangs over the proceedings like grim death.
 Don't go in the cellar! March 9, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is one of the finest books ever written about the movie business. Bach explains, step by step, why he and the other UA execs did the things they did, and the disaster that unfolded. He's honest about his own failings, but at every step, as he outlines the choices available, you realise that - in his place and without the benefit of hindsight - you'd probably make the same mistakes. It's fascinating.
Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to see the experience as a kind of horror movie. Each time UA concedes a point to Cimino, you feel like yelling "Don't go in the cellar!" (or, in this case, "Don't cast Isabelle Huppert!"). Of course, down they go into the cellar, where there are even more zombies lurking. The high point is the part where Cimino demands the installation of an irrigation system to ensure the grass looks properly green - but of course it's his land!
I have read this book several times since it was first published, and lent my copy to at least a dozen people who are also in the business. Everyone I know who knows anything about moviemaking has loved it.
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