RE: UCLA getting wrong version of Heaven's Gate

This is a daily -- if not hourly -- occurrence with studios and not a
selective slight against Cimino or Heaven's Gate. The studio people who
handle prints consider them just another number. When they get a request
for Heaven's Gate, they send Heaven's Gate.. or anything that may be
Heaven's Gate. For example, the company I work for once bought a film
called 'Surrogate' (1988) starring Shannon Tweed (CanCon requirement). What
we received was 'Sexual Surrogate' starring Marilyn Chambers. Thankfully
the technician assigned to do the formatting correctily deduced that we
didn't have a license to broadcast porn, and noted the mix-up. And recently
Toronto's Cinemateque had to cancel their screening of Preston Sturges'
'Unfaithfully Yours' (1948) because 20th Century Fox instead sent them
'Unfaithfully Yours' (1984) starring Dudley Moore.

RE: Perception of Heaven's Gate

Vilmos Zsigmond makes an interesting comment about HG in 'Masters of
Light':  "... Everyone was trying to judge that picture in relation to
present-day films. And on that basis they find fault with the film. But I'm
pretty sure that as years go by, someone will dig up the picture and say,
"What a genius this Cimino was! He realized he didn't need a strong story
to make a motion picture." Right now maybe you'll laugh at that. But I
think the time will come when a plot is not going to be that important for
a picture... the visual quality [will be important]...Movies should be a
visual experience. Unfortunately when sound came in, movies became
photographed theatre, where the play was the thing. We are still at that
stage."

RE: Rumors about Cimino's transvestitism

Huh? That's a new one to me. What's his next film going to be? 'Michael or
Michelle'?

RE: Robin Wood on Cimino (for Dag)

Wood's assessment of Cimino is definitely worth pursuing -- arguably the
only critic with anything useful to say (good or bad) on the subject. I was
especially impressed with his essay on 'Year of the Dragon' (one of the
many Cimino films that have been dismissed in thw wake of Heaven's Gate).

dw

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