Final Cut: The Making & Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate (2004)
Heaven’s Gate is the way, way overbudget western that sank United Artists as an independent studio, in 1980. It was made by Michael Cimino, who spent two years and $36-million of the studio’s money making it (that’s $147-million in 2026 dollars, and two years in 2026 years).
Its original release was 3 hours and 39 minutes, and ran for one week, earning universally awful reviews and piddling box office, before Cimino asked the studio to yank it back and allow him to re-edit it. His second version, released months later, was two hours and 29 minutes, and also bombed.
This documentary on Heaven’s Gate, made by now-defunct cable channel Trio, features too-brief interviews with several members of the cast, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and others involved behind the scenes and at the studio. Some interesting factoids emerge, and it’s all fairly fair, I think, but I wasn’t there, so who knows?
Cimino comes off as someone obsessed with making the ultimate western, based on the true story of the 1889-93 Johnson County War. He didn’t give a damn about the studio’s money, but was passionate about every tiny detail of Heaven’s Gate. He wanted it to be perfect, and perfect costs a lot.
Virtually every shot was repeated for dozens of takes. Many of the film’s characters are Slovakian and Ukrainian immigrants, so the actors were given intense ‘accent lessons’, along with weeks of 1880s-era gun shooting lessons, and waltz and roller-skating lessons for the film’s huge dance and skate scenes. The skates, of course, had to be period-appropriate, built or rebuilt in the style of 1880s skates.
Jeff Bridges says that he lives (as of 2004) in the whorehouse set, which he bought after filming, because it wasn’t a set, but an actual log cabin built from actual logs, just for the film. So maybe Cimino was nuts, but it was lovable nuts, not Idi-Amin-in-Uganda nuts. Well, unless you lost your job when United Artists went under.
“I’ll bet Michelangelo cared. I’ll bet Picasso cared. Anybody who believes in his artistic vision, I’ll bet they cared. I probably didn’t care that much, but I was glad to be working with someone who did.”
—Kris Kristofferson
I’ve seen Heaven’s Gate twice, once for each version, but before watching this, all I remembered was that Heaven’s Gate was slow but visually beautiful, with many huge crowd scenes that left me feeling I was watching from a distance.
Final Cut is interesting, but it’s a TV show, not a movie. The copy I watched didn’t have commercials, but teaser excerpts from upcoming scenes play before every commercial break, and the structure, style, everpresent click-click-click of fake projector sounds during film clips, the stock musical score, and much of the meandering narration leave no doubt that you’re watching a show made by formula for a low-tier cable channel. The Trio logo, bright red and never fading, is also a reminder, in the bottom-right corner.
Verdict: YES, and it whet my appetite to see Heaven’s Gate a third time.
♦ ♦ ♦
Gal Young Un (1979)
No idea what the title means, but this is a simple and satisfying story of a backwoods woman of a certain age who marries a young swindler, who then begins swindling her.
It features no fancy plot twists, no heavy thinking, no showy filmmaking tricks or expenses, but it’s a pretnear perfect piece of indie drama, with a fine fiddle soundtrack by the Azalia Blossom String Band.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Twixt (2011)
Edgar Allen Poe helps a horror writer solve a real-life murder.
Late-career Val Kilmer stars, with equally-late Bruce Dern and early Elle Fanning. The vibe is a nifty combination of spooky and kitsch, color and black-and-white, expected and whoa-I-didn’t-see-that-coming, mixing old-style horror with modern jokes. Everything is always simmering, even as the plot spins beyond description.
Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, revisiting his Roger Corman Dementia 13 roots. There ain’t many bigger names in moviemaking who are still alive and working, so I’m startled that I’d never heard of this li’l gem.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
11/13/2026
Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.
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If you can’t find a movie I’ve reviewed, or if you have recommendations, please drop me a note. And I mean it — if you ask, I will get you the movie.
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No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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