DIRECTOR · BORN 1939 · DIED 2016
Michael Cimino
- Born
- 3 February 1939, New York City, New York, USA
- Died
- 2 July 2016
- Known for
- To Each His Own Cinema (2007), Clint Eastwood: The Last Legend (2022), Michael Cimino, God Bless America (2022), Clint Eastwood: The Man from Malpaso (1994)
43 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
All facts (43)
- #001
Had Heaven's Gate (1980) been a hit instead of a fiasco, Michael Cimino planned to follow it with another epic whose screenplay he had already written: "Conquering Horse." It was a generations-spanning saga tracing the history of the Sioux Indians in America. He planned for the entire film to be told in authentic Sioux dialogue with English subtitles. The picture has never been made to this day.
- #002
In December 1981, Michael Cimino took on the direction of the Footloose (1984) musical. Producer Daniel Melnick warned him that if the film exceeded its $7.5 million budget, Cimino himself would have to cover the costs. He agreed, but the following month, just as he was about to begin shooting, he asked Melnick to let him rewrite the screenplay for an additional $250,000 and to postpone the start date. Melnick fired him, and Herbert Ross directed Footloose (1984) in his place.
- #003
In 1979, Michael Cimino was considered to direct The King of Comedy (1982), which would have reunited him with Robert De Niro. Because Cimino was occupied with Heaven's Gate (1980), Martin Scorsese directed the film.
- #004
In 2000, Michael Cimino told Vanity Fair that his dramatically altered appearance in later years was the result of jaw alignment surgery. During the operation, all of his teeth had to be realigned, which changed the shape of his face.
- #005
After giving up directing, Michael Cimino found success in France as a novelist.
- #006
Producer Dino De Laurentiis offered Michael Cimino the chance to direct "Hand Carved Coffins," based on Truman Capote's book, but Cimino turned the offer down. The material has never been produced as a film to this day.
- #007
In the late 1970s, Michael Cimino accepted an offer to direct Oliver Stone's screenplay for Midnight Express (1978). A few years later he met Stone again and optioned the screenplay for Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Cimino was eager to make the film, going so far as to offer to work for free, and he even attracted Al Pacino for the role of Ron Kovic. The producers refused. The film was eventually directed by Stone in 1989, and the two would later collaborate on Year of the Dragon (1985).
- #008
During the making of The Deer Hunter (1978), Michael Cimino gave his colleagues (such as cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and associate producer Joann Carelli) the vague impression that much of the plot was biographical, somehow related to the director's own experience and based on the experiences of men he had known during his service in Vietnam. Just as the film was about to open, he gave an interview to The New York Times in which he claimed that during the 1968 Tet Offensive he had been "attached to a Green Beret medical unit." When the Times reporter, unable to verify this, questioned the studio about it, executives panicked and fabricated "evidence" to support the story. Universal president Thom Mount commented at the time: "I know this guy. He was no more a medic in the Green Berets than I'm a rutabaga." The Times's veteran Vietnam correspondent Tom Buckley confirmed that Cimino had served as an Army doctor but that the director had never been attached to the Green Berets. His active service (only six months in 1962) had been as a reservist who was never sent to Vietnam. It was reported that the journalist said he planned to sue Buckley, but Cimino never did.
- #009
As of February 2004, Michael Cimino was living in Paris, France, where two of his successful novels were published.
- #010
During the production of Year of the Dragon (1985) in Thailand, Michael Cimino was given the title of Honorary Colonel of the Royal Thai Air Force.
- #011
Over the course of his life, Michael Cimino recorded two audio commentaries: one for The Deer Hunter (1978) and one for Year of the Dragon (1985).
- #012
Michael Cimino's surname is pronounced "Chee-Mee-Noh." It is the name of the Italian city his family came from.
- #013
Michael Cimino received a B.F.A. in painting from Yale University in 1961 and an M.F.A. in painting from Yale University in 1963.
- #014
In 1984, after failing to reach an agreement with director Herbert Ross, Paramount Pictures offered Michael Cimino the job of directing Footloose (1984). According to screenwriter Dean Pitchford, Cimino remained attached for four months and made increasingly extravagant demands regarding set construction and the overall production. In the process, he reimagined the film as a musical comedy inspired by "The Grapes of Wrath." Paramount realized it potentially had another Heaven's Gate (1980) on its hands. Cimino was fired, and Ross was brought in to direct the film.
- #015
Michael Cimino was attached to an adaptation of Andre Malraux's novel "Man's Fate," to be shot in Shanghai with Johnny Depp, Daniel Day-Lewis, John Malkovich, Uma Thurman and Alain Delon. Years earlier, Fred Zinnemann had done pre-production work and gone through a major rehearsal with his cast just before principal photography began, when MGM pulled the plug.
- #016
The story behind the notorious commercial failure of Heaven's Gate (1980) was first told by former United Artists executive Steven Bach in his book "Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven's Gate," published in 1985. Then, based on Bach's book and with new interviews, the documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate (2004) was made. Cimino rejected the book as "pure fiction" and did not take part in the documentary.
- #017
In 1987, with financing from Nelson Entertainment, Michael Cimino tried to make an epic about the 1920s Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, but budget problems forced the film to be abandoned. Irish director Neil Jordan later directed Michael Collins (1996), based on his own screenplay.
- #018
Michael Cimino claimed that after his academic work he began making documentary films and that he nearly completed his doctorate at Yale. Some of these details are repeated in reviews of his films or in his official biographies. In his book "Final Cut," Steven Bach refuted these claims: "[Cimino] had done no work toward a doctorate and was known in New York not as a maker of documentaries but of sophisticated television commercials."
- #019
Since arriving in Hollywood, one of Michael Cimino's goals was to make a musical. One of his dream projects was a musical inspired by "Porgy and Bess". It would not have been a straight adaptation, but a love story about a black gospel singer and a white Juilliard pianist struggling to stage an opera production. Cimino later held talks with producers to direct Evita (1996), but they ultimately decided to hire musical specialist Alan Parker.
- #020
Michael Cimino directed four actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Jeff Bridges, Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep. Walken won for his performance in The Deer Hunter (1978).
- #021
Michael Cimino directed a film selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Deer Hunter (1978).
- #022
Among Michael Cimino's stalled dream projects were: an adaptation of "The Fountainhead"; a biography of Fyodor Dostoyevsky; an adaptation of the novel "The Yellow Jersey" (a cycling-marathon-themed novel once said to have attracted Dustin Hoffman's interest); an adaptation of André Malraux's novel "Man's Fate"; a film about the Tour de France; and an adaptation of "Crime and Punishment".
- #023
Michael Cimino's nephew is the novelist and screenwriter T. Rafael Cimino.
- #024
Michael Cimino turned down the offer to direct The Bounty (1984).
- #025
Michael Cimino worked for a year and a half on a screenplay called "Perfect Strangers", a political love story. "It bears some resemblance to Casablanca (1942)," Cimino said, adding that it "covered the romantic relationship of three people". Someone called it a romantic Z (1969). "I came very close to doing it. In fact, we had already done two weeks of pre-production shooting, but the project fell apart because of various political intrigues at the studio. This was just before David Picker left. He was the producer. There were internal difficulties, that's all. Still, I had spent a year and a half of my life on something. My father died while I was writing the script."
- #026
In 1981 Michael Cimino wrote a screenplay titled "Proud Dreamer," about the life of the gangster Frank Costello (III). CBS turned the screenplay down because he was asking too much money to make the film; the film was never made. There are rumors that Cimino sold the screenplay elsewhere and that it eventually became Mobsters (1991), but this has not been proven.
- #027
Michael Cimino was set to work on The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), which would have reunited him with Heaven's Gate (1980) actor Mickey Rourke. After Rourke and Eric Roberts signed on to star, Cimino wanted to develop the screenplay with some rewrites and restructuring. However, the rewrite would have pushed him past the mandatory start date for shooting, so he and MGM parted ways. Stuart Rosenberg was hired as a result. The film received favorable reviews but did not do well at the box office.
- #028
In 2001 Michael Cimino published his first novel, "Big Jane". Later that same year, the French Minister of Culture awarded him the honor of 'Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres', and he received the Prix Littéraire Deauville 2001, previously given to Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. Cimino said, "Oh, I'm the happiest, I think, I've ever been!" In 2003 he also wrote a book with Francesca Pollock titled "Conversations en Miroir".
- #029
While both were working on a Frank Costello (III) biography for 20. Century Fox, Michael Cimino wrote a biography of Janis Joplin titled "Pearl". "It's almost a musical," Cimino said, "I was working on it with Bo Goldman and we were doing a series of rewrites… All these projects were in play at once," he recalled, "I postponed 'The Fountainhead' until I had finished the first draft of 'Pearl', then started on "Frank Costello" after meetings with Jimmy."
- #030
Michael Cimino also wanted to write and direct an adaptation of Frederick Manfred's Western novel "Conquering Horse", an epic set in pre-white America and shot in the Sioux language. He intended it to follow the expected success of Heaven's Gate (1980), but it was never realized after the film's failure.
- #031
An article in "The Hollywood Reporter" about Leonard Termo touched on how he and Mickey Rourke became friends and how Termo appeared in most of Rourke's films. The article said: "The pair were also to appear in a Cimino biopic at Embassy Pictures about 'Legs' Diamond; Rourke was to play the legendary 1930s gangster and Termo his bodyguard."
- #032
Michael Cimino worked with short story writer Raymond Carver on two films. The first was "Purple Lake", a contemporary Western about young criminals returning to society after serving time in prison. The other was a biography of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Carver, backed by Carlo Ponti, took over the task from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The final screenplay, heavily researched and focused on Dostoyevsky's near-execution, was 220 pages long. The pieces were eventually published by Capra Press.
- #033
After "Perfect Strangers" fell through, Michael Cimino worked for 2-1/2 years with James Toback on "The Life and Dreams of Frank Costello", a biographical film about the life of Mafia boss Frank Costello (III) for 20. Century-Fox. "We got a good screenplay together," Cimino said, "but again, the studio, 20. 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 what to put in the film was quite difficult."
- #034
Michael Cimino was in talks to direct the cycling drama "The Yellow Jersey", written by Carl Foreman and starring Dustin Hoffman. The project was ultimately abandoned because shooting during the actual Tour de France proved logistically difficult.
- #035
In 1997 Michael Cimino was attached to direct "The Dreaming Place". The film, in the early stages of development, was to be a vigilante story similar to Paramount's Eye for an Eye (1996). Rodney Patrick Vaccaro wrote the screenplay under Cimino's supervision, and Jonathon Komack Martin was to be executive producer. The planned budget was not disclosed.
- #036
The Johnson County War became Heaven's Gate (1980) with a budget of 7.5 million dollars when shooting began in April 1979, but by the time shooting ended it had risen to 40 million dollars.
- #037
It took Michael Cimino 14 hours a day for 3 months to watch all the footage and assemble the 3-and-a-half-hour rough cut of Heaven's Gate (1980). The first screening ran 219 minutes, later reduced to 165 minutes, then to 153 minutes in 70 mm and 149 minutes in 35 mm.
- #038
Biography: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 214-219. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1988.
- #039
Michael Cimino's father was a music publisher and his mother was a clothing designer.
- #040
Cimino's dream project was an adaptation of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." Taking its cue from far more than the novel, the work was largely modeled on architect Jørn Utzon's troubled Sydney Opera House as well as the construction of the Empire State Plaza in Albany, NY. He wrote the screenplay between Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Deer Hunter (1978) and hoped Clint Eastwood would play Howard Roark. His other dream project was an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment."
- #041
Shortly after the Michael Collins biography was cancelled, Cimino quickly began pre-production work on "Santa Ana Wind," a contemporary romantic drama set in Los Angeles. Filming was to begin in early December 1987. The screenplay was written by Floyd Mutrux, and the film was to be financed by Nelson Entertainment, which had also backed Collins. Cimino's representative said the film was "about the San Fernando Valley and the friendship between two guys" and added that it was "more intimate" than Cimino's previous big-budget films such as Heaven's Gate (1980) and the not-yet-released The Sicilian (1987). However, Nelson Holdings International Ltd. cancelled the project after announcing that its banks, including Security Pacific National Bank, had reduced the company's borrowing power when Nelson failed to meet certain financial requirements in its loan agreements. A Nelson spokesman said the cancellation came "in the normal course of business" but declined to give details. The film's budget was about $15 million and production was to begin shortly. The film, whose distribution was planned by Columbia, featured no major stars.
- #042
Michael Cimino directed a film nominated for Best Picture: The Deer Hunter (1978), which also won the award in that category.
- #043
Despite sharing the same name, Michael Cimino has no connection to the actor Michael Cimino of the series Until Dawn (2025).
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