10 Movies That Changed Because Of A Director’s Bad Behaviour
1. Heaven’s Gate
The Deer Hunter is one of the greatest Vietnam movies in cinema history, a moving and extraordinarily powerful piece of war film making which portrays the psychological cost of the infamous war in intimate terms.
It’s understandable that its director, Michael Cimino, got something of an ego from creating the film, but boy did his next film provide an outlet for it.
Cimino’s still-unimpeachable status as a studio-baiting madman came from the insanely ambitious shoot of 1980’s Heaven’s Gate. A film better known for its tortured production than its actual content, this was a case where the perfectionist film maker drove his cast, crew, and particularly producers insane with his ever-increasing outlandish demands.
Was it really that bad?
Well, six days into shooting, the production was delayed… by five solid days.
The film’s estimated budget jumped from seven to eleven million before filming even began, the director insisted on over fifty takes of a one second shot, and the crew were expected to tear down and rebuild sets because they didn’t “look quite right” on the day of filming.
By the time the film wrapped, Cimino had the studio paying to print 220 hours of footage… Only for his director’s cut to run a "lean" 325 minutes.