117. Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, and the Price of a Vision

In his new book, Charles Elton tackles the impossible; a biography of late director Michael Cimino, an elusive, mysterious, obfuscating, and contrary Hollywood figure in real life...and, if possible, a man even more complicated and gossiped about online, in the press and in the power lunch spots of Hollywood than any other Oscar-winning director of his or any time.

From Long Island roots to Mad Men-era success in advertising to the 9 Academy Award Nominations for 'The Deer Hunter' to the debacle of 'Heaven's Gate' and to Cimino's final and often-misunderstood final decades of personal transformation, Charles Elton's book reads like an unfurling mystery, following clues and attempting to pin down elusive or outright combative Cimino friends and loyalists in pursuit of several important accomplishments that I think the book deserves credit for.

The first is a resetting of the narrative that Cimino's 'Heaven's Gate" was responsible for bankrupting a major Hollywood studio in United Artists.  Elton's book reveals how, excess notwithstanding, Cimino himself was less guilty than the studio executives who were unable to reign in the rising costs and delays that they themselves set in motion.

The second is a sensitive handling of Cimino's dramatic altering of his physical self in his final decades.  Was he, as was rumored, transitioning to live as a woman?  Was he someone who simply enjoyed wearing women's clothes from time to time but otherwise lived a heterosexual lifestyle? Is it telling that as Cimino altered his appearance so drastically as to be unrecognizeable from his 20's and 30's and 40's he also became more voluble and open and "himself" when he did speak to the press, however infrequently that was. Here, too, Elton parses the record with sensitivity and curiosity not of a prurient nature; how did this man who directed a masterpiece in "The Deer Hunter" never do it again and what fueled his drive and need for total, dominating control...even as he had a 50-year partnership with his producer, protector, and friend Joann Carelli which blurred the lines between their two lives to a degree never before so closely reported as in this new book.