Michael Cimino - Interviews

Interviews

Interviews with Cimino are rare: He declined all interviews with American journalists for 10 years following Heaven's Gate and he gives his part in the making of that film little discussion. George Hickenlooper's book Reel Conversations and Peter Biskind's highly critical book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls deal with the film and resulting scandal. Hickenlooper's book includes one of the few candid discussions with Cimino; Biskind focuses on events during and after the production as a later backdrop for the sweeping changes made to Hollywood and the movie brat generation. Steven Bach, a former UA studio executive, wrote Final Cut (1985), which describes in detail how Heaven's Gate brought down United Artists. Cimino has called Bach's book a “work of fiction” by a “degenerate who never even came on the set.” However, Bach's work does discuss times in which he did appear at the shooting location to confront Cimino about the budgetary issues.

While Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Hackman, Sidney Lumet and Robert De Niro all gave interviews for the 2009 John Cazale documentary I Knew It Was You, Cimino refused to do so.

However, the European DVD release of The Deer Hunter contains an audio commentary with Cimino as does the American DVD release of Year of the Dragon.

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