Box Office Bomb: As exorbitant as the price tag was, this wasn't actually the all-time most expensive film at the time of its release, as is commonly reported (Superman: The Movie and Star Trek: The Motion Picture both had budgets just shy of $50 million, and Cleopatra was nearly twice as expensive if you adjust for inflation. It wasn’t even the studio’s most expensive film - that was Moonraker). Unfortunately, it didn't make even a tenth of its budget back ($3 million against a $44 million budget), making it inarguably the biggest box-office bomb that Hollywood had seen up to that point. To give an indication of just how severe of a bomb it was, here's the 2021 adjusted budget/gross numbers: $146 million, $11 million.
Budget-Busting Element: The film ended up costing approximately $44 million to make. Director Michael Cimino famously demanded that the buildings on both sides of a western street set be torn down and rebuilt a few feet wider apart, at a cost of $1.2 million, all the while overruling the crew's objections that it would be much cheaper to tear down only one side and move it the full distance away.
The Harvard scenes were actually filmed in Oxford, England, as Harvard didn’t want a repeat of Love Story and A Small Circle of Friends.
The majestic mountain vistas around Glacier National Park in Montana play the part of Johnson County, Wyoming, which is actually a rather drab grassland area.
The town of Wallace, Idaho was used for the scenes set in Casper, Wyoming.
Creator Killer: The film destroyed Michael Cimino's career, contributed to Transamerica's sale of United Artists to MGM, and ended the "New Hollywood" post-studio-system era in which director/auteurs were given carte blanche to do however they see fit. Thus, it not only destroyed the careers of the people who created it but ended an era that produced many of the best films in history. Cimino's directing career didn't immediately end after that, but all of his post-Heaven's Gate outings were commercial failures. He had a chance of recovery, however, as not long after Heaven's Gate Cimino was offered a chance to direct Footloose (of all things) under the condition that he won't exceed the budget and schedule by a single day or dollar. However, his primadonna behavior started again during pre-production, and when weeks before the shooting was scheduled to begin he demanded to delay it until he rewrites the script (and to get $250,000 for it), Paramount quickly booted him out the director's chair. Cimino's final film was 1996's Sunchaser; its failure to get a wide theatrical release due to poor test screenings made him stop working on any more projects, as he died twenty years later.
The Danza: Jeff Bridges as John L. Bridges. Before filming Jeff learned that his great-grandfather John Bridges had been on the frontier around the same time the film was set, so he convinced Cimino to change the character's name and allow him to basically play his own ancestor.
Extremely Lengthy Creation: Michael Cimino submitted the script in 1971, but the project was shelved when it failed to attract big-name talent. Production started in 1979, but wasn't completed for another year.
Follow-Up Failure: Coming off the Oscar-winning success of The Deer Hunter, it seemed Michael Cimino could do no wrong and was poised for another surefire hit. His next film is one of the standout examples of Troubled Production, over-budgeting, and general practice of a director having too much control. Compared to the $34 million profit that The Deer Hunter made, Heaven's Gate turned in a box office loss of $40.5 million— it's largely responsible for the end of the New Hollywood era of films as a result of all this. A running joke around Hollywood was that Cimino had sold his soul for the success of The Deer Hunter, and this film was the devil coming to collect.
Magnum Opus Dissonance: The cast of the film, Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges love the film and enjoyed their experience making it, with Kristofferson considering it his favorite film to work on. Some consider it to have been Vindicated by History; it has a strong vocal audience today, to the point where restored rereleases have received great reviews.
Role-Ending Misdemeanor: An extremely rare Disproportionate Retribution example, if you can believe it. Willem Dafoe was fired just for laughing in the set. This film was supposed to be his debut. He still ended up in a few shots of the final cut and narrated the Documentary version of Final Cut.
Joann Carelli, the film's producer, who had a hard-to-describe lifelong Platonic Life-Partners relationship with Cimino, married David Mansfield, the film's composer who also played the violinist at the Heaven's Gate skating rink, during production.
There were rumors that Cimino was so adamant to cast Isabelle Huppert because he'd fallen for her, and subsequent onset gossip had them in a relationship.
Saved from Development Hell: Cimino wrote the original version of the screenplay in 1971, and it was kept under consideration by several studios (including United Artists before the Orion defection) but ultimately passed on numerous times, until the buzz for The Deer Hunter got the new regime at UA to offer Cimino a two-picture deal, and he chose to make it as his first UA project.
The film killed Kris Kristofferson's career as a leading man. Throughout the '70s, he had been a major star of both films and music, balancing a successful career as a country and folk singer-songwriter with an acting career that saw him take leading roles in critically acclaimed hit films like Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and A Star Is Born. After this, he never had a lead role in a hit film again, finding work only in supporting or bit roles in genre films such as the Blade trilogy. He had neglected his music career during his most of his time in Hollywood and his post-Heaven's Gate solo albums received middling reviews and sales. His only major hits afterward came as part of the country supergroup The Highwaymen. Interestingly, Kristofferson loves the film, and cited it as one of his favorite of his films long before the 2012 re-release of its director's cut brought critics around to the film.
Isabelle Huppert was cast in her first leading role in an American filmnote She'd already been in one American film, the Otto Preminger flop Rosebud, as one of five wealthy teen girls held for ransom by Palestinian terrorists on a yacht, with Kim Cattrall as one of the others. after achieving success in her native France and winning a BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for La Dentelliere. Unfortunately, the film's failure derailed her chance of an international breakthrough. However, she has remained successful in France, holding the record as the most nominated actress for the César Award. She finally broke through to American audiences in 2016, with her Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated performance in Paul Verhoeven's Elle.
Troubled Production: Hoo boy. Michael Cimino took his recently-earned Auteur License to finally make this pet project of his, but his already excessive meticulousness added to fame going into his head made his Epic Movie also an epic clusterfuck that the press compared to a then-recent debacle by nicknaming it "Apocalypse Next". Locations were distant, Cimino's perfectionism and countless retakes (the raw footage amounted 220 hours!) made the shoot five days behind schedule after just six days while ballooning while skyrocketing the costs. He demanded 50 takes of at least one scene, and refused to start shooting for another until a cloud he liked rolled across the sky. While on location, he ordered that a street set be dismantled and each side be moved six inches towards the other. The crew suggested that they take down just one side of it, and move it a foot towards the other side, because it was half the work for the exact same result. Cimino refused to listen and they had to do it the way he said. Post-production had Cimino changing the locks on the editing suite to ensure that he could cut the film his way, and even then, his original cut was 325 minutes long, with a threat of dismissal shortening to 219, and disastrous test screenings leading to a wide release of 149. And it still didn't impress reviewers or audiences, helping destroy Cimino's career and United Artists's 62-year existence as an independent studio.
Kris Kristofferson as James Averill was part of the package deal that got the film greenlighted (Cimino and Kristofferson had the same agent), but when Cimino was shopping around his original Johnson County War screenplay in the first part of The '70s, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Robert Redford and John Wayne*Likely not a serious possibility with his health problems, and also he undoubtedly would've hated the script's left-wing political bent. were floated as possibilities to play Averill. Steve McQueen (actor) was also courted to play Averill, and liked the script, but refused to work in what would've been Cimino's directorial debut. Also in that early phase, Jack Lemmon was considered for the role of William C. Irvine (the role John Hurt ended up with).
Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Sylvia Kristel, Diane Keaton and Raquel Welch all turned down the role of Ella Watson before Isabelle Huppert was cast. A big issue was that Kristofferson had been guaranteed top billing, and none of the big-name actresses contacted were willing to be billed under him.
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 The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark immediately after that. John Barry was also briefly considered, and Ennio Morricone interviewed for the position, but didn't impress Cimino on a personal level.
◊ quite a bit like the real Canton
