Director Michael Cimino talks Clint and praises 'American
Sniper' in his first Interview in 13 Years
By Seth Abramovitch - February 19, 2015
From genius auteur to Hollywood
pariah in the space of two films: That is director Michael Cimino’s legacy to
bear. Born in New York City in 1939 to a music-publisher father and
costume-designer mother, the writer and Oscar-winning director and producer of
the ground-breaking 1978 Vietnam War feature The Deer Hunter first made a name
for himself on Madison Avenue, directing visually striking TV spots for the
likes of Kodak, Pepsi and United Airlines. Cimino moved to Los Angeles in 1971,
finding early success as a screenwriter with 1973’s Magnum Force, the sequel to
Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. Impressed by the 33-year-old writer, Eastwood,
then 41, agreed to produce and appear in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, a heist
script by Cimino that also would serve as his first directing gig. Thunderbolt
was a hit, followed by Deer Hunter, with Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken
playing soldiers captured by the North Vietnamese. The film took home five
Oscars.
United Artists gave Cimino free
rein on his next film, a sprawling Western set in 19th century Wyoming titled
Heaven’s Gate. That 1980 feature would go down in infamy, ultimately
bankrupting the studio with its ballooning $44 million budget, endless production
delays (according to legend, Cimino shot more than 1 million feet of film),
critical thrashing and stillborn reception at the box office. As film projects
dried up (his last nonbomb was in 1985, with the Oliver Stone-penned Chinatown
crime drama Year of the Dragon), Cimino withdrew, with rare public appearances
suggesting he’d taken steps to alter his appearance, fuelling rumours that he
had become a woman. Cimino, now 76, has not granted a major interview since
2002. A two-hour call with THR from his home in Los Angeles touched on
everything from his profound admiration for Eastwood’s American Sniper (“Cancel
the awards and give all the gold to Clint”) to his misunderstood politics (“In
the first film, I was homophobic. Second film, I was a right-wing fascist.
Third film, I was a left-wing Marxist, and fourth film, I was a racist”) to
whispers about his personal life (unmarried, he has posited himself as a
ladies’ man).
What did you think of American Sniper?
It’s Clint’s best work as a
director. By far. For all the reasons that people like it. I don’t think other
directors, including myself, could have gotten the same result given the same
resources. Clint got an extraordinary result because he is an extraordinary
man. There’s no pretension about him. He could be Bradley Cooper, he could be
the character. Clint inspired Bradley by virtue of who he is, a principled guy.
Clint has remained my friend for over 40 years.
How does Sniper compare with The Deer Hunter?
It’s not, in my view, much like
Deer Hunter. Though it was characterized [as such], Sniper’s not a political
movie. It’s not about the rightness or wrongness of the war. It deals with the
impact of trauma on people who go to war and people who stay behind.
But both Deer Hunter and American Sniper confront the grief
of war …
Yes, especially at the end, the
way it ends with the flashback to the death of the real protagonist and the
reaction of people with flags. It reminded me of [the ending of Deer Hunter,
when De Niro, Meryl Streep and others break out and sing] “God Bless America,”
which again was not meant to be a political statement. You know, when you’re
overwhelmed with grief? You see women in Africa, Arabia, Indonesia wail. But in
America, I think what people do is reach out for a common expression. The idea
came from an experience in a restaurant in Pittsburgh, where people actually
for no reason whatsoever broke into that song. It’s a way of relieving the
grief and knitting back a family. I’d never seen that footage before in the
ending of Sniper with the multitudes of people. It overwhelmed me.
Eastwood took a big chance on you with Thunderbolt and
Lightfoot, which you directed in 1974 with him and Jeff Bridges starring.
Huge. It was [Eastwood’s
production company] Malpaso’s first picture. One of the great things about him
is that he’s never been afraid to take a chance on new people. I remember we
saw The Wild Bunch together in New York at a theater. It was myself, my
producer, Joann Carelli, and Clint. We watched it and then walked down to P.J.
Clarke’s and had a hamburger. No big deal. Jeff Bridges, the same way. I was
unbelievably fortunate to have both of them in my first film. And never have I
had such a good time making a movie. I would go to Clint every day and say,
“Hey, boss, you happy with the dailies?” He said, “Michael, you just keep
shooting what you’re shooting.” He said, “I’ve done so many films with great
backgrounds, and it looks like it could have been shot in Burbank, but you have
an eye for scope.” When I look back, given all of my experiences, it was by far
the best. And I’m still collecting checks on that movie, if you can believe it.
It’s still shown all over the world.
What was it like accepting the Oscar for Deer Hunter?
I feel very, very upset that when
it came time for me to get an Academy Award that I didn’t especially thank
Clint Eastwood. I never really had time to digest it. I was in the middle of
preparing Heaven’s Gate, going back and forth to Montana. I was on the floor
measuring somebody’s outfit at Western Costume Co., and the chauffeur had to
come in and remind me, “Michael, you’ve got to go home and change.” I said,
“For what?” I forgot that it was the awards that night. Clint should have been
the first person I thanked, because without him, I would not have had the
chance to make Deer Hunter. I took an ad out in the trades and tried to explain
why I neglected to thank certain people and to make up for the shortfall of my
dumb-ass acceptance speech. You know, you go out in front of thousands of
people. And they are all in the business and all people who voted for you. It’s
hard not to be moved.
How did you feel about the reaction to Deer Hunter?
It was shocking. I remember the
very first screening. My assistant at that time was the daughter of the great
English actor Robert Shaw, Penny Shaw. We were sitting in the back row in
Westwood, and people were just driving up in a line of cars. Someone would run
out and buy 12 tickets. Someone would run out and buy 20 tickets. This kept
going and going. The screening began. Penny said, “Michael, you’ve got to come
quick to the lobby.” The ladies room was filled with women who were weeping and
wailing and breaking down. There were ex-vets who literally crawled up the
aisle out of their seats. One letter I received in particular, I think it was
from a black sergeant. He was a combat vet, and he said, “I don’t know, man,
that was no movie. When those choppers came up the river, the hair on the back
of my neck stood up, stood on end, I crawled out of the theater.”
But American Sniper is doing so
well that I’m sure in certain parts of the country, in certain population
mixes, there are similar emotional reactions. There’s got to be some extreme
emotional reaction for the movie to be doing that well. It hasn’t happened
since Deer Hunter. I mean, all the movies that have been made about war, from
Platoon to the thing the girl made about the box …
The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
The Hurt Locker, right. (Laughs.) There’s been none of that.
So Platoon and The Hurt Locker fall short of that?
No, it’s just that they were made
with a different sensibility. I mean, I love Oliver [Stone, Platoon director],
we co-wrote Year of the Dragon together, and I think Oliver’s one of the most
talented screenwriters in America, he and Jimmy Toback. It’s just that Clint
has brought a special feeling to this, and those other films don’t do that
because they are about one war. They’re about Vietnam or they’re about Iraq.
Sniper could have been about any war in any country. And I believe that’s true
of Deer Hunter. It’s about war, period.
But with Deer Hunter, you did the first film about the
Vietnam War when people still hadn’t processed it. That had to turn out to be
an anti-war film, no?
Every first-rate film about war
is an anti-war movie. You think of All Quiet on the Western Front directed by
Lewis Milestone. There’s nothing good that comes out of war. It’s simply hell
on earth, and people survive and people don’t. Individuals emerge who become
special, but it’s brutal. All one has to do is look at old footage of the
firebombing of Dresden during World War II and think of the people beneath
those bombs. It’s horrific. I think American Sniper is anti-war. It
demonstrates the agony of the decision-making that goes on. When do I pull the
trigger? Do I pull it on a 10-year-old kid picking up a bazooka or not? Do I
shoot this woman or not? It’s agony.
Coming Home was up against Deer Hunter. Did you have any
run-ins with Jane Fonda?
It was rather interesting because
Coming Home was produced by Jane Fonda, who at that time had made films with Ho
Chi Minh and was virulently anti-American. At the Academy Awards, she wouldn’t
look at me because I had already been labelled a right-wing fascist. We were in
the same elevator together. I wanted to say congratulations, but she turned
away.
From what I know about the original script, it was honest,
but I think because of her political stance at the time, she managed to turn it
into American guilt. She’s the only one who had the power — she was the
producer. The end of the movie is the American officer, Bruce Dern, who out of
unspeakable guilt walks into the Pacific Ocean to drown himself. That’s not
what the original script was. That character is so filled with rage that he
strides the hillsides of Laurel Canyon onto the 101, as I recall, and he’s got
a machine gun with him. He walks to the center of the freeway with oncoming
traffic in both directions, and he’s just howling, just firing in a circle.
Cars are blowing up all over the place. That was the real ending. You don’t
have movie making to prove a point about your political conviction in American
Sniper.
Have you spoken to her after that night?
Never had a chance to ever be in her presence since that
night.
She apologised recently for that photograph of her with the
tank.
Well, I don’t know how far that goes — an awful lot of guys
died.
Your definitive cut for Heaven’s Gate made it to the screen
and is available now. Are you happy with it?
I’m blown away. I’ve happily
watched it several times now. And it just had overwhelming responses. It was at
Venice [Film Festival] with a half-hour standing ovation, and New York Film
Festival, same thing. At the Lumiere festival in France, the biggest film
theater I know of in the world, 6,000 people filled it from top to bottom, gave
a standing ovation. And no, I never needed vindication. I knew what I had done.
Is it you true that you changed the locks on the doors so
that nobody could get in while you edited it?
No, I never put chained locks on any doors. That’s a silly
story. I don’t personally like this idea of the attention that directors
receive. Directors should be faceless.
But you didn’t need to parlay your “brand” into getting more
films made like Quentin Tarantino.
Well, he’s a nut. He’s a great
guy, funny as hell, I love him, but he’s totally crazy. Quentin knows every
goddamned movie that’s ever been made because he worked in a video store. He
can quote you lines from the most obscure movie that’s ever been made from
1920. And I have no idea what he’s talking about.
So what’s your life like these days?
It’s always a daily struggle to
write. I’ve published a couple of short novels in France that I didn’t want to
publish in English because I loved the characters too much to subject them to
American critics who were not exactly favourable toward my work.
Are you still in a relationship with Joann Carelli?
Professional, yes. She has been involved with me in film production
since the first movie.
There’s no one else?
No. You mean other girls? Oh
yeah, of course, but I’m not gonna go into all that. I don’t want to get
serious. Writing by nature is a fairly solitary occupation. I mean, I’ve got a
room full of scripts. They go to the ceiling. I can’t even hardly walk into it
anymore. Most are original, and there are some adaptations like Man’s Fate.
You spoke of Man’s Fate for your last interview, 13 years
ago. Have you been avoiding the media?
In America, yes. I won’t do anything in America. There have
been so many false things written about me by people who don’t know me.
Let’s set the record on whether you are transitioning
between genders.
What?! Oh please. I don’t even
want to go there, OK? I don’t know what that bullshit is all about. It’s worse
than a rumor, it’s personal assassination. If you can’t stop somebody from
working and making movies that you hate, what’s the next best thing? Destroy
them personally.
But the culture has come around in the past couple of years
where it’s not considered an insult.
What’s not an insult? No, look,
it’s absurd. I don’t want to really go into it. It’s stupid how these things
get going. But it seems to me that I am a fount of fodder. Because people don’t
see me around a lot, I’m the source of all sorts of rumor. Look at the state of
the media in America.
What do you see when you look at it?
Do you think the
Patriots deflated their balls?
Yes, probably. Am I naive? What do you think?
There was an awful lot made about
it, wasn’t there? (Sighs.) Aaron Hernandez, who played for the Patriots in the
last Super Bowl, is up for murder. And after that, two more murders. It seems
to me that’s more of an issue than a pound or two in a ball. And besides which,
if a ball is deflated when you kick it, it’s not going to go as far. And if you
throw it, it’s not going to go as far.
So you think it’s a media conspiracy?
No, I don’t know what it is. I feel like I’m talking to
Hillary Clinton talking about Benghazi! All you get is bullshit. I think Clint
should be president.
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