Taglines: The only thing greater than their passion for America…was their passion for each other.
Heaven’s Gate movie storyline. Wyoming, 1890. James Averill is the Sherriff of Johnson County, a county largely inhabited by foreign immigrants. The wealthy cattle owners view the immigrant farmers as a nuisance and hindrance to them enlarging their own land. The cattlemen’s association, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, effectively declares war on the immigrant farmers, and gets the state government’s blessing. They assemble an army of guns-for-hire, and, backed by the U.S. Cavalry, set out to rid the state of the immigrants. James Averill’s heart is with the immigrants, but he is not sure they have a chance of winning the inevitable war.
Heaven’s Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film written and directed by Michael Cimino. Loosely based on the Johnson County War, it portrays a fictional dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s. The film features an ensemble cast, including Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Joseph Cotten, Geoffrey Lewis, David Mansfield, Richard Masur, Terry O’Quinn, Mickey Rourke, Willem Dafoe and Nicholas Woodeson, the last two in their first film roles. It is notable for being one of the biggest box office bombs of all time, losing the studio an estimated $37 million ($144 million in 2019 dollars); it was at one point considered one of the worst films ever made.
There were major setbacks in the film’s production due to cost overruns, endless retakes, negative press (including allegations of animal abuse on-set) and rumors about Cimino’s allegedly authoritarian directorial style; the film resultantly opened to scathing reviews, earning only $3.5 million domestically (from an estimated $44 million budget), eventually contributing to the management problems of its parent studio, United Artists, and effectively destroying Cimino’s reputation as a filmmaker.
Previously a rising auteur from the success of his 1978 film The Deer Hunter, winner of the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director in 1979. Cimino had an expensive and ambitious vision, pushing the film nearly four times over its planned budget. Its resulting financial problems and United Artists’ consequent demise led to a move away from the 1970s period of director-driven film production in the American film industry, back toward greater studio control of films, as had been predominant in Hollywood until the late 1960s.
A notorious artistic and financial failure, Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate was blamed for critically wounding the movie Western and definitively ushering out the 1970s Hollywood New Wave of young, brash, independent filmmakers. Taking a revisionist, post-Vietnam view of American imperialism, Cimino used the historical Johnson County War incident in Wyoming to create an impressionistic tapestry of Western conflict between poor immigrant settlers and rich cattle barons led by Canton (Sam Waterston) and his hired gun Nate Champion (Christopher Walken).
Attempting to mediate is idealistic Harvard graduate and county marshal Averill (Kris Kristofferson), who is both Nate’s friend and his romantic rival for the affections of Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert). However, war erupts, at great cost to all involved. Flush from his success with the Oscar-winning The Deer Hunter (1978), Cimino demanded creative control, and his insistence on shooting on location and building historically accurate sets and props multiplied the film’s original budget to a then-astronomical $36 million. When United Artists premiered the original 219-minute version (sight unseen), they discovered that Cimino had produced an elliptical epic, compounding the box-office difficulties of making a Western without any major stars.
Critics howled about Cimino’s incomprehensible self-indulgence, and United Artists pulled the film after several days. Re-released five months later, 70 minutes shorter, Heaven’s Gate bombed again, and MGM bought out the financially crippled United Artists. The ailing Western genre virtually vanished during the 1980s, Cimino’s career never recovered, and Hollywood studios had had enough of bankrolling financially risky ventures by “auteur” directors. Heaven’s Gate’s reputation recovered somewhat after its video release, as it garnered praise from some viewers for such visually remarkable sequences as the Harvard dance and the final battle, as well as for David Mansfield’s haunting score.
Heaven’s Gate (1980)
Directed by: Michael Cimino
Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, Joseph Cotten, Paul Koslo, Geoffrey Lewis, Richard Masur, Mary Catherine Wright
Screenplay by: Michael Cimino
Production Design by: Tambi Larsen
Cinematography by: Vilmos Zsigmond
Film Editing by; Lisa Fruchtman, William Reynolds, Tom Rolf
Costume Design by: J. Allen Highfill
Set Decoration by: James L. Berkey, Josie MacAvin
Music by: David Mansfield
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: November 19, 1980
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