10 Ridiculous Ways You Won't Believe Films Accomplished Shots

2. Michael Cimino Spent 24 Hours And $200,000 On Kris Kristofferson Cracking A Whip For Heaven's Gate (1980)

This one isn't so much a mind-blowing shot - in fact, the image of Kris Kristofferson cracking a whip in Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate is plain and unremarkable. It has no impact on the plot, and is nothing but a stylistic flourish that you could, essentially, take or leave. But it's the lengths to which Cimino went to get the shot that's extraordinary.

On production of Heaven's Gate, a film which has come to represent ultimate excess in Hollywood moviemaking, the notoriously perfectionist director reportedly filmed a minimum of 32 takes for each shot. It's been said that Cimino was trying to top Francis Ford Coppola's own one-million-feet-of-footage style of excess on Apocalypse Now (p.s. mission accomplished: Cimino got to 1.3 million feet of film, totalling some 220 hours), so would rack up the number of takes on-set.

Of course, it becomes a bit of a problem when said film is costing approximately $200,000 per day and the director is spending whole days on single shots, like that of lead actor Kristofferson drunkenly cracking a bullwhip in a hotel room. The film went over-budget, flopped at the box office, bankrupted a studio, ruined Cimino's career and practically killed the western. But hey, at least now the critics like it, right?