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My wife and I just cringed through 4 hrs of Heavens Gate, picked up at the library.
The IT guy who I met at a recent Christmas party was there at Wallace during the filming and said it was a non stop party every night with cast and crew and towns people.
My question is does anyone associated with the filming in 1980 see any physical or mental scars in Wallace?
I knew one of the wranglers on Heaven's Gate.
Later on, I came to know a musician who was part of a big scene in the movie as well.
They also said the party was non-stop, but the wrangler didn't participate; he had a couple of his own horses to care for along with the others he was hired on to take care of. (I don't know if the musician joined the party or not- never asked.)
Michael Cimino, the director, was never a paradigm of a director who controls tightly. His earlier big hit movie The Deer Hunter shows plenty of evidence of that, and displays Cimino's weaknesses. But the Deer Hunter wasn't made in an era when cocaine was the drug of choice, and according to the guy I knew, there was a mountain of white powder that dusted the production like snow, except it wasn't exactly snow.
I have seen the picture several times. It's kind of like watching the Russian version of War and Peace; the movie in it's original director's cut is over 3 1/2 hours long. Part of it is filmed in sepia, because United Artists, the studio, refused to foot the bill for those scenes to be processed in full Technicolor, which was used in the rest of the film.
The pace of the movie is as glacial as the Deer Hunter was, except worse, if a quick pace is what attracts you to watch a movie. The scope is epic- the movie begins with a graduation at Yale, where the 3 major characters in the film all graduate in one class, before they all move west to Wyoming a decade later. (The film is supposed to take place in Wyoming. Wallace was the stand-in town for 19th century Sheridan.) And it ends over 30 years later, with one of the major characters now at sea in his own yacht, far away from the west.
If you are ready to spend a full evening watching it, and you like long epic movies, it's excellent. Not so much, though, if you are in a theater, though, with its relatively cramped seats.
The most interesting thing about it is how impossible it became to edit into a shorter, faster moving, more concise motion picture. Each scene is a polished gem of its own, and every scene lasts about 3-4 minutes too long, but there's no dialog or action in every scene that can be edited out without ruining the entire scene.
The biggest hunk the studio tried to cut, the one that's partly in sepia, was one of the longest scenes, and one of the most appealing; it was an extended scene that was done inside Heaven's Gate, the canvas covered roller skating rink that was the poor immigrant's main source of fun and the escape from the harsh reality of their lives.
It was cut because it wasn't necessary to the plot, but it showed the motivations of all the main characters, where their loyalties lay in the war that was coming, and was the only real joyful moment in the entire movie. Everyone in the scene meets their fate later on, when the cattle barons go to war with the immigrants. Without it, the rest of the movie goes flat.
Watching a fiddler on roller skates lead a hundred of people dancing, all on skates and in moving lines swirling around the floor of Heaven's Gate is the most memorable scene in the movie. We have all seen every other scene before in other Westerns, but this one was unique and very memorable.
Most of it was filmed in Montana. The scenes in Wallace are relatively brief, but they do show off Wallace's downtown pretty well. I think they were the first in the production, as the weariness of the entire cast becomes more evident as the picture goes on.
I don't do drugs, and I've never done cocaine, but I know folks who were hooked on it, and they say things become obsessive when someone is high on the stuff. I think that's what happened; everyone was intent on making every scene really good, so the movie is a bunch of perfect trees that make a messy, big, tangled forest.
The movie is based on historic events- the Johnson County War, that took place in a series of Wyoming range war events between 1889 and 1893, but is fictionalized, though most of the main characters are based on real people.
I saw Dante's Peak, too. it doesn't show off Wallace like Heaven's Gate did, and it's a more average movie by far.
If you love Westerns and want to spend an evening in a marathon, it's a good choice. Kris Kristofferson, Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterson, John Hurt and Christopher Walken (who plays a semi-good guy) all turn in some of their best performances ever in it, and if it had not been such a massive box office bomb, Isabelle Hupert would be as famous here as she is in France.
It's very evident where a lot of the money went; the production is very historically accurate in all the details. The costuming, props and trappings are all really faithful to the times, and many were reproduced from museum pieces that can be found in Wyoming museums I've visited. The Cattleman's Club set was built from the actual blueprints of the real building.
Wallace was selected specifically because it remains 19th century in the downtown. It was chosen because of the railway that's in town, which plays an important part of the scenes that were shot there.
But be warned- the graphic violence is very graphic and very violent, and includes a rape, so it's not a movie for the kids or those who don't like to see this stuff. It has been a while since I saw it last, and with the expected cold snap coming next week, I may try to rent it again, just as a good excuse to curl up with some popcorn and a beer next to the fire when it's too cold to go out.
banjo Mike thank you for that thoughtful explanation of the film. I definitely need to see it and from what I have read about it today I need to see the director's cut.
We love westerns and will sit on a rainy day watching Lonesome Dove in its entirety. I do believe it is the best and one of the most authentic westerns ever made. Little things like Gus grabbing the horse's tail as he walks behind him outside the saloon, its just how old cowboys are. My great grandparents lived on our ranch until I was out of high school and he would tell me all about working on the 6666 Ranch in Texas in the 20's where he met my great grandmother who was the "Cookie." He was a wrangler and Gus reminds me so much of him.
Lonesome Dove is the way a Western epic should be. When it first aired, it was on as a miniseries, with 2 hours per episode shown on every following night.
The original cut of Heaven's Gate was over 5 1/2 hours long. The final Director's Cut was finally released on DVD in 2013, and I haven't seen it yet, but I did see the same cut on tape, quite a long time ago now. Even though I like it, Lonesome Dove is better by far as a real epic. The theater is sometimes not the best place for long stories that are intimately told in detail.
One interesting thing about Heaven's Gate was when it was released in 1980, the Western had gone through a long resurgence of popularity throughout the decade before. The 1970s saw many of the most popular Westerns, and many of the most critically successful, ever made.
The Western is our great national myth- the way Americans first defined what 'America' is, and how we still define ourselves. Heaven's Gate was so excessive in everything that it killed the Western as a genre for over a full decade afterward, and the Western has yet to regain it's former dominance in our popular entertainment that it enjoyed for so long.
Much was due to the studios; the 70s was a decade when the studios allowed young directors to make motion pictures that were financially risky.
Cimino's big hit The Deer Hunter was one, and when it became a big money-making hit, and won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, became the reason why Cimino was allowed to get away with going so far over-budget and over-schedule.
But when it bombed, the bean counters, the producers, the directors, and the actors in the studios all didn't want to be the ones who would be held accountable when a picture failed to return its investment any more, and our movies became a lot more conventional and less controversial afterward.
Which in turn has led to the current sequel after sequel after sequel. There's nothing these days like a popular franchise, and motion pictures have always been as much about money as art.
Oh my goodness. We rented Heaven's Gate on Amazon Prime last night and watched the whole 3:39 hours. It was bad. The locations were great and the story could have been good, but the execution was terrible. I can see why it ruined westerns. No offense to you intended Mike. The flow was haphazard and the scenes, like you said, were each too long. The sound mixing was awful, so much so that in the busy street scenes in Wallace you could not hear the actors lines because of the noisy wagons going back and forth at a pretty dangerous speed. Its a wonder no one got run over, or maybe they did. About 2 hours into it my husband says "This is not a western! Only one guy has been shot so far!" LOL.
All that said, the immigrant story is very poignant and their plight should never be forgotten. Nor should the behavior of the upper landowning class of the time - and later. That human aspect of the movie was great and I wish it could have been delivered in a better way. Not in a blockbuster style either but more fluid and watchable. The lavish scenes are telling of the expense spent on filming and are wondrous in and of themselves.
Here is part of my list of great westerns:
Lonesome Dove - wish it had been filmed in a cinematic format instead of for TV - McMurtry book is excellent
Dances with Wolves - Extended Director's cut because much of the story was removed for theaters
Open Range - I think I have a thing for Duvall and Costner
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - This movie was my first in a theater.
The Quiet Man - not exactly a western but its JW
Unforgiven
Tombstone - Who doesn't like every line in the movie from Val Kilmer?
Wyatt Earp - Costner's version is good and Dennis Quaid really got into the role.
Quigley Down Under - Rickman and Selleck are both great!
I have to say I really like the new Magnificent 7. Quite entertaining and the cast was perfect.
I know I have many more but those are ones we watch regularly.
Last edited by redwood66; 01-01-2017 at 11:02 AM..
Another huge fan of Westerns weighing in here! I finally sat through Heaven's Gate a few years ago. That was painful. Sorry, Mike! And I love the grim story of the Johnson Ct War, but it felt to me like I was watching some "Gangs of New York" movie just set in some kind of token West. But it has great music!
Nevertheless, next time we go to Wallace we'll make a point of checking out locations, which we love to do, anyway. We've already "done" Dante's Peak. And remember the old thread we had about Pale Rider? A great Ketchum location.
I can probably put a list of "CFF's 20 Most Beloved Westerns" together at some point , but let's just start with these:
The Searchers
High Noon
Jeremiah Johnson
Lonesome Dove
Tombstone
Red River
A little bit different than the traditional type of "western", but I really enjoy The Man from Snowy River. It's on Netflix right now. The sequel is pretty good too, and they followed that up with a short-running weekly series. Have 'em all on DVD. Promotes the same values as Wild West westerns, just with a Down Under flavor.
Quite a few westerns have been filmed along the Idho-Montana-Wyoming-Oregon borders.
Cimino's first feature film, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, was partly filmed in Idaho, and its star Clint Eastwood returned to make more movies here as a director. Broncho Billy, and Pale Rider were filmed here, and there may be others. Eastwood and Cimino were close friends.
Shane was filmed just over the border in Jackson Hole, as was Far Horizons, which was partly shot on the Idaho side. The Mountain Men, a late Charlton Heston movie was filmed on both sides of the border, and Spencer's Mountain was filmed there ca. 1964. Breakheart Pass was filmed here and in Montana,
In the 80s, the final scenes of the last John Belushi movie The Continental Divide were filmed in Idaho, but the scenes weren't used and an abbreviated version of them was re-shot in N. California. A threatening snowstorm and an airplane crash that killed someone involved with the production stopped the Idaho shoot before it was completed. In it, Idaho was standing in for Wyoming.
Farther back, It Happened In Sun Valley and Sun Valley Serenade were big musical hit in the 40's, The River Of No Return was a hit for Marylin Monroe and Robt. Mitchum in the 50s, and both were filmed here. And, of course, the low-budget hit Napoleon Dynamite was filmed in the producer's home town of Preston.
S. Idaho is used more often, due to logistics. Salt Lake City is the only city in the intermountain west with companies that rent all the specialized production equipment needed for motion pictures, and airport access is an important part of location selection, as crew members and actors are leaving and arriving from California all the time.
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, but let's just start with these:
