Distinctly Montana Magazine

62 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 5 H EAVEN'S GATE IS WIDELY CONSIDERED ONE OF THE BIGGEST FLOPS IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA. And a lot of that opinion depends a great deal on what crite- ria people use to measure failure. But it surprises me that among the press I've read, including two books to research this article—Final Cut, written by one of the pro- ducers of the film, Stephen Bach, and Cimino, a biography of the director—nobody mentions a specific fact. The opening scene of Heaven's Gate depicts a graduation ceremony from Harvard Col- lege, and the main speaker at the ceremony is a character called The Reverend Doctor. The man who plays this character is none other than Joseph Cotten, in one of his final film appearances. In 1942, Cotten played a major role in another film from a young director who had just been crowned as the next great genius by the film community. Cotton co-starred in Citizen Kane, which is considered one of the best movies ever made. But once hav- ing praise heaped upon him from every direction, Orson Welles then produced and directed The Magnificent Ambersons, also co-starring Cotten, and because Welles became so difficult, the film went through several delays, as well as several battles over editing and other particulars, to the point where Welles even- tually distanced himself from the production. The Magnificent Ambersons was the Heaven's Gate of its time, considered a fi- nancial disaster after RKO Pictures poured more than a million dollars into the picture ($25 million in today's dollars). When Michael Cimino pitched Heaven's Gate to United Artists, his own masterpiece, The Deer Hunter, hadn't been released yet, but there was already enough buzz about the film that people expected big things. Cimino leveraged that buzz to negotiate an unprecedented amount of control over the production of what was initially called The Johnson County War. by RUSSELL ROWLAND THE FILM WAS MOSTLY SHOT IN GLACIER NATIONAL PARK; THE ENTIRE CREW HAD TO BE BUSED TO THE SITE EVERY DAY FROM KALISPELL, A NINETY-MINUTE DRIVE.

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