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Steven Bach

Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film that Sank United Artists Paperback – August 16, 1999

by Steven Bach (Author)

4.3 91 ratings

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Heaven's Gate is probably the most discussed, least seen film in modern movie history. Its notoriety is so great that its title has become a generic term for disaster, for ego run rampant, for epic mismanagement, for wanton extravagance. It was also the film that brought down one of Hollywood’s major studios—United Artists, the company founded in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin. Steven Bach was senior vice president and head of worldwide production for United Artists at the time of the filming of Heaven's Gate, and apart from the director and producer, the only person to witness the film’s evolution from beginning to end. Combining wit, extraordinary anecdotes, and historical perspective, he has produced a landmark book on Hollywood and its people, and in so doing, tells a story of human absurdity that would have made Chaplin proud.

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Newmarket Press
Publication date

August 16, 1999
Dimensions

6 x 0.86 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1557043744
ISBN-13

978-1557043740
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Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

The best account of American moviemaking in the age of conglomerate control of the studios.

Review

"The best account of American moviemaking in the age of conglomerate control of the studios." -- Pauline Kael, "The New Yorker"

"A landmark book on movies...must reading!" --"Kirkus Reviews"

"A compulsively readable account of adventures in the film trade. An intimate view of what goes on in the corridors of Hollywood power...distinguished by its awesome objectivity." --David Brown, The Zanuck Brown Co.

"Buffs will love this one...inside and fascinating looks at Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Sellers, writer William Goldman, Dino De Laurentiis, Truman Capote, Martin Scorsese, et al." --"Newsday"

"A riveting, witty and essentially heartbreaking chronicle of a catastrophe..." --Peter Bogdanovich, director of "The Last Picture Show"

"One of the few indispensable books about Hollywood." --Jack Kroll, "Newsweek"

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Newmarket Press; Updated ed. edition (August 16, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1557043744
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1557043740
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.26 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.86 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #712,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #56 in Movie Industry
- #688 in Movie Direction & Production
- #1,365 in Movie History & Criticism

Customer Reviews:
4.3 91 ratings

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Edward Roberts

Self-Perpetuating Fear

Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2004

Verified Purchase

Steven Bach is correct in using William Goldman's quote about Hollywood in his introduction ("No one knows anything."). What follows with Final Cut happens because the executives took that attitude to heart, and sometimes, for good reason.
Cimino maneuvered the UA executives, including Bach, into making a movie they didn't believe in because they didn't believe in their own judgement on the script. They didn't step in when the production got out of control beecause they didn't trust their own judgement on what was happening on location in Montana. They didn't demand a proper edit of the movie because they didn't believe they could find any other talent to solve the problem. They didn't pull the movie because they didn't trust what their eyes told them: the movie was awful.
The above paragraph is harsh, and there are examples upon examples of studio heads pulling the plug on what became magnificent movies. These examples, however, are like fortune-tellers proclaiming their successes when they get something right. The fortune-teller did get that one prediction right, but no one remembers the hundreds of times that the fortune-teller was wrong because no one points it out, especially the fortune-teller. In Hollywood, the talent doesn't want the failure pointed out, and the executives don't either since their jobs are on the line.
None of the above is a criticism of this book. In fact, it gives a wonderful insight into how disasters like "Heavan's Gate" can happen. It is written well, and I came away with a much better understanding of the process by which movies get made. It also gives insight into the difference between honest artists who sometimes fail (Woody Allen, Martin Scorcese) and poseurs who bluff their way into creating disasters (Cimino).

19 people found this helpful

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R. Gorey

Worthwhile history of eighties Hollywood

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2006

Verified Purchase

So much has been written about Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" that few people recall the film itself: a bloated, aimless, wandering and unfocused epic about the Johnson County "war" of the late eighteen hundreds. The book's story of wretched excess, greed, artistic ambition run amok and misguided faith in that ambition mirrors the story of the making of Fox's "Cleopatra" in 1961. Though "Heaven's Gate" has a devoted cult following today, such admiration is common to reviled works: people have a tendency to champion projects that "nobody else got" because it makes them feel elevated from the common wisdom, or a part of an exclusive culture of appreciation. Sadly, Cimino's film doesn't warrant such revisionist thinking. The book explains in excruciating detail the process by which a small, personal project became one of the grandest flops in the history of Hollywood. Equally culpable in this fiasco are the men and women who allowed this director to squander the millions spent, even after it became apparent that the film was a disappointment by the kindest standards. Far from being a lost opportunity (the story of the Johnson County war has been done several times, in films like "Shane") "Heaven's Gate" is probably the best known example of the kind of apalling waste that drove the film industry into the sad state it has fallen to. The author accepts his share of the blame, and is astonishingly fair to Cimino, defending the director's vision, his decisions, and his intentions. But the end result (known to every film buff) hangs over the proceedings like grim death.

18 people found this helpful

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Hans Visser

A Steven King story come to life.

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2009

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Not so much that it is horror (people aren't dying or being stalked by monsters), but in how the process of making the film started out wrong, and continues to get more and more wrong at every step. As a history, you know how it'll end, but it's still almost depressing how at each step the execs make wrong decision after wrong decision, throwing good money after bad. If Bach is to be believed, he and his confederates were so desperate for a defining hit that they simply talked themselves into a disaster, didn't have the guts or experience or self-preservation instinct to cut their losses and then the piper was paid.

Cimino comes across as someone who simply needed to be told no on occasion and forced to work within limits, and the early rejection of his Fountainhead idea shows that that was probably possible. But once the train started rolling, nothing save a miraculous Citizen Kane level result would have saved the day, and Heaven's Gate was no miracle. You could tell by the way they caved in to his demand to cast Huppert that the only real option had become ditching the project altogether, but that's not how ego works. Some say it's a masterpiece (though with the sound issues, absurd length and lack of narrative dynamism that's pretty hard to support), but it didn't need to be a masterpiece; it needed to be a hit. It wasn't and it destroyed Cimino's career and UA along with it. We are left to wonder whether a fictional account of a war that never happened was worth it.

4 people found this helpful

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Doy Virginia

Gripping story of a major film disaster. Just wish it had pictures in the book.

Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2015

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Great book on the inside story of one of the great movie disasters of all time. I was 25 when the Heaven's Gate debacle occurred, and was one of those who was fortunate enough to have seen the movie during it's brief national theater run. I recently watched it again on Blu-Ray. And despite attempts of some to "re-habilitate" this film, it still remains a boring and ponderous mess.

The only quibble I have with Bach's book is that there are no pictures. Having pictures of the people involved with this film, and of the film itself, would have added tremendously to my enjoyment of this book.

In 2005, TLC network made a 90 minute documentary on the subject matter in this book, entitled "Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate". There are extensive interviews with Bach, David Field, and numerous others involved with the making of the film (but not Cimino). Unfortunately, this great documentary film isn't available on DVD, but you can catch it on YouTube. I advise watching the documentary first and then reading the book.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Bookworm72

Great book

Reviewed in Germany on December 28, 2022

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A great book for those who love the movies and how they were made back when they still made them.

Ricktu

Good book but terrible kindle conversion

Reviewed in Australia on January 20, 2023

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The book itself is well written and extremely interesting. Whoever converted it to kindle format though should be fired immediately. There are three to four conversion errors on almost every page. "I"s showing as "1"s. Words very obviously missread. You are frequently having to stop to work out what a word was supposed to be to make the sentence make sense. This book was obviously passed through some OCR software then published without ever checking if it came out allright.

77Sophie!

It’s hard to read.

Reviewed in Canada on May 20, 2021

Verified Purchase

Don’t buy the paperback, the cheesy publisher shot it down from the hardcover and the type looks like an old cheap comic book.

Andreas Konstas

Opinio about Final Cut the book

Reviewed in Germany on June 27, 2018

Verified Purchase

Fantastic book, that describes the intricate workings on a movie set in great detail, and in a suspenseful way.

Anil Kumar Karnal

Knowledgeable

Reviewed in India on July 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

A beautiful story of failed entrepreneurship

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