Episode 58 – The Cuts of 'Heaven's Gate' - a podcast by Phi Phenonenon

Famed as the movie that destroyed a studio and an Oscar-winner, writer/director Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate got its reputation replenished with a Criterion edition in 2012. But why do some sophisticated film-viewers still view it as an eye-roll-worthy indulgence? On this episode is Michael Epstein, director of the documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate, as we discuss:

- United Artists’ executive Steven Bach’s book, Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate, from which Epstein adapted his doc;
- if this book is the greatest making-of-a-movie book, or merely the best one written by an insider;
- the bogus narrative that the movie destroyed UA;
- how the book contributes to the narrative of Gate as an indulgent slog;
- an alternate theory on how inflation destroyed American politics and film in the 1970s;
- and why it doesn’t matter how much was spent on a piece of art years, decades, or centuries ago.

Also:

- How Epstein’s doc precipitated Gate’s 2004 restoration and DVD release;
- why Cimino’s perfectionism, now timeless, is still treated as a negative;
- whether or not the film could have survived if its “internal rhythms” were cut down;
- my edible-enhanced screening last year where I declared the movie “one of the greatest movies ever made”;
- what enhancement actually led to that declaration (spoiler: not the edibles);
- and the identity of the mysterious “Famous Director” Bach covertly discussed replacing Cimino with if he’d gone through with firing the writer/director mid-shoot.

Michael Epstein is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker whose work has been awarded two George Foster Peabody awards, two Primetime Emmys, a Writers Guild Award, a Clio, as well as numerous other distinctions. His films include House Two, Combat Diary: The Marines in Lima Company, along with the John Lennon docs LennoNYC and John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky. He’s also the writer/host of the Murder in House Two podcast.

The 216-minute director’s cut of Heaven’s Gate is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Criterion. Its 219-minute Premiere cut is available on VOD and on DVD from MGM. The 149 theatrical cut briefly showed up on MGM’s HD channel but is, apparently, only available on the Region 2 DVD. Director Steven Soderbergh’s 106-minute “immoral and illegal” “Butcher’s Cut” is available to stream on his website, Extension 765.

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