Trivia for
Heaven's Gate (1980) More at IMDbPro »

• At one point during filming, Michael Cimino decided that the spacing of the buildings on one of the sets didn't look right, despite it having been built to his exact specifications. He ordered both sides of the street razed and rebuilt, at a cost of $1.2 million over the objections of his crew, who reasoned that it would be easier and cheaper to knock down one side of the street and rebuild it twice as far away.
  
  
• Cimino kept an armed security guard posted outside the editing room during postproduction to keep United Artists executives from interrupting him.
  
  
• Misuse of an oil-based stain during construction of some sets caused nearby Two Medicine Lake to be covered with an oily sheen for the duration of production.
  
  
• Over 1.5 million ft. of film was used. Over a million feet were processed in labs.
  
  
• One of the most notorious screen disasters in the history of film. After struggling with personal films that went nowhere, Michael Cimino finally got to make The Deer Hunter (1978), a very personal project that brought him critical and commercial success and earned five Academy Awards. Afterwards, United Artists was willing to allow him anything he wanted. Cimino got $11.6 million to make his next project, which was initially budget at $7.5 million (according the Steven Bach's "Final Cut"). The film was to be a simple lower-budget western about a land war in Johnson County, Wyoming, featuring a first-rate cast. The film went over budget almost immediately, mostly due to Cimino's insistence on absolute perfectionism. Stories abounded that Cimino was tearing down sets for no reason and hiring and firing crew members almost weekly. Many of the stories were exaggerated, but the film ballooned to a then-astronomical sum of $40 million. When Cimino presented the film to United Artists, it ran well over 5 hours. After some squabbling, Cimino agreed to trim it down to less than 3 hours. The film was a commercial and critical disaster that destroyed Cimino's career as a director and nearly caused United Artists to file bankruptcy. When UA was sold to MGM, MGM acquired UA's pictures. That year MGM had a hit in For Your Eyes Only (1981). Cimino didn't get work for another five years. To date, his career has never recovered.
  
  
• The film's male lead was initially offered to John Wayne in the early 1970s, several years before the film was finally made. The film's female lead, played in the final film by Isabelle Huppert, was originally offered to Jane Fonda.
  
  
• At the time, it was the biggest and most expensive Hollywood flop ever. Its failure resulted in the sale of the United Artists studio to MGM.
  
  
• Real horses' entrails were used to add realism to the gorier scenes.
  
  
• There really was a Johnson County War in Wyoming and James Averill, Nathan Champion and Ella Watson were actual historical figures. In the real war, however, the U.S. Army arrested the cattlemen for hiring the killers and did not threaten to arrest the homesteaders for defending themselves, as happens in the film.
  
  
• After the film received scathing reviews after its New York premiere in November 1980, 'Michael Cimino' sent a signed memo to the head of United Artists that asked them to pull the film from theaters so he go back and re-cut the film to a version that everyone would be satisfied with. It had been a misconception for years that it was United Artists that had pulled the film despite its negative press and reviews.
  
  
• While doing press for Desperate Hours (1990) in the fall of 1990, Michael Cimino, in a TV interview, claimed full responsibility for what had happened during the making of this film.
  
  
• John Williams was the original composer attached to the film, but left the project when the film was half a year behind schedule and he had to start composing the music for both Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) immediately after that.
  
  
• The period steam train engine used in the film had to be shipped to the location on flatbed railroad cars across several states.
  
  
• The skating rink featured in the film is called "Heaven's Gate". That is the only connection this film appears to have to its title.
  
  
• This film is notorious for the amount of animal abuse that took place during production. Actual cockfights, decapitated chickens and physical torture of horses including at least four deaths are all proven to have taken place. The outcry prompted the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) to contractually authorize the American Humane Society to monitor the use of all animals in all filmed media.
  
  
• The original cut was 5 hours and 25 minutes long.
  
  
• The rollerskating violinist is actually David Mansfield, the composer of the sound track.
  
  
• Property master Robert J. Visciglia Sr. contacted his old friend, director Sam Peckinpah, about doing second unit on the final battle sequence, not realizing the director had recently suffered a heart attack and was therefore medically unfit. Nonetheless, Peckinpah visited the set and met with Cimino, staying for four days.
  
  
• Some of John Hurt's scripted scenes had to be re-written or canceled as he had to leave the production to start shooting on The Elephant Man (1980).
  
  
• Film debuts of Willem Dafoe and Terry O'Quinn.
  
  
• At one point, the head of United Artists along with fellow executives proposed selling the movie to producer Barry Spikings in order to rid themselves of the financial burden and also allow Michael Cimino to finish the film any way he liked, as long as it was not under the banner and scrutiny of United Artists. Under the proposed deal, Cimino would have complete control of the finished product with Spikings overseeing everything. United Artists would have looked after the distribution rights for the film in the U.S. and abroad. After looking at the all the financial records for the film at that point which had reached approximately $15 million, Spikings instantly refused to take over the project.
  
  
• Jeff Bridges salvaged the log cabin from the set of the film and now has it as a family get-away in Montana.
  
  
• According to Steven Bach's book "Final Cut", after principal photography had ended, Michael Cimino was granted $3 million dollars to film the prologue and epilogue. The prologue scene that takes place at Harvard University, but which was shot in Oxford, England after Harvard had refused to let them shoot on the campus. He was given that money with an ultimatum which was to have the prologue done in the specific amount of time ordered by the studio with no more money to be spent on wasted film. However, Cimino asked for $5.2 million but the studio refused. Instead Cimino agreed to the $3 million. The studio would have completely scrapped the entire prologue and epilogue, if Cimino had not followed orders.
  
  
• The final battle sequence featured in the original cut film that Michael Cimino had screened for United Artists executives is rumored to have been the length of a full length motion picture.
  
  
• In former United Artists' Executive Steven Bach's book on the making of the film, "Final Cut", Bach kept saying of the initial rushes that it looked "like David Lean went and made a Western". When production spiraled out of control, Bach apparently visited a director (against DGA rules) with the intent of seeing if he would replace Michael Cimino. As he did not want to create problems for that director, in the book Bach only refers to him as "The Famous Director". When "The Famous Director" asks what the rushes look like, Bach told him that it looked "like you went and made a Western", the implication being that he asked Lean. In any event, "The Famous Director" saw some of Cimino's footage and turned Bach down.
  
  
• During one of the scenes Allen Keller was injured when the Sharps Buffalo Rifle he was issued to use exploded. He later sued the company that provided the firearm, Stemburgen Gun Rentals, but he waited until 1986 to do it. By that time, the statute of limitations in Montana had run out.
  
  
• Michael Cimino was reportedly such a perfectionist that by the fifth day of filming they were already four days behind schedule.
  
  
• The studio considered firing Michael Cimino and approached Norman Jewison to take over the project, but Jewison refused.
  
  
• Both Kris Kristofferson and Jeff Bridges are very proud of being in this film. Kristofferson says that he'll be proud of it as long as he's in the business, and Bridges says that he likes it better for every time he sees it.
  
  
• Kris Kristofferson and director Michael Cimino were planning to do a remake of The Fountainhead (1949) with Kristofferson in the starring role after this movie was done with. Since it was, as Kristofferson puts it, "universally trashed", they had to give up on the idea.
  
  
• Such was Michael Cimino's obsession with getting the right shot, that 50 takes were not uncommon for each scene. Enough film was shot for 200 hours worth of viewing, the equivalent of nearly 9 days non-stop viewing.
  
  
• Even though the budget ballooned from $7.5 million to $40 million, not one executive from United Artists saw a single frame until filming had wrapped.
  
  

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