Michael Cimino

I don't know what's worse, The Deer Hunter, or the wikipedia plot summary I just read.

Believing Steven to be mentally broken, Mike considers abandoning him to his fate, to which Nick replies with shock and anger. Mike is in the moment, though unaware others are not; moral responsibility calls.

Meanwhile, the psychologically dead Nick is recuperating in a military hospital in Saigon.

The innocent American abroad is seduced by the sophisticatedly corrupt European to assuming the burden of a dead-end colonial war.

HEAVEN'S GATE gets some good press these days. or it did do last time i looked. i wish i could be bothered to wtach the dvd.

1980 (and 1981) was like the golden age of supposed disastrously bad movies that are actually pretty good, so I can't see why Heaven's Gate wouldn't be among them.

Whatever happened to that new cut of Heaven's Gate that was supposed to debut at a recent Cannes fest? It had been penciled in to play at a Western retro at our MFA back in January, but got scrapped at the 11th hour.

Heaven's Gate is not pretty good, it's just not terrible.

I don't even think The Deer Hunter is that good.

Year of the Dragon is good stupid fun though.

Desperate Hours is one of the worst movies I've ever walked out of -- didn't know it was Cimino.

Dan S. is right about Year of the Dragon.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, on the name alone. Plus has Clint Eastwood.

Plus has weird-ass Paul Williams music, and is more genuinely WTF (in a good way) than any other Cimino film.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is awesome.

Deerhunter is a disastrous mess. Still some good performances.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I was just clicking around and ended up looking up Sunchaser, which I have zero recollection of. This is amazing: its box-office gross was $23,107. The average movie ticket was $4.42 in 1996--a little over 5,000 people saw Michael Cimino's last film in theatres.

Mickey Rourke, fellow collaborator and friend of Cimino, believes the director “snapped” sometime during the making of The Sunchaser. “Michael is the sort of person that if you take away his money he short-circuits,” Rourke says. “He is a man of honor.” Rourke did not say how or why Cimino “snapped.”
Joe D’Augustine, the film's editor, recalls his first meeting with Cimino: “It was kind of eerie, freaky. I was led into this dark editing room with black velvet curtains and there was this guy hunched over. They bring me into, like, his chamber, as if he was the Pope. Everyone was speaking in hushed tones. He had something covering his face, a handkerchief. He kept his face covered. And nobody was allowed to take his picture [...] Welcome to Ciminoville.”

Maybe a separate poll for all the films he HASN'T made:

--

The Fountainhead
Cimino's dream project has been an adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Taking its cue from more than the novel, it was largely modeled on architect Jørn Utzon's troubled building of the Sydney Opera House, as well as the construction of the Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York. He wrote script in between Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and The Deer Hunter, and hoped to have Clint Eastwood play Howard Roark.[46][47]

Crime and Punishment
Cimino's other dream project has been an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.[7]

Perfect Strangers
Cimino spent a year and a half working on a script entitled Perfect Strangers, a political love story. "[...] It bears some resemblance to Casablanca (1942)," said Cimino, "involving the romantic relationship of three people. Someone called it a romantic Z (1969). I was very close to doing it. In fact, we'd already shot two weeks of pre-production stuff, but because of various political machinations at the studio, the project fell through. This was just before David Picker left. He was the producer. There were internal difficulties, that's all. Nevertheless, I'd spent a year and a half of my life on something. It had been a difficult time. My father passed away while I was writing the screenplay. I kept working..."[48]

Untitled Porgy & Bess Project
One of Cimino's goals since first arriving in Hollywood was to make a film musical. One of his dream projects was a musical inspired by Porgy and Bess. Not an adaptation, it would instead had been a romance about a black gospel singer and a white Julliard pianist, as they struggle to mount a production of the opera.[47]

The Life And Dreams of Frank Costello
After Perfect Strangers fell through, Cimino spent two and a half years working with James Toback on The Life and Dreams of Frank Costello, a biopic on the life of mafia boss Costello, for 20th Century Fox. "We got a good screenplay together," said Cimino, "but again, the studio, 20th Century Fox in this case, was going through management changes and the script was put aside." Cimino added, "Costello took a long time because Costello himself had a long, interesting life. The selection of things to film was quite hard.[48]

Pearl
Cimino wrote a biography on Janis Joplin called Pearl while working on the Costello biopic, both for 20th Century Fox.[7][48] "It's almost a musical," replied Cimino, "I was working with Bo Goldman on that one and we were doing a series of rewrites."[48] "All these projects were in the air at once," Cimino recalled, "I postponed The Fountainhead until we had a first draft on Pearl, then after meetings with Jimmy began Frank Costello."[48]

Conquering Horse
Cimino also wanted to write and direct an adaptation of Frederick Manfred's Western novel Conquering Horse, an epic, set in pre-white America, to have been shot in the Sioux language.[49] Conquering Horse was intended to follow the anticipated success of Heaven's Gate but was never realized after the failure of that film.[50]

Footloose
In 1984, after being unable to finalize a deal with director Herbert Ross, Paramount Pictures offered the job of directing Footloose to Cimino. According to screenwriter Dean Pitchford, Cimino was at the helm of Footloose for four months, making more and more extravagant demands in terms of set construction and overall production. In the process Cimino reimagined the film as a musical-comedy inspired by The Grapes of Wrath. Paramount realized that it potentially had another Heaven's Gate on its hands. Cimino was fired and Ross was brought on to direct the picture.[51][52][52][47]
[
The Pope of Greenwich Village
Cimino was scheduled to work on Pope, which would have reunited him with actor Mickey Rourke from Heaven's Gate. After Rourke and Eric Roberts signed on as the leads, Cimino wanted to finesse the screenplay with some rewriting and restructuring. However, the rewriting would have taken Cimino beyond the mandated start date for shooting, so Cimino and MGM parted ways. Stuart Rosenberg was hired as a result.[53] The film, while receiving admiring reviews, bombed at the box office.

Born on the Fourth of July
In the late 1970s, Cimino passed on an offer to direct Oliver Stone's adaptation of Midnight Express. A few years later, he met Stone again, who was optioning his screenplay for Born on the Fourth of July. Cimino was eager to make the film, going so far as to offer to work for free, even attracting Al Pacino for the role of Ron Kovic. The producers declined. The film was inevitably directed by Stone himself in 1989, and the two would later collaborate on Year of the Dragon.[47]

Hand-Carved Coffins
Cimino attempted an adaptation of Truman Capote's Hand-Carved Coffins.[54]

The Yellow Jersey
Cimino was in talks to direct The Yellow Jersey, a bicycle racing drama with a script by Carl Foreman and starring Dustin Hoffman.[6] The project was ultimately abandoned as it proved logistically difficult to shoot during the actual Tour de France.[47]

Michael Collins
In 1987, Cimino attempted to make an epic saga of the 1920s Irish rebel Michael Collins, but the film had to be abandoned due to budget, weather and script problems. The film was to have been funded by Nelson Entertainment.[54]

Collaborations with Raymond Carver
Cimino worked on two films with the famed short story writer Raymond Carver. The first was Purple Lake, a contemporary Western about "juvenile delinquents who return to society after serving time in prison."[47][55] The other was a biography of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Backed by Carlo Ponti, Carver took over from an uncredited Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Heavily researched, and taking Dostoyevsky's near execution as its focal point, the final screenplay was 220-pages long. Fragments were eventually published by Capra Press. [56][57]

Santa Ana Wind
Shortly after the Michael Collins biopic was cancelled, Cimino quickly started pre-production work on Santa Ana Wind, a contemporary romantic drama is set in L.A. The start date for shooting was to have been early December 1987. The screenplay was written by Floyd Mutrux and the film was to be bankrolled by Nelson Entertainment, which also backed Collins. Cimino's reperesentative added that the film was "about the San Fernando Valley and the friendship between two guys" and "more intimate" than Cimino's previous big-budget work like Heaven's Gate and the yet-to-be-released The Sicilian.[54] However, Nelson Holdings International Ltd. cancelled the project after disclosing that its banks, including Security Pacific National Bank, had reduced the company's borrowing power after Nelson failed to meet certain financial requirements in its loan agreements. A spokesman for Nelson said the cancellation occurred "in the normal course of business," but declined to elaborate. The film had been budgeted at about $15 million and was to have begun production shortly. The film, intended for distribution by Columbia, didn't feature any major stars.[58]

The Dreaming Place
Cimino was attached to direct The Dreaming Place in the 1997.[59] The film, which was in the early stages of development, was to be a male vigilante story, along the lines of Paramount's Eye for an Eye. Rodney Vaccaro wrote the screenplay under the supervision of Cimino, and Jonathon Komack Martin was to exec produce. The planned budget was not revealed.[60]

Man's Fate
Cimino has written a three-hour-long adaptation of André Malraux’s 1933 novel about the early days of the Chinese Revolution.[7][43] The story will focus on several Europeans living in Shanghai during the tragic turmoil that characterized the onset of China's Communist regime.[61] “The screenplay, I think, is the best one I’ve ever done,” adding that he has “half the money; [we’re] trying to raise the other half.”[9] The roughly $25 million project is to be filmed wholly on location in Shanghai and will benefit from the support of China's government, which has said it will provide some $2 million worth of local labor costs.[61] Cimino has been scouting locations in China since 2001.[7][18][43] "There was never a better time to try to do Man's Fate", Cimino said, "because Man's Fate is what it's all about right now. It's about the nature of love, of friendship, the nature of honor and dignity. How fragile and important all of those things are in a time of crisis." Martha De Laurentiis, who with her husband Dino helped produce Year of the Dragon and Desperate Hours with Cimino, read his script for Man's Fate and passed on it. "If you edit it down, it could be a very tight, beautiful, sensational movie," she said, "but violent, and ultimately a subject matter that I don't think America is that interested in."[7]

I was just looking at his IMDB page. Another one: In 1979, he was slated to direct The King of Comedy (1983), which would have reteamed him with his The Deer Hunter (1978) star Robert De Niro. Because of missed deadlines and Cimino's preoccupation with Heaven's Gate (1980), he was fired and replaced by Martin Scorsese.

I've never seen Footloose, and can't see as I ever will. Michael Cimino's Footloose, now that I would see.

Michael Cimino's Out of Africa

I'd watch most of these unmade movies tbh

Hmmm:

“Being infamous is not fun. It becomes a weird occupation in and of itself.” Michael Cimino spoke those words at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday as he introduced a digitally remastered version of Heaven’s Gate. One of the most notorious box office flops of all time, the film is credited with contributing to the demise of United Artists and halting the auteur movement of 70s Hollywood. Cimino was coming off Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for The Deer Hunter when Heaven’s Gate came out in 1980 and cratered his career. On the Lido Thursday to accept a life achievement award along with debuting the updated pic, he said he at first didn’t want to revisit it, “I’ve had enough rejection for 33 years.” Cimino oversaw the digital remastering and said technology had advanced enough that seeing it now was like seeing a new movie. It’s also a longer movie. The new version runs 216 minutes.

Which is all well and good but I have a question -- this is him? This is REALLY him?

http://www-deadline-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/michael__120831111901-200x278.jpg

Dude how much work did you have DONE?

73 years old!

HIllary Clinton meets Tom Verlaine.

Yoko Cimino

Does he even need to shave?

said technology had advanced enough that seeing it now was like seeing a new movie.

mayb he also got replacement eyeballs

vanity fair did a profile of cimmy 10 years ago:

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/classic/features/ciminos-final-cut-200203

Hey, good find. Page 2 has most of the details.

saw deer hunter for the first time in 70 mm -- beautifully shot, well acting, shame abt the main plot

*acted

The cinematography is often stunning.

tried to watch desperate hours, ugh

He's now on Twitter! https://twitter.com/Cimino1939

https://twitter.com/Cimino1939/status/277480791271936000 Films I Almost Made no.269 / THE KING OF COMEDY / 1981 / Andy Kaufman / Meryl Streep / Orson Welles / I shot videotape of Andy for weeks.

Now that I'd like to have seen.

Michael Cimino @Cimino1939
But after HG, I couldn't get arrested / My FOOTLOOSE with Chris Walken would have been something. / Great dancer, nobody knew.

this too

Holy heck! I knew about the Footloose connection but not Walken.

a recent De Niro interview mentioned the 'other' King of Comedy gestation, I think Buck Henry was working on the script.

My FOOTLOOSE with Chris Walken would have been something. / Great dancer, nobody knew.

Slated to be made when? Because I think people knew about Walken after Pennies from Heaven.

he is so crazy looking :(

thought you meant walken for a second

"crazy looking" is generally a plus with directors isn't it (xp)

Michael Cimino @Cimino1939
But after HG, I couldn't get arrested / My FOOTLOOSE with Chris Walken would have been something. / Great dancer, nobody knew.

with Kenny Loggins' "Footloose" recorded in a bluegrass style produced by Ricky Skaggs.

Scott Foundas says tweeting MC is a hoax

https://twitter.com/foundasonfilm/status/278281473478492160

Gave Heaven's Gate another try. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a screening here within the next year, now that the Criterion disc is out. I've got the older MGM disc, with a running time three minutes longer. It doesn't look especially great.

I feel about the same way I did whenever I last watched it--didn't deserve all the abuse, but not a misunderstood masterpiece. It sort of reminds me of Gangs of New York, and I think it's definitely better than that; at least two great sequences (the whole opening, the roller-skating fiddler), and nothing egregiously bad. Well, maybe the scene where Kristofferson starts calling out the names on the list. Mostly, it's just ponderous and sometimes obscure. I don't think I've ever been sure what Kristofferson is, or what his relationship is to the people with the list. John Hurt seems confused as to what's going on too.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/301810_308397105945465_1099438209_n.jpg

And RIP

https://variety.com/2016/film/people-news/michael-cimino-dead-dies-deer-hunter-heavens-gate-1201808052/

Wow. Such a bizarre life.

it sounds like his hollywood career left him bruised, and he was still a bit paranoid until the end (or close to it anyway)

he's a frustrating figure. he had grand ambitions, and there are stray moments in his films where he seems close to achieving them. but there are tons of other moments where he just seems impossibly ham-fisted, not a natural filmmaker at all. i can't say i really like any of his films, but i like particular stretches of them very much.

although there are some genuinely, if modestly, funny moments in thunderbolt and lightfoot that make me think he could have had a career as a decent director of modest genre films rather than the epochal career he clearly wanted (or the times caused him to think he deserved/needed).

(i sort of think the same thing of william friedkin.)

I don't know...I'd be inclined to think the opposite based on The Deer Hunter. The epic stuff in that is often stunning, and, for me, the work of someone who clearly knew what to do with a camera; it's when people start talking that things can get clumsy (even though the performers usually salvage the script). I haven't seen Thunderbolt; Heaven's Gate is beautiful and ponderous and confusing and dull.

The epic stuff in the Deer Hunter wedding is a Godfather rip with steelworkers.

Cimino circled many projects that never came to fruition, including a life of Dostoevsky developed with Raymond Carver; adaptations of “Crime and Punishment,” Truman Capote’s “Handcarved Coffins,” Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” and Andre Malraux’s “Man’s Fate”

nu-poll options

The epic stuff in the Deer Hunter wedding is a Godfather rip with steelworkers.

― helpless before THRILLARY (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 3 July 2016 04:22 (4 hours ago) Permalink

the godfather probably, Il Gattopardo certainly, no?

and to clemenza: yeah it's true that deer hunter has some interminable dialogue scenes (as I recall; it's been 15+ years since I saw it). but there's some low-key action-comedy in thunderbolt that is probably the most appealing stuff (to me, obviously) in any cimino movie.

it doesn't hurt that he's working with more charismatic leads than he would have later. de niro seems clamped down in deer hunter to no great effect, esp. since he often doesn't have anyone particularly animated to play off of.

high point of his filmography IMO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjIDrWn0DQ4

Robin Wood's essays defending him are often more satisfying.

Like I remarked in the RIP thread, I'd checked out the restored Criterion edition of Heaven's Gate from the library on Thursday and finished it yesterday. An astounding film, often in the worst sense. I can see what he wanted to do but the parts are all wrong. Some sequences go on forever (the roller disco one), other basic examples of exposition and development are hurried, as if they embarrass him (I kept thinking, "When is the picture starting?"). It took almost two hours for me to figure out Walken and Huppert's relation to each other. And speaking of Walken and Huppert, Cimino cast exactly the wrong actors. An epic set in the 1890s requires actors less passive than Kristofferson, Hurt, and Walken. Clemenza's remark above -- "didn't deserve all the abuse, but not a misunderstood masterpiece" -- is right on.

RIP. Give me grandiose ambition and visionary self-indulgence over the tedium of 'modest' Clint Eastwood vehicles.

saw heaven's gate when it was rereleased last year or the one before and thought it was good like really long but good I imagine I'll never watch it again

Since Cimino's death it's been interesting reading about all the different versions of Heaven's Gate - again, I enjoy the idea of obsessive auteurs who can't resist tinkering with their work (so yes, another point of comparison with Friedkin).

Just because I had it on the shelf, I watched The Deer Hunter for the first time in probably 25-30 years. I'd seen it many times before that (augmented by working at a theatre soon after its release). I don't think the overwhelming effect it would have had on a 17-year-old is that hard to understand. I'm glad it came along when it did.

I was watching maybe the first DVD I ever owned, a gift before I had anything to play it on. Didn't look good at all. So Vilmos Zsigmond's work--the deer hunting sequences, the blue nighttime glisten of the town--was all but lost. Some of the dialogue, especially the gropingly meaningful small-talk between De Niro and Walken, is painful--"I like the trees." Lapses of logic and probability everywhere. (How many months had Walken been over there playing Russian Roulette, seemingly many times a night? The idea that he'd still be alive is quite a stretch.) I know it's not a film where it's very useful to start picking at stuff like that...The flagrant historical inaccuracy of the game itself, which many critics jumped on immediately, never bothered me much; it's a device.

I'd say the best reason to see it today is far and away Streep. She's doesn't have a false line or gesture; she doesn't even seem like Meryl Streep. (Her character in Defending Your Life got back some of what you see here.) There are lots of funny bits here and there, and I've always loved the way the Frankie Valli scene in the bar builds. I still think the ending is audacious--and ambiguous enough to allow for different interpretations--although one might just as easily think it's hopelessly bombastic.

A somewhat nostalgic 7.0. If nothing else, I miss how such a film could cause such an uproar.

My reaction, based on a re-viewing more than a decade ago, mirrors yours, and you're right about Streep. Over the years when I've mentioned the movie and Streep, people go, "Oh yeah RIGHT she was in it?!" because it's such an un-Streepian role and performance.

She was also making the film while her husband was dying. Her bemusement with De Niro at the wedding was perfection.

she was not married to him, and the bf was John Cazale.

(I believe they shot all the scenes w/ Cazale first, which wouldn't be hard in this case)

sorry they both hadda go before their 80s, but Kiarostami was 100x the filmmaker this dude was.

yes but ward otm

Unedited transcript of his last American interview, nutty as you think as the gamut is run from American Sniper to Tarantino to DeflateGate to Thrillary: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-cimino-full-uncensored-hollywood-778288

LOL @ "the thing the girl made about the box."

she was not married to him, and the bf was John Cazale.

Meryl Streep gives a pretty unmannered performance in the film version of Carrie Fisher's Postcards from the Edge.

I knew it at one time, just like Jim Hickman's batting average in 1970, the lyrics to "Betcha By Golly, Wow," and all the TTC stops between Kipling and Yonge. It all melts away eventually.

So true. Sometimes I post people on Oh! I Always Get Those Two Mixed Up! between which I know perfectly well the difference only to find later that the thread has become a prophecy and now I do have difficulty telling the difference.

although there are some genuinely, if modestly, funny moments in thunderbolt and lightfoot that make me think he could have had a career as a decent director of modest genre films rather than the epochal career he clearly wanted (or the times caused him to think he deserved/needed).
― wizzz! (amateurist)

Found this for $10 online--Kino Lorber reissued it. I thought it was pretty good, and there were moments (like the opening) where you might have thought at the time that it was a cut above generic action, and that the director's name might be worth remembering. George Kennedy is as hammy as he is in Airport, but Eastwood and Bridges are okay, and Geoffrey Lewis has a couple of good scenes. I didn't find it that funny, except for the shot of the ice cream trucks heading out en masse--reminded me of Bill Forsyth's Comfort and Joy. Surprising ending, clearly modeled on a famous late-'60s film (if I see which one, I'll give away what happens). Seems to be the only film Claudia Lennear ever did, and only one scene...wow!

"if I say which one"

Robin Wood wrote a long, compelling essay giving a homoerotic gloss to the Bridges-Eastwood relationship.

Definitely...He used to write about The Deer Hunter that way too. It was all over Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, including the film evoked in the ending.

I have Claudia Lennear's album on vinyl! Half of it's funky stuff w/LA session dudes, other half w/Allen Tousainnt (& the Meters?)...funky as well.

Back to T & L: Catherine Bach & June Fairchild as hookers!

Wasn't she the inspiration for "Brown Sugar"? She was Jagger's girlfriend for a while.

I love that Wood essay...if you're talking about the same one that discusses Masculin Feminin, My Bodyguard and Victor/Victoria. I really should see T&L one of these days.

XP That's the story...either her or Marsha Hunt. Lennear was also an ex-Ikette.

I used to see Wood all the time at the Cinematheque (usually just there to see a film, although I saw him introduce Marnie and Rally Round the Flag, Boys). Regret not getting him to sign my copy of The American Nightmare.

Keith Uhlich surveys the oeuvre:

http://www.keithuhlich.com/2016/08/michael-cimino.html

Liked the first half of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot best, but it certainly delivers on the barely-coded-queer macho road movie front, and in a better world Bridges' shaggy, loose-limbed performance would be more iconic and cult-adored than That Stoner Movie.

http://images.static-bluray.com/reviews/10166_1.jpg

That Stoner Movie is justly feted, if not necessarily for the right reasons.

I differ.

That Robin Wood essay analyzing T&L is here:

http://dnwilliams.com/cp349/readings/wood_buddies_to_lovers.pdf

and Wood mentions in a footnote a presumably homophobic essay on the film by Peter Biskind titled "Tightass and Cocksucker."

I love this interview where Cimino claims that De Niro asked to use a live round in the scene where they're in the shed and he shoves the gun in John Cazale's face and pulls the trigger. Every time they cut back to him his cigarette has either disintegrated between his fingers or he's lit a new one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZwE30yr-Xw

New bio reveals Cimino was secretly/not secretly trans.

In Elton’s telling, in the early nineties, Cimino began to present as a woman with the aid of a wig seller and cosmetologist named Valerie Driscoll. Working with Driscoll, Cimino went by the name of Nikki; their sessions, Driscoll told Elton, took place in the course of a few years, through 1996, when she closed her wig shop. During their visits, Cimino told her that he was “a caregiver to an elderly couple in Beverly Hills and lived in their guesthouse.” Driscoll refers to Cimino as Nikki, by the pronouns “she” and “her.” In public, Cimino continued to appear as Michael through the end of his life; in private, Cimino’s gender identity seemed fluid. “I think she was questioning herself, what she was doing,” Driscoll said. “ ‘So now what? Should I just go back to being Michael?’ ”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/a-new-biography-of-michael-cimino-is-as-fascinating-and-melancholy-as-the-filmmaker-himself

Will read that for sure. Weirdly, I don't remember his death at all, even though I posted about it above.

Excellent review. I would really be tempted to read this biog if I really loved a film by Cimino.

Didn't know Cimino co-wrote Silent Running

w/ Steven Bocho!

BochCo

Good catch!

When I read this yesterday I thought "hang on, I'm sure I knew this already". Have just checked back at obits and, well, kind of:

Cimino became reclusive in recent years, with his own agent describing him as “the Howard Hughes of Hollywood”. Drastic alterations to his appearance fuelled erroneous rumours that he was undergoing gender reassignment surgery.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jul/04/michael-cimino-obituary

https://observer.com/2002/02/last-typhoon-cimino-is-back/

When Gore Vidal called him to ask about the rumors, he said: “I said, ‘Oh, really? My doctors are going to be very surprised when I go to take a physical for the next movie. It’s going to be a big shock."

Reading the biography linked to above. Most interesting thing so far is that in the '60s, he was very much a Mad Men-type guy in New York. Not much of his work survives, but they describe three commercials at length, one of which, for Kodak, sounds more than a little similar to Don Draper's "The Wheel." A couple of others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKwvsUznhDE

Having just finished the biography, took another look at Year of the Dragon. Cimino, Oliver Stone, Mickey Rourke--can one film withstand that much hysteria? It's made skillfully enough that it's watchable, but god, the script is awful. Hard to say how much is Stone and how much Cimino. If Cimino's name weren't attached to it, it's basically just another '80s erotic thriller with atmospheric Chinatown stuff ladled on. Did I mention the script? Couldn't make it today, and this is one time I'll say "Thank god."

(I know Ariane, who plays the newswoman, gives an infamously awful performance, but I've seen worse. Rourke's worst moments here are no more or no less laughable. She's basically Ali McGraw in Love Story...with a much-mocked apartment she'd need to be a CEO to afford.)