Heaven’s Gate 1981 Part One

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Christopher Walken, Heave's Gate, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, Kris Kristofferson, Michael Cimino, United Artists

Western Approaches

The Cream Will Rise to the Surface … Eventually!

You can’t separate the story of the film from the film. Thirty five years on more people have opinions than have actually seen it. I’ve had conversations (with friends) from 1981 to 2016 and I’ve rarely heard anyone (other than myself) praise the film. There are reasons why vested interests in the American film industry wanted the film to fail, but why the hostility in England? In 1981? In 2016 for crying out loud?

I went to see it in 1981 and thoroughly enjoyed it only to be told, at work the following day, that it was one of the worst films ever made by three people who hadn’t seen it. They were quite aggressive in their antipathy. Something strange was in the air. These were friends. We usually chatted amicably about rugby league and country music. They were adamant in their stance that I wasn’t going to be able to claim that I had seen a good film at the ABC Huddersfield (Since demolished and now a Sainsbury’s supermarket). I didn’t want to tell them I’d seen a good film. I wanted to tell them that I had seen a great film. They were having none of it. Never let ignorance of a subject stand in the way of a strongly held opinion.Why the strength of feeling?

It’s complicated. This is something of a simplification (I’m trying to keep it down to 1500 words).

Background factors:

• The sixties had seen several of the big Hollywood studios taken over or merged into huge corporations or conglomerates. United Artists (the company which produced Heaven’s Gate) had been bought up by TransAmerica. By 1980 the relationship between the studio (famous for giving artists a great degree of creative freedom) and the parent company had become fraught. A box office bomb would suit the aims of TransAmerica without harming its commercial interests.
• The difficulties between TransAmerica and United Artists had just seen the departure of all of the senior executives of the studio. They were so unhappy with the interference of the financial giant that they had left en masse to form Orion films.
• This meant that United Artists was being run by relatively inexperienced executives who were very keen to establish their own reputations as well as building on the studio’s reputation for bold, independent film making that allowed full rein to the artistic vision of the film maker.
• Michael Cimino had just collected 5 Oscars (including best film and best director) with The Deerhunter.
• This made Cimino as many enemies as friends. A big section of the Hollywood establishment felt more than aggrieved that a young blood had stolen the awards from Jane Fonda’s Coming Home. They were looking for an opportunity to knock the new prince off his throne.
• The 70s had been the era of the Hollywood auteur. The directors called the tune. There were a bunch of superb filmmakers around at the time and the freedom given to them resulted in a golden age of superb films.
• Superb films are not necessarily what the corporate money men and bean counters want. Even box office success isn’t what they want, though it is a necessary factor. They wanted greater creative and editorial control of films. They were particularly unhappy that many of this golden age of film makers seemed to be politically left of centre.

I’m not saying that Heaven’s Gate was set up to fail but its failure allowed changes to be made that favoured the money men over visionary film makers.You can largely divide films into those that please artists and those that please the accountants. Heaven’s Gate is the pivot where the see-saw swings. Prior to this movie the big films had been Annie Hall and Manhattan (both regarded as masterpieces but very much also rans at the box office) The Godfather films, The French Connection films and the new wave of Vietnam war based films (all politically charged, left leaning and very expensive to make, and potential bombs at the box office – now all regarded as brilliant films). Oddball films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Direct political history like All the President’s Men, socially aware films like Taxi Driver. In the second half of the seventies we see the future emerging in two names: George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. These two didn’t only know how to put bums on seats, they also made films that allowed a whole new industry to take off: merchandising. Nobody I knew had an Annie Hall doll (though a few tried too copy her dress sense), there were no Deerhunter games or Lego sets. Jaws, Close Encounters and Star Wars changed the game.Hollywood suddenly had some more directors out of the Walt Disney mould. What they did wouldn’t impress Michelangelo but they made exciting films that attracted the teenage dollar and pound both at the cinema and at the toy shop, the clothes shop, the dance floor, the burger bar.You can still see good films at the cinema but these days there are far more constraints on the film maker. The occasional masterpiece gets through and sometimes the best films get nominated for the industry prizes. All too often though I am reminded of the saying that a donkey is a racehorse designed by a committee. Film making has suffered since 1980 though strangely television, which is potentially subject to the same interferences, has improved beyond measure in terms of drama. Perhaps film’s loss was television’s gain.  

In 1980 and 1981 the independent minded film maker was, to a large extent, consigned to history and  the decisions over go-aheads, casting, script editing and direction went upstairs. It was a quiet revolution and the victims were those who wanted to make good films and those who wanted to watch them. The criminals (if that is what they were) were the corporate fat cats who can never get quite enough cream. The blame was dumped on Michael Cimino who had discovered that his supposed bosses at United Artists would pretty much foot any bill he sent them and  took advantage of this to make one of the most spectacular westerns ever made. The overspend was hyped in newspapers across America and Britain. There was a concerted media blitz to sensationalise and then ridicule the movie. It cost $35 million. By today’s standards this is small change. Even in 1981 it wan’t a huge amount. TransAmerica wrote it off the following week without so much as a blip on its spreadsheet. In cinematic and financial terms it was all small potatoes. By blowing up the story to sensational heights it allowed TransAmerica to get rid of its unwanted studio and place the blame elsewhere. It also allowed every other studio to crow quietly and take back artistic control.All of that makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is how they managed to get away with it. To do so critics had to pan the film, the public had to stay away in large numbers, and those who went had to come away saying it was every bit as bad as they were told it was. The problem lies in just how good the film is. It’s a bit like taking the 1960s Real Madrid side and getting everyone to agree that they were actually rubbish.

It is impossible to watch this film without being impressed with the storytelling, the acting and above all the stunning attention taken to create two and a half hours of visually stunning cinematography. You can make every single frame into a poster worth of a frame of its own. The music is wonderful, the film has something to say to a 1980 audience and even more to say in 2016. Those who don’t like naturalistic sound and actors speaking the way the characters would speak will have some gripes. There are possible quibbles about whether some character relationships are fully drawn. But these are quibbles. What you cannot say on watching it is; this is a bad film. And yet that is exactly what happened.Conspiracy is perhaps the wrong word but there were as many people wanting this film to fail as to succeed and once Vincent Canby of the New York Times had  pointed his thumb downwards the crowd started roaring for Cimino and his movie to be thrown to the lions.

”Heaven’s Gate,” which opens today at the Cinema One, fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of ”The Deer Hunter,” and the Devil has just come around to collect.”

The victims were many. United Artists was sold to MGM and essentially closed down as a producing studio, studio executives Steven Bach and David Field fell on their swords, Isabelle Huppert returned to France and rarely again worked on American films. Kris Kristofferson fell from top 3 box office draw to bit part player and Michael Cimino was largely finished as a serious film maker.

Some survived. It didn’t damage the careers of Jeff Bridges, Christopher Walken or John Hurt.

Surprisingly the bad reviews stopped when the film reached mainland Europe. The French saw it immediately as a superb film. When it was re-released in souvenir DVD form (with a fabulous documentary telling the story of the film included) the praise was universal. For once in my life I was ahead of the crowd; by about 35 years. I knew in 1981 that I’d seen a very special film. In 2016 I no longer feel lonely.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) Part One

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Bob Dylan, James Coburn, katy jurado, Kris Kristofferson, pat garrett and billy the kid, slim pickens

To Be Hunted by the Man Who Was Your Friend

This is a remarkable film that has long been among my all-time favourites: sometimes my number one.  Not necessarily the very best film ever made but one that ticks off a lot of the criteria that make up a truly great film and which satisfy a whole lot more. It’s a bio-pic of the last three months of the life of William Bonney. It’s a death rattle flashback by the man who killed him. It’s a study of how lawful and legal often got tangled around the wrong side of ethical and decent.  It shows a view of New Mexico in the 1880s that doesn’t hide the faults. It was made in an America of 1973; a country that had just been shaken to the roots by the Watergate scandal, the resignation of a president, the tail-end (and the messy tail end at that) of an unpopular and unsuccessful war. And all of this comes through. A country where trust in leadership, decency and honesty had taken quite a beating. It’s a film starring one A list rock star with another hors catégorie rock star slotted in so comfortably that you see only the character and not the legend playing him. If you prefer Delta Blues and country music you’ll catch a few more familiar faces in the cantinas and haciendas. And a film of carefully assimilated paradoxes that are so perfect that, for once, the English language fails to find the concept of paradox puzzling; instead it becomes  a thing of beauty. It’s a film rich in binary opposition: opposites which oppose yet complete each other at the same time. A thing that is both itself and not itself. Two sides of the same coin. Looking up and looking down simultaneously. Age and youth, love and death, friendship and betrayal, freedom and confinement, natural against governed, clean against dirty, friend against friend and above all, life against death.

The story is simple. Those responsible for the enforcement of law and order around Santa Fe have hired ex-outlaw Pat Garrett to bring Billy the Kid to justice. It’s too well known to worry about spoilers. Garrett tells “the kid” what he’s going to do and asks him to leave the country. Billy initially stays, is captured by Garrett (and his posse), faces hanging but escapes. Garrett continues his pursuit and eventually shoots Billy dead. It’s an entirely one-way thing. At no point does Billy attempt to stop him, let alone attempt to kill Garrett. At the end of the very first scene of the film one of Billy’s gang asks “Why don’t you kill him Bill?” The answer appears simple but is redolent with meaning.

“Why? (long pause) He’s my friend.”

 

There is no coincidence that key roles are played by rock stars, By 1973 rock stars had come to hold a similar role in society that outlaws  and gunslingers held a hundred years earlier. They live outside the normal rules of society, are perceived as glamorous, are able to break moral codes without attracting public opprobrium, and a very real expectation that their life will be spectacular and short. Billy is being deliberately compared to the musical heroes who had joined the recently deceased. In the few years before the movie was made Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and quite a few others had all died at the height of their fame and to the mass grief of hundreds of thousands. They encapsulated, in the minds of many, the hedonistic rush for pleasure and experience to be found in alcohol, sex and drugs and rock and roll. These cowboys are living a similar lifestyle. Whiskey is the drink of choice of all of the characters and it is always drunk neat and in large measures. They know that violent death is never far away. This is a  ‘live fast, die young and make a beautiful corpse’ style of living. The lead actor, Kris Kristofferson had always been a good looking fellow on stage or on screen. Here he is portrayed as downright beautiful. His followers look like rock stars and in some cases are: and his camp followers are all chosen from the front section of the catalogue. (Including Kristofferson’s then wife, the singer Rita Coolidge).

Bonney was 21 when he was killed and already famous enough to have read fictionalised novels of his own life and to have been on the verge of being granted a reprieve by the governor of the Territory. (One Lew Wallace played in this film by Jason Robards). Some think the pardon should have been given and would have been given if the governor hadn’t been so busy trying to get his book published…the book was Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ… an unusual juxtaposition by any standards).

Garrett and Billy had worked together on both sides of the law. The older man is described at one stage of the film as having been like a father to the Kid. The West shown in this movie is one that is rapidly changing. As in Shane, Butch Cassidy and The Wild Bunch, the gunman is seen as anachronistic; the age of the outlaw drawing to a close as fences, railroads and telegraph poles tame the country more quickly and more effectively than any pistol or rifle. Garrett has seemingly accepted the change whereas Billy refuses to believe in it. In reality Garrett has chosen the option that will keep him alive. He talks of this in scene after scene. It has involved not only betrayal of his former friends, but also acceptance of a corrupt form of law based on the wealth and power of cattle barons; notoriously John Chisum. Billy will have nothing to do with it. The real life William Bonney certainly found himself opposing the big ranchers but whether it was for altruistic motives is debatable. Opinion varies from psychopath to latter day Robin Hood. The film chooses both. A man who has a huge sense of honour and decency and yet quite capable of shooting someone in the back.

There are many reasons for finding this a good film and several for finding it a great film. The photography is stunning, the casting wonderful, the acting of an astonishingly consistent greatness and the Bob Dylan soundtrack is both ground breaking and brilliant. What makes this an outstanding film is the way the moral balance is played. It constantly changes, is never simple; almost impossible to say what is right and wrong at any point and impossible to hold an audience position of accepting the moral judgements of each scene. To achieve this requires writing and direction of the highest order and acting to match. Kristofferson and Coburn are simply outstanding. The ensemble playing, faultless.

We meet both of them in the opening moments of the film as currently edited. Two scenes, one in 1909 and one in 1882 are intercut. In the earlier scene we see Billy and friends entertaining themselves by shooting the heads off chickens in an act of casual brutality that somehow encapsulates the reality of their existence. This is a life of forced excitement caused by excessive boredom. In the other scene we see the demise of Pat Garrett as an older man being gunned down by the very men who had hired him 27 years earlier to kill the Kid. As the film is cut, the first bullet to enter the old lawman’s body seems to have been shot by a smiling Kristofferson. The ghost of the dead outlaw returning to avenge himself upon the unhappy old man.

As Garrett can be seen to have chosen life and Billy an inevitable death it is significant that the first death we are shown (of many) is that of the great betrayer. The question is asked throughout the film of what makes a life. Does living longer make a better life? Does fame or infamy? Does cramming excitement or experience or good deeds or bad deeds? Two things are mourned in the film and that is the betrayal of friendship and the loss of love. The most touching moment in the movie doesn’t involve either of the principal characters but is the death scene of Sheriff Baker, played by Slim Pickens (has there ever been a less likely looking or better Western actor?) who has walked off from a shootout, fatally wounded, to sit by a small lake where he is watched by his elderly, tearful Mexican wife (brilliantly played by Katy Jurado). The soundtrack is Knocking on Heaven’s Door. It is now one of the best known songs in the world but it is still a hauntingly beautiful accompaniment to the film. I’d never heard the song the first time I saw the film and I have rarely been so affected by a scene.

Death (often violent) is ever present in the film but this is far, far more than a feast of slow motion special effects shootings. Killings have the effect that they should have in films; they are shocking and awful. Not once do you feel any desire to cheer or blow out our cheeks in relief as someone is layed low. This is like Hamlet in terms of the rising bodycount heightening feelings of tragedy and waste.

The film failed to receive a single Oscar nomination. Like Heaven’s Gate in 1980 it was largely overlooked and like Heaven’s Gate has become to be seen as the masterpiece that some of us thought it was in the first place.

 

 

Day 135: Heading for the Borderline

Tags

Beleek, Halfords, Kris Kristofferson, Lower Lough Erne, Omagh

A Cycle on the Celtic Fringe …Part 37

Omagh was a feast of helpful people. Everybody from the woman who served me chicken and chips to the man who poured a coffee “with an extra express to keep you going” were incredibly obliging. The Halford’s boys had made it their mission to get me riding again by teatime. When I dropped the bicycle off they took it in turns to spin the broken wheel, smile, tut a couple of times and agree that “You’d not be going far on that one.”

When I eventually pay for it – new wheel, new chain, new gear parts,  a full service and an afternoon’s labour, the price came to £65. I was staggered. I was prepared to pay £200.

I said how delighted I was and expressed my heartfelt thanks. The main man said it was  an honour.

I had said I was worried about the wheel collapsing under me and being stranded. “I don’t mind pushing the thing but I don’t fancy carrying it.”

“Sure”, he agreed “You’d not want to be carrying it.”

“Would anyone stop to help if I was stranded?”

“Oh, round here they would. Further east you’d be left for certain, but here in the west you’ll find us good folks.”

I certainly did.

I had not planned to visit Omagh. I’d gone out of necessity and found myself obliged to stay for four hours. If every hour of my life had enriched me as much as each of those four, I’d be up there with Nanci Griffith and Kris Kristofferson. I’d know what I was feeling and I’d have the words to put it down. I’d have become a good man.

The town that helped me when my adventure was in trouble and the person who helped me when life was a little harder than I could manage have a great deal in common.

It’s 3.30. Just a matter of enjoying a bicycle that works properly, whose gears don’t creak and jump on the downhills, whose wheels go round and whose front is pointing towards the border with the Irish Republic. I’ve given up all hopes and plans of getting to Sligo. I’m struggling with what I thought was a chesty cold but now feel sure is a more serious chest infection. This journey is to advance my health, not ruin it. I’m going into a light headwind. I’m finding the roads quieter; even the A roads. I want to go just as far as I can on the condition that I don’t feel tired when I get there. I’m in a fine mood, on a good bicycle enjoying the end of a warm, bright afternoon.

I follow the Clanabogan Road as far as The Drumlish Road which is a good deal quieter and promises a ride through Lack. My friend Jon and I once cycled twenty miles out of our way in Normandy to take photos of each other at a place called Bastard. When we got there it was too small a settlement to have a place sign. I was working on weak puns “I’m going to Lack for nothing”, and pedalling along with good legs and no wind.

It came and went. A pretty place with the essentials; a pub, a corner shop and a place to buy calor gas. As I pass one place, another becomes the target, and so through Ederney and Kesh where I nearly take a wrong turning. There’s the whole of the west of Ireland waiting for me and I nearly miss it.

Once past Kesh the road becomes one of the best I have ever cycled. I normally avoid main roads, but if you’re on one with not too much traffic you have the pleasure of a smooth flat surface. Non cyclists may be surprised at how much difference the top of the road makes. Cyclists and non cyclists alike couldn’t help but revel in the views. Lower Lough Erne is quite the most dazzling lake I have ever seen. I was brought up near the English Lakes and love them dearly and the memories of playing The Last of the Mohicans in the woods and swimming in Coniston and Windemere when I was young. But they had nothing on this for sheer size and splendour. Rydal and Grasmere did wonders for the likes of Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Out here in the west the sight of a lake is known to get a poet beating out the rhythm just the same.

I contemplate what a wonderful view it would make first thing in the morning, but I’ve got that feeling you get when the day is showing signs of closure and you haven’t worn your legs out. I just want to keep going.

There’s a bed and breakfast on Lusty Beg Island. It seems an opportunity not to be missed but I sail on by. You actually cycle across causeways and a small string of islands though you don’t necessarily notice it. Water, sunlight and green willow is enough for me. The sensation of moving forward. I stop to look out over the lake and fall into conversation with a woman a little older than me who looked as if she’d read a bit of Yeats in her time.

“Will I need a passport?”

“No. Sure, during the troubles there was a checkpoint on the bridge at Belleek and they’d ask you what your business was. But even then they didn’t ask to see your passport.”

“Will Guest Houses and Hotels take English money?”

“Sure, we’ll take anything round here.”

“Will my card work in the bank machines over the border?”

“If you’ve some money in your account it will.”

The rest of the journey is pretty much perfect. I have the new experience of motorists waving in acknowledgement of my right to be on the road rather than waving to point out some shortcoming in my technique or dress sense.

In the shop in Belleek I buy milk and ask for a recommendation for where to stay. That was before I see a hotel by the bridge. It does me a double room with a bath for the price of a single, lets me park my bike in the gym. “Let me take your card number,” says the receptionist, “The machine isn’t working. If it isn’t working tomorrow I’ll walk you up to the bank machine. I could show you around.”

There isn’t a hint of lack of trust; simply helpful friendliness. the one downer is the arrival of a bus load of pensioners fro Surrey.

Before long I’m under a mass of bubbles reading a Susan Hill book; The Small Hand; that I’d picked up in Asda in Larne. It seemed a long way away and a long time ago. A whole country  away.