http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/03/entertainment/michael-cimino-obit/index.htmlMichael Cimino -- who went from co-writing Magnum Force to directing Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, the Oscar-winning The Deer Hunter, and the disastrous flop Heaven's Gate -- has died from "natural causes." He was believed to be 77 years old, but the guy was notoriously private.
He was also a perfectionist. The Deer Hunter proved to be a fluke, as his next picture, Heaven's Gate, was a sprawling widescreen Western whose budget ballooned to $40 million. He would delay shooting just so that the cloud formations were correct.
A slightly abridged version was originally released in 1980. It was savaged by critics and massacred at the box office. It killed...
1) United Artists
2) Cimino's career
3) The New Hollywood movement -- the era spanning c. 1967 to 1980 in which young, maverick directors were given carte blanche. Basically, the inmates ran the asylum.
In the years since, it has been re-evaluated, and several different cuts have been released -- including Cimino's preferred 3 hour, 39 minute cut, which was screened in 2013 and released on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection.
Oddly enough, The Deer Hunter Blu-ray, being from the dark-age Universal era, is plagued by digital noise reduction and de-graining.
Cimino made four other movies, but none were truly successful.