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Was “Heaven’s Gate” the Worst Movie Ever Filmed in a National Park?

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Heaven's Gate set in Glacier National Park. Jim Burnett photo.

The 1980 movie Heaven’s Gate, a mega-flop filmed in Glacier National Park, was so wretched that it destroyed the director’s reputation, helped extinct United Artists, and sent Hollywood westerns to the doghouse.

As the saying goes, it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time. Back in 1978, director Michael Cimino talked United Artists studio into producing a major western film based on the Johnson County War, a late frontier era (1892) range war in which struggling immigrant ranchers fought an uphill battle against powerful cattle barons and their hired killers in Wyoming’s Powder River Country. It was David vs. Goliath with rustling, lynching, a sheriff’s posse, the Sixth U.S. Cavalry Regiment, and scenic grandeur thrown in for good measure.

Cimino would direct this big-budget epic, and boy, did he ever look like a sure thing. Everything was breaking right for him. His 1978 movie The Deer Hunter, now a classic, would walk away with the 1979 Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. He was a man with the Midas Touch.

With a big story, a big director, and a big budget, it wasn’t hard to sign up actors who could carry the weight. The leading roles went to Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, and Christopher Walken. The large supporting cast included such notables as Jeff Bridges, Joseph Cotten, Sam Waterston, John Hurt, Mickey Rourke, and Willem Dafoe.

Shooting got underway in April 1979 at Glacier National Park, a location that Cimino chose for scenic values, and despite terrible logistical problems (such as the lack of nearby housing for the cast and film crew). Things did not go well from the very outset. Early misgivings gave way to growing despair as the production assumed the tell-tale appearance of a slow-motion train wreck.

“Slow” is the key concept. The production fell seriously behind schedule almost immediately and never achieved a comfortable stride. Cimino’s overbearing style angered and frustrated the cast members, yielding an atmosphere in which finely-tuned teamwork became impossible. The filming was much more than routinely difficult, and production costs skyrocketed to around $200,000 a day. This led United Artists bigwigs to rue the fact that they had given Cimino what amounted to a blank check.

When the last of the film was finally in the can, a production that was originally budgeted for $11.6 million cost nearly $30 million to shoot and racked up another $10 million or so in other expenses. The final production cost amounted to over $120 million in today’s money.

Cimino seemed to lose his sense of “enough” while making this film. He shot an astonishing 220 hours of film to create a movie he first whittled to a hideously long 5 ½ hours and then to a studio-ordered 3 hours and 39 minutes.

United Artists released Heaven’s Gate in November 1980, but the studio might as well not have bothered. Getting theater audiences to sit through a very long film is one thing, but getting them to fork over their hard-earned money to sit through a very long and very bad film is quite another. Well before the long-overdue film premiered, word had gotten around that it was a stinker. Film critics savaged it, and the only buzz the movie ever got was bad. The box office in the U.S. was less than $3.5 million, making Heaven’s Gate one of the worst flops in moviemaking history.

The aftermath was not pretty. Michael Cimino’s reputation was ruined; Heaven’s Gate even earned the poor guy a Golden Raspberry Award (Razzie) for Worst Director (1982). United Artists, though not financially ruined, ended up being sold off and obliterated for reasons that included being responsible for the Heaven’s Gate fiasco. The western movie genre, which Hollywood had been resurrecting in the 1970s, was dealt a blow from which it has not yet fully recovered. Studios, appalled by the freewheeling spending of Cimino, Francis Ford Coppola, and some other directors, tightened budget controls and looked much closer to the bottom line. To prevent the sort of flagrant animal abuse that occurred during the filming of Heaven’s Gate, the movie industry struck a deal with the American Human Association to have the AHA monitor animal use in all filmed media.

Heaven’s Gate has been variously called a complete failure, a cinematic waste, an unqualified disaster, and the worst movie ever made. On the strength of this we think it’s fair to say that it was the worst movie ever filmed in a national park.

Comments

Can you give us a list of other movies shot in national parks?


I've seen the movie, and it is far from terrible. I would suspect we could look around any number of b-movies filmed in or around NPs for the title "worst". I can believe it is the most disastrous movie ever made in a National Park. The movie is actually pretty enjoyable in the home, where you can pause it and address nature functions....and you do need to skip over the first 20-30 minute scene at a University. I did a little research on the net when it showed up on Sundance in the last year, and at least some of the actors, like Kristofferson, had some pride in the film. The bad-mouthing the film gets is very over-blown, especially in the modern era where effects are everything and story is unnecessary.


Clara: There's a list of movies filmed in national parks at this site. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated in the past ten years.


Duncan: Every movie has its defenders. I wonder about an endorsement that includes a recommendation to "skip over the first 20-30 minute scene." That would be an awfully big chunk of a movie of typical length.


I second Duncan's opinion. It would have made a good mini-series: reasonably-sized chunks (more suited to our attention spans and bladder capacities) on consecutive nights. Better than similar mini-series I remember.


Guys, guys, just face the facts. Film distributors are not stupid, and they like money just as much as you and me (maybe more?). If Heaven's Gate was even a half-way decent movie, they'd have figured out a way to make money on it. It isn't, and they haven't.


Heaven's Gate may have been a financial disaster and artistically mediocre, but surely it's better than City Slickers II?

There seem to be at least five titles of early films shot at Mount Rainier not listed at the film link Bob cites above. Film buffs may be interested in the following from the historical sidebar 'A Mountain For The Movies' on page 28-29 of Mount Rainier National Park, by Jerry & Gisella Rohde (1996):

"Three o'clock on a fall afternoon [probably 1924]. A large party has gathered on the Nisqually Glacier. Three guides and eight rangers are with the group, and one of these, chief guide Heine Fuhrer, peers anxiously at the gathering clouds, He approaches the party's leader, advises him that they should go back, and is promptly ignored. A short time later, Fuhrer repeats his warning: 'We must leave here not later than 3:45.' Again there is no response."

"The minutes speed by. Suddenly an icy blast sweeps across Rainier's flanks, and the group is pelted by the
beginnings of a blizzard. Now everyone races for safety as the storm roars down upon them; three of the
women are carried the last stretch by the men."

"A scene from a thrill-a-minute movie? Almost. Only in this case it is the film makers themselves who become
part of the drama, as one of Rainier's mood swings disrupts Cecil B. DeMille's shooting of The Golden Bed.
The storm rages throughtout the night, scattering and shattering some $22,000 worth of film and equipment
that the crew left on location when they fled. Decisely walloped by the weather, DeMille admits defeat and
departs for Hollywood the next morning."

"The daunted director was not the only one to have movie troubles on the mountain. In 1937, an April
blizzard snowed in Sonja Henie and Tyrone Power as they tried to finish scenes in the Scandinavian skater's
second movie Thin Ice. Still, the setback had its rewards for the leading couple; reputed to be 'real-life' sweethearts, they no doubt found extra time to snuggle at the Paradise Inn."

"Other, less-illustrious performers also plied their trade beneath the peak, creating such now-forgotten
matinee favorites as Raw Country and Wings of the Storm, whose titles indicate that the mountain may have been up to more meteorological mischief."

"One star had no difficulty adapting to Mount Rainier's weather. Balto, the sled dog made famous by his
1920s run to Nome witha supply of diptheria antitoxin, came south to the park for a filming of his life-saving exploit. Production Manager W. H. Ely announced that he was actually hoping for a storm so that he could accurately reproduce Balto's dash through Alaska's wintry wilderness."

I couldn't find any listed year or title for this last re-creation with a quick search of 'Balto'.

Also, Otto Lang started several ski schools in the Northwest and was an early film producer. He starred in the 1936 documentary Ski Flight, partly shot at Paradise and scouted filming locations there for Thin Ice. Bits of his Rainier footage were spliced into many a mountain or skiing sequence in films of subsequent decades.


Thank you - that link produces an impressive list, even if it does need to be updated!


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