Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists

by Steven Bach

Heaven's Gate is probably the most discussed, least seen film in modern movie history. Its notoriety is so great that its title has become a generic term for disaster, for ego run rampant, for epic mismanagement, for wanton extravagance. It was also the film that brought down one of Hollywood’s major studios—United Artists, the company founded in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin. Steven Bach was senior vice president and head of worldwide production for United Artists at the time of the filming of Heaven's Gate , and apart from the director and producer, the only person to witness the film’s evolution from beginning to end. Combining wit, extraordinary anecdotes, and historical perspective, he has produced a landmark book on Hollywood and its people, and in so doing, tells a story of human absurdity that would have made Chaplin proud.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, History, Business, American, Memoir

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Steven Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios. In Final Cut: Dreams And Disaster in the Making of Heaven's Gate (1985), Bach chronicles his involvement in the troubled production of Heaven's Gate (1980), a film widely considered to have been the decisive reason for the financial bankruptcy of United Artists.

Bach is the author of The Life and Legend of Marlene Dietrich and Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart. He taught film studies at Columbia University and Bennington College.

His biography of the Nazi-associated filmmaker Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl (2007) overturns many of the claims Riefenstahl put forward in her self-defence regarding her contact with Hitler's regime, and was named by the New York Times as one of the most notable books of 2007.

Bach died of cancer in March of 2009. He is survived by his companion, Werner Röhr.

Reviews

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

This witty book was recommended to me by another fellow film buff as one of the best books on Hollywood from a studios stand point. It was written by the late United Artists senior vice-president, Steven Bach, about one of the most expensive flops in movie history. It is the story of how a thirty-five year old director named Michael Cimino approached United Artists and Steven Bach with the idea of doing a seven million dollar (medium budget) American western film, inspired by Wyoming's 1892 Johnson County War. Mr. Cimino who had just finished directing the academy award-winning “The Deer Hunter” and the studio was very pleased with him. So VP Stephen Bach gave the go-ahead based on the studio's past dealings with him.

The film called “Heaven's Gate” had a excellent ensemble cast with Jeff Bridges, Kris Kristofferson, John Hurt, Christopher Walken, Isabelle Hubbert and many other fine actors. It was based on a dispute between land barons and immigrants in Wyoming. They started shooting in April, 1979 and was scheduled for a Christmas release that year. Quickly things started going terribly wrong, starting with endless retakes, and the budget began to climb and climb. The director, Michael Cimino, had a vision that the film would be a massive epic now and he pushed it nearly four times over its planned budget.

Stephen Bach writes of a first screening (the film is now five hours long) and realizes with absolute horror that it was a terrible mess of a film. Unfortunately, on general release in April 1981, the critics hated it. Critic of the New York Times, Vincent Canby, wrote: "Heaven's Gate fails so completely 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 public hated it. Of its 1979/1980's $44 million dollar cost, only $1.5 million was recovered at the US box-office. Stephen Bach and other executives were fired and it forced the famous studio, started in 1919, United Artists to close down its doors forever.

My main complaint about the book is director Michael Cimino is the main villain and the author the unwitting victim. In retrospect, it was also the United Artists executives who were at fault for not providing strong leadership or even having the experience to rein in to a director who was clearly in over his head. However it is an entertaining read and I loved reading about how Hollywood dealt with this disaster. Four Stars.

[Drew Raley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Self-serving first-person account of a slow-motion train wreck, written by a studio exec whose claim to fame was devaluing the studio to the extent that King Kong Kirk Kerkorian could snap United Artists up at fire sale prices. That the film in question is an eccentric near-masterpiece,replete with stretchy pacing, sound cues that are mixed inadequately, and performances pitched at varying extremes, is a minor miracle. HG is imminently watchable stuff, and is neither a great nor even good film, but it is a gorgeous white elephant of ambition. Its flaws are the cracks where the circumstances of its fraught production peek through, and the viewer glimpses the processes that wrought such a four hour beast. Bach's book, by contrast is a sober account of those processes, the exigencies and economics of filmmaking, and the dreams of the moneymen as hostages to the dreams of the artists. Bach emerges as a sensible fellow in hindsight; no doubt during production he must have appeared a combination punching-bag/marshmallow, so thoroughly was he roughed up by Cimino throughout casting, production, and editing. A true survivor's story, as well as a primer in career destruction and property devaluation. Blame Cimino for making his film, but blame United Artists for failing to know its business. Cimino was punished for breaking the only two rules that matter: 1) don't spend all the money, and ; 2) don't take all the credit. Bach lost his job at the top of UA, and UA lost its cache under MGM. The book, while excellent, is an artifact of the film, which while misguided approaches brilliance too many times to dismiss and remains an oddball epic. Please read the book to savor the bitter flavor of defeat, but more importantly watch the film to see the thoughtfulness beneath the murk and the scope of one man's vision. A loopy and disjointed vision of a film whose flaws are as energizing as other films' successes. Or don't. It's four hours long fergodsake!

[adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

FINAL CUT deserves its reputation as a canonical work about the movie business. Author Steven Bach was an executive at United Artists in the 70's, when UA was arguably the best-run studio in Hollywood. TransAmerica Bank acquired UA in the late 1970's on the basis of that success, but unfortunately all it took was one bad gamble to bring the whole thing down. That would be director Michael Cimino's HEAVEN'S GATE project-which I've never seen and apparently is actually pretty good, but in any event went five times over budget, bombed at the box office, and managed to drag down everybody associated with it. Imagine a horrific train wreck that happens over two and a half years; this book gives the blow-by-blow. Bach is actually a very smart author, and he does not spare himself part of the blame for HEAVEN'S GATE's failure, although he saves the sharpest barbs for Cimino's pathological and egomaniacal behavior. Lots of great 70's-era Hollywood anecdotes and inside-baseball about the film trade make this an engaging and worthwhile read.

[Kirsti · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read lots of books about the movies . . . but this one's my favorite.

[Roz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long look at the chaotic making of Heaven's Gate and the downfall of a Hollywood studio, Stephen Bach's Final Cut is absorbing, detailed and messy. After all, the downfall of United Artists is often blamed on the singular failure of Gate, but as Bach's book shows, there was a lot more it than just that.

The book offers several points where had UA acted differently, they might still be in business. They range from everything from the unique contract they gave Gate writer and director Michael Cimino to a string of executives leaving the company to a number of risky but high-yield bets failing on them. They weren't just gambling on Gate being a success: they were hoping it'd be part of a number of successful movies. And nothing quite panned out.

But maybe it wouldn't have made a difference if these pictures did get made and were successful. UA, as Bach paints it, was a chaotic organization, headed by a CEO who didn't inspire his underlings and was marred by in-fighting between executives, who constantly complained about being undercut and conspired against. It's sometimes hard to keep track of who's who in Final Cut because so many people quit, get fired or just change jobs.

Those coming to Final Cut looking for a detailed look at the making of Gate will be a little disappointed. It's a book about how one of the major players in Hollywood fell apart and was sold. It's not a behind-the-scenes look at a movie, although it does have the occasional glance, like Cimino banning people from the set, working long hours and shooting millions of feet of film and relentlessly battling executives over his schedule and budget.

All in all, Final Cut is a fascinating look at the inner workings of a movie company: how it interacts with the bosses, with directors and producers and how, in so many words, the sausage gets made. Recommended for film fans.

[Thomas Stroemquist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written and absolutely fascinating book giving an insight of how the production of a single movie (by a company large enough to have several projects ongoing) could spiral out of control, ultimately bringing about the end of the company. Described in one sentence as above, this sounds unbelievable, but the book tells the tale. It also has merit for a movie fan as it contains a lot of information on the production of some of the most memorable movies (and a lot of really forgettable ones). For myself, the early eighties were the absolute golden age of movies and therefore this book delivers so much for me.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

A largely self-serving account in which Bach tries to remove himself from blame at a time when "Heaven's Gate" was seen as the last word in movie failures. Ironically, "Heaven's Gate" stands up today as a major, underrated film whose failure says a lot more about changing tastes in the blockbuster era than it does about Cimino's ambitions.

[Nathan Magalhaes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty interesting look at one of the great movie flops of history, but it's also fairly unfocused in a way that feels like it wastes time.

[Joshua Pesikoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Required reading for anyone who is interested in the business side of how movies are made, financed, or produced. Also, a great study in how a series of small (wrong) decisions can lead to disaster. The book was written in 1985 based on events from 1978 to 1981, so it's a bit dated. This is when $20 million to make a movie was seen as grossly excessive! As many people know, the movie, Heaven's Gate, was a disaster start to finish and, effectively, ended United Artists, a studio founded by the four movie-making giants D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks in 1919. It's amazing that a studio with back-to-back-to-back Oscar winners for Best Picture (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975, Rocky in 1976 and Annie Hall in 1977) could be destroyed by one movie four years later, but that's how fickle the industry can be, I suppose. In any case, in 1978 the Deer Hunter (produced and distributed by EMI and Universal, not United Artists) was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning six, including best picture and best director for Michael Cimino. United Artists contracted with Cimino to make his next film, Heaven's Gate, and, well, you'll have to read the book to find out what happens. Without giving anything away, it is fascinating to see all of the decisions made by UA from the inside, as the book was written by Stephen Bach, the head of worldwide production for the studio. Bach is openly critical of many UA decisions, including his own, but like the frog in boiling water, each incremental decision the studio made kind of made sense after Bach explains the internal discussions and thought process, only realizing at the end that they are in a boiling pot. Some of the best parts of the book are the ones where Bach tells stories that have nothing to do with the movie, Heaven's Gate, but occurred concurrently, like his interactions with Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Barbra Streisand.

[Tolendi Kaken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Томми Вайсо отдыхает.

[Frank Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

After seeing a reissued "director's cut" version of "Heaven's Gate," the movie so expensive to produce and so poorly received by the critics in 1980 that it destroyed Michael Cimino's reputation as a director and led to the demise of United Artists, I sought out this book by one of the United Artist producers involved in the project (and who also lost his job in the aftermath). It's a fascinating story. How could Ciminio--who had just come from making "The Deer Hunter," which netted him Academy Awards for best picture and best director--have created such a mess? "Heaven's Gate vastly exceeded its budget, was visually spectacular but had a poor sound track and story itself verged on incoherence at times. Why did United Artists let him do it? This book tells the story in great detail and Steven Bach was a fine writer. The most interesting parts, however--the Cimino story--gets lost from time to time in Bach's efforts to paint a comprehensive picture of United Artist's glorious history (it was founded by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks) as well as describing the Hollywood system of movie making in general. I found myself skipping parts. But, that being said, it's a great read and a fabulous story of hubris and Hollywood finances.

[Adrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Bach, the author of this, overestimated the fascination non-movie executives would have for business deals that movie executives make, but it's certainly extremely well written and perceptive about movies. What really makes this book interesting is the film that it's about. I saw the full 3 hour 39 minute version of 'Heaven's Gate' on MGM recently - and so picked up the book - and there's no doubt in my mind that it's a major work, one of the most beautiful movies ever made. It throws up the ancient question of 'do you need to care about the characters to enjoy a film?'. I didn't remotely care about any of them but for me the 3 and a half hours flew by because the film is so alive. This conundrum is articulated really well in the book - Bach is fully aware of the visionary nature of the work he is sanctioning, but he's also in horror at the level of indulgence required to produce such a singular vision, and he can't find the mental equilibrium required to get a handle on the situation. And so Cimino - one of the most mysterious men in Hollywood history - pursues his vision all the way. There's no doubt the result is worth seeing, and the book is good too.

[Emily Brogan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Giving up on this book. The first 115 pages have been an unbearable slog explaining the history of United artists, which feels both like filler and content that only the narrator could truly care about. Feels like history gets in the way of story. Story feels like it has finally started happening around p113 but unfortunately all the filler history of United artists which literally no one cares about, keeps popping up. Got this book based on a Reddit recommendation but it’s practically unreadable. The dryest nonfiction you can imagine.

[Matthew Mixon]

Fucking great. Been on my shelf forever, but I thought I needed to watch a four hour cut of a possibly shitty movie in order to understand it. Turns out you don't, but now that I've read about every detail of the production, I kind of want to.

Anyway, awesome shit about making, selling, and collaborating, and a really detailed look into Hollywood about 40 years ago. One of my favorite books about the business I've ever read.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most notorious review of Michael Cimino's historical epic Heaven's Gate was one of the first. Vincent Canby, the renowned New York Times film critic who had just two years prior championed Cimino's The Deer Hunter as the work of "an original, major new filmmaker," was unsparing in his criticism of Heaven's Gate, calling it "a forced, four-hour walking tour of one's own living room," "a ship that slides straight to the bottom at its christening," and, most memorably and damningly, "an unqualified disaster." It is perhaps the most notorious bomb in the history of American cinema. Steven Bach was an executive at United Artists during the tortured creation of the film, and in Final Cut, he delivers an engrossing, all-encompassing timeline of the film that would near-singlehandedly kill the New Hollywood movement, permanently damage the career of its director, and bring United Artists, one of the most revered studios in the world, to its deathbed. It's an astonishing work, one of humor and insight and great candor - Bach never once downplays the role he had in enabling Cimino, nor does he gloss over the warning signs he ignored in bringing the picture to UA in the first place. More than once he draws parallels to another infamously troubled United Artists production, Apocalypse Now, and one of the lessons of the book may be that lightning never strikes twice; UA dodged a massive bullet when Apocalypse was a resounding success, after all. Perhaps some within the company thought the studio would get lucky a second time. That this book exists at all shows where that led them.

Final Cut manages to fulfill the needs of several possible audiences. For rubberneckers, it spares none of the gory (literally, in some cases) details of the film's production. Forty-plus years after it landed in theaters, many of the most eyepopping anecdotes - the woefully overrun budget, the glacial pace of the shoot itself, Cimino's insistence on getting everything just so and losing the forest for the trees - are well-known, but they can still shock looking back on them today. In fact, one of the most surprising quotes was from Bach himself, who told Cimino in Paris that Isabelle Huppert was so uninspiring as a leading lady that audiences would wonder why Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Walken "are fucking her instead of each other." Books like The Disaster Artist owe a spiritual debt to Final Cut in this sense, and here Bach sets a high bar. For cinephiles, it's an extensive inside look at a film's life cycle, from pre-production to post-release and everywhere in between, as well as a history of United Artists (one chapter, crucial to the context of what's to come, is devoted entirely to the origins of the studio) and a running log of its last few years in business. Indeed, some of the most impactful sections of the book have nothing to do with Heaven's Gate, instead focusing on Bach's first viewings of two of its most important latter-day releases: Manhattan and Raging Bull. The sense of wonder he conveys in describing both is heartfelt and sincere, a stark and necessary contrast to the slow death march of his current assignment. And for film historians, it's a crucial testament of a very specific moment in American filmmaking, one where auteurs like Cimino, Coppola, Allen and Scorsese held serve over the studios. In today's film landscape, what Bach describes throughout might as well be ancient history. In that sense, the book takes on an almost elegiac quality.

What was most moving to me was how Bach documented his own evolving relationship with the film as a work of art. From the moment he read the screenplay (much of which is reproduced at length about halfway through), he was a believer in Cimino's vision. Through the early days of the production, despite the mounting crisis the shoot was becoming, the actual product was something he never lost faith in; more than once he described the footage that returned from Kalispell to UA as "like David Lean decided to make a western" to any curious parties (including, amusingly enough, an anonymous director all but stated to be Lean himself). But by the time the film finally premiered, all Bach could see when watching (and watching, and watching again) was "the waste, the arrogance, the indulgence...the perfection money can buy, the caring that it can't." Fittingly, though, the last chapter focuses on the positive reevaluation Heaven's Gate would receive in the years following its disastrous initial reception, one which has only grown even more fervent since the publication of the revised edition of Final Cut in 1999. It has become, somewhat ironically, a repudiation of the film's tagline: "what one loves about life are the things that fade." Bach closes the book arguing exactly this, saying "what one loves about life are the things that last, because those who care see to it that they do." It's still something of a debate whether Heaven's Gate has become one of these "things"; there's no doubt in my mind that Final Cut is just that.

[Oliver Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

So to start off I think this book was pretty good. I think I'd give it 4 and a half stars. The writing for the book is pretty good. It tells the story of the movie's conception and its almost spectacular failure. The book starts off an a pretty good start and is pretty readable. The information on the process of getting movies made was pretty interesting. The book is exhaustively detailed to the point that near the end it feels a little exhausting to get through. The main problems I have with this book are with the author. He feels a little full of himself sometimes and doesn't really acknowledge his own mess up's with the movie partially which helped derail it. He only really deals with those mistakes in the broadest possible terms which shrink the appearance of the blame that should be assigned to him on the outside. His view of himself in the book makes you think he believes he is almost infallible. He is also quite quick to designate some of the presses as legitimate as just mean when some of them were quite reasonable. The other thing is he can come off as somewhat misogynistic. He doesn't have a great view of Isabelle Huppert at all. When he says "She is a french woman with the flattened face of a Pillsbury doe boy" it just comes off as mean. When he goes very much out of his way to point out how bad her English was at first it just comes off as mean-spirited for no reason at all. Even later when he sees dailies of her performing beautifully and applauds her as such it doesn't really feel that authentic because of his comments later. He also takes a similar view of Barbara Streisand (I can't speak on her talent having seen none of her movies) where he doesn't have any faith in her in the slightest until he falls in love with how beautiful she is and then only then she ends up getting to make the movie she wants to make. Besides that, the guy has some pretty interesting things to say. Overall I would say barring some strange opinionated inclusions in the book it is a well written, very readable, and endlessly fascinating. If you are interested in movies or anything related to movie history or both I would strongly recommend that you check it out!!

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So you’ve got an Oscar-winning director, the movie studio that turned James Bond and Rocky Balboa into household names, a cast that includes Jeff Bridges and Christopher Walken, a music director who once worked side-by-side with Bob Dylan, and tons of gorgeous Western scenery, and you’re turning all this into a movie. What could possibly go wrong . . . right?

This book chronicles one of the most notorious movie flops in history, Heaven’s Gate, from the perspective of one of the executives who allowed it to happen. United Artists threw its absolute trust behind a director who had a fresh Oscar in his hand and was being hailed as the Next Great Genius Filmmaker. Instead of being rewarded with riches and awards, their hubris cost them their studio.

It’s fascinating to watch the slow-motion trainwreck as the UA executives let director Michael Cimino get away with one questionable decision after another - from the casting of the leading lady to spending astronomical amounts of money to grow grass on a battlefield - because, well, he’s a genius and it will all work out in the end . . . right? The whole thing is written in a witty and engaging style that keeps you turning pages even though you know the outcome, and makes you sympathize with the execs even when you KNOW they’re being boneheads. You feel their pain when they see an early cut of the film that’s as long as a miniseries and realize, with absolute horror, that there may be no way to salvage this thing.

Recommended for lovers of Hollywood history or just those who enjoy a good modern-day Shakespearean-style tragedy. Because you know if the Bard were around today, he’d be all over the cautionary tale of Michael Cimino and the money men.

[Hamid · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took quite some time to get through. I had a few false starts and having dwelt far too long on the first ten pages it almost became a DNR. Once I got into it, however, I found myself not wanting to put it down.

The first 30%/40% of the book is a bit of a potted history of Hollywood through to its operations in the 1970s, pushing into the period in which 'Heaven's Gate' was released. The pace ramps up steadily over the half-way mark through to the movie's release; the part of the book broadly from 40%-85% the way through more a temporal narrative. The final 15% is a sad, if not tragic, ending. There's not a huge amount given to post-mortem and, while I suspect there's a little bit of hagiography, the book doesn't go nearly as far as I suspected it would of suggesting that Bach had 'clean hands'. His mistakes are bare but so are everybody else's. It's quite a fascinating read.

This goes a lot slower than the Peter Biskind, Julie Salamon or William Goldman books but sits well in their company for the insights he provides as a producer whose movie career was effectively killed by this work. It's a proper sit-down-in-the-single-seater-with-a-cup-of-whathaveyou affair, best read over many days.

[A Cesspool · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everything you need to know about the The Unmaking of United Artists (or more specifically .. Making of Heaven's Gate) should be sourced from Charles Elton's essential 2022 monograph: Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven’s Gate, and the Price of a Vision.

Steven Bach is a mediocre studio executive with notoriously ruinous track record; He was never on set throughout Heaven's Gate location production -- thanks to Elton, we now know Final Cut's real author was former-United Artist co-president of West Coast productions, David Field -- Bach's principle, unaccredited, source.
Not including the United Artists' historical-prologue and some segments involving inner-office conflicts (and ultimate exodus resulting in Orion Pictures), everything regarding Heaven's Gate's pre-production & unending production was culled from either Field's studio memos (or his personal insights)... atvl Bach's genuine involvement was limited to Heaven's' post-production/re-editing/truncated release(s) [taking place in New York, after Field departed UA].

fun fact: After David Field left United Artists, he eventually worked for another studio. After Steven Bach left was ultimately forced out, he never worked for another studio. And for good reason, Bach's showbiz savvy was primary limited to memorabilia preservation: vintage kitsch extraordinaire.

[John M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a Stephen Bach’s memoir of his last two years as a production executive at United Artists. It’s not simply the tale of “Heaven’s Gate”, the critical and commercial flop that eventually sank UA It’s also about the other people and projects he encountered during these years. For me, he spent too much on the latter and not enough on the former.

While I was mildly interested in hearing about Truman Capote drinking Tab from a champagne flute, I wanted to know more about the magnificent mess that became “Heaven’s Gate.”

Bach does take us from the deal to “Gate’s” disastrous theatrical release. In between, he tells us about the intervening events that led to UA’s demise: Cimino’s insistence on casting the unknown French actor Isabelle Huppert as the female lead, the Montana-based production that went wildly over budget and schedule (Cimino shot a MILLION feet of film), and the four-hour New York premiere that touched off a critical feeding frenzy that all but doomed the theatrical release.

I never felt that Bach adequately explained how UA let Cimino run this project 34 million over budget only to produce a well-photographed muddled mess. For sure, Cimino was an arrogant perfectionist. No doubt he thought he was bullet-proof after winning best picture and director Oscars for “The Deer Hunter”. Bach certainly makes the case that Cimino was difficult to deal with. However, these things don’t entirely explain how UA let Cimino get away with it.

[Phil Segal · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're looking to hear about what happened during the making of Heaven's Gate, don't look here. This is more of a history of United Artists/diary of Steven Bach's time there, and while he was involved in Heaven's Gate, it wasn't very closely and it was all on the deal making end of things, not the movie making one. It is fairly illuminating as a look into the business end of the movie business and Bach isn't a bad writer but one can only read about so many meetings and at a little over 400 pages, nearly 200 of which go by before filming starts on Heaven's Gate, maybe he should throw less stones about editing things down to a reasonable length. Still, if you want a book about the business of film production that actually focuses on the business of film production and not lurid personal stories like The Kid Stays In The Picture or You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again, Final Cut has some solid value and is plenty readable.

[Adrienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed look at the making of the notorious bomb “Heaven’s Gate.” Although I’ve read the whole thing, I’m still perplexed by how this disaster could have happened. Somehow the studio ceded all control to the director, who felt that he was too much of an artist to make any attempt to adhere to budgets and deadlines. The author, Steven Bach, was one of the executives involved in the project, and of course wants us to think well of him, but I thought he was remarkably honest about the many errors of judgment he and his colleagues made. I also liked his writing style quite a bit. I couldn’t find an ebook or audio version of this book, so ordered it from a used book website and read it the old-fashioned way, which I think led to its taking me a longer time to read than normally. But if, like me, you are interested in Hollywood and movie history, it’s worth tracking down.

[Lars Aumueller · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book for cinephiles, "Final Cut" impresses not just in its marvellous wealth of behind-the-scenes detail but in its deep objectivity. I was expecting to read a book lambasting writer-director Michael Cimino and his film, and while it at times does that, the portrait that emerges is of a very gifted yet uncompromising (for good and bad) director and a film that became a flashpoint in the media not only for itself but for an entire industry. Of course, my own view of the book is colored by the fact that I think "Heaven's Gate" is an unqualified masterpiece, but "Final Cut" is a constant reminder that most art has to be by nature a compromise between an esoteric clashing of ideas and a reaching out to a public that craves to be entertained.

[Nathan Worthington · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Final Cut" is not only the history of the making of "Heaven's Gate" but also of United Artists. The book begins by delving into the history of UA. (I definitely plan on finding more books to read over this early period of Hollywood history.) Then it shifts into the awards heaped upon Cimino, the director, for "The Deer Hunter" & his idea to fictionalize & exploit what happened in Johnson County. The exhaustive process of going from a script to a "final cut" of "Heaven's Gate" helped to dismantle United Artists. I now know more about the making of "Heaven's Gate" than I do for any other movie that I have ever watched. (This book was recommended by a friend when I said I was interested in watching HG. I have never seen the movie before but I now plan to watch it. Fingers crossed.)

[Paul Lyons · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing expose on the making of the 1980 Michael Cimino epic box office bomb HEAVEN'S GATE. Although author Stephen Bach was Senior Vice President of Production at the studio that made HEAVEN'S GATE: United Artists, and had been with the studio through the many trials and tribulations of making the movie, "Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film that Sank United Artists" serves as only a cursory account of what really happened.

What happened, per the author, was a series of fearful miscalculations that led to a strong-willed, enigmatic, brilliant Oscar-winning director getting his way to the point of a 220-minute, $44 million dollar (over $100 million dollars today) western that the New York critics hated, that the general public didn't care for, nor had a an interest to go out to the theater to see. Half of the blame goes to Stephen Bach and the other United Artists executives who allowed it to happen. The other half of the the blame goes to the ambitious yet egomaniacal writer-director Michael Cimino, who is portrayed in the book as a talented yet irresponsible and uncooperative spoiled child.

Despite Stephen Bach's position at United Artists, his responsibilities on HEAVEN'S GATE were at a considerable distance. Yes, he and UA exec David Field green-lighted the picture, and made decisions about production issues. Yes, Bach had meetings and phone calls with writer-director Michael Cimino. Yes, he had at least one visit to the HEAVEN'S GATE set, and had a say in post-production. But the fact is, Bach was mostly based in NY, then later LA, while the production was shot in Montana, Idaho, and England. He was not the day-to-day executive on the picture, nor did he have time to do so.

As a result, only about 60 percent of "Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film that Sank United Artists" actually has anything to do with HEAVEN'S GATE. Perhaps for lack of material, Bach instead devotes the rest of the book to the history of United Artists, and the motion picture industry in general, as well as his dealings with Woody Allen and Barbara Streisand, in addition to his time spent on projects with Peter Sellers, Truman Capote, and Gay Talese that ultimately never got made. What the drama involved with purchasing the screen rights to Talese's non-fiction book "Thy Neighbors Wife" had to do with HEAVEN'S GATE is a mystery to me.

On a positive note, some of "Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film that Sank United Artists" is engaging and entertaining in its insider look at the movers and shakers circling around and within Hollywood. When Stephen Bach is focused on HEAVEN'S GATE, and goes into detail about how this or that happened, the book shines.

Where "Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film that Sank United Artists," fails is in Bach's over-indulgent, intellectual, overly-literate prose, which displayed the characteristics of a disciplined scholar looking at history from a detached distance. This is all well and good EXCEPT for the fact that the author himself played a part in that very same history, and had an inside information as to what went on. Bach seemed torn between literary aspirations, historical study, and just writing about what had happened as he experienced it. The result: a book almost as misguided and indulgent as HEAVEN'S GATE itself. What a shame.

[Jim Milway · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would make a great business school case. Management knows there are many things going wrong with the production of Heaven's Gate, including the costs. What do you do about it? Stop everything and accept your losses? Bring in a new director? Look over his shoulder minute-by-minute? Or just hope that it will be a blockbuster and recover its costs. No easy answer.

I found the reading a little hard at some points. So many names, so many side stories. I didn't feel that I got to know the UA people. I realize Cimino's perspective was extremely hard to include in this book; but it might have been better if the author had tried to get some sense from others.

[Tamburino · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read for those who like stories where every possible thing goes terribly wrong (and you can sense that from the very beginning).

Contour plots are sometimes interesting (Woody Allen, the evolution of United Artists that sets the stage), sometimes very boring (Barbra Streisand, most of Bach's professional relationships aside from the one with Cimino). Bottom line: I bought a book about Cimino and I want to read about Cimino.

I read the LA Times said Bach was "unsparing about his own failures", but I am not sure I agree - he rather seems to defend his choices all the time.

[A Cesspool · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a pre-production meeting, United Artists executives were discussing how to watch “every penny” of the budget, East Coast executive [later author, Final Cut] Steven Bach said to Production executive, David Field…

BACH: "You’ll be watching every penny. I have no intention of going to Montana."

Excerpt From:
Cimino by Charles Elton

[Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steven Bach recounts his tumultuous experience working for United Artist as an executive overseeing the production of Michael Cimino’s infamous Heaven’s Gate. The book delves into the studio, financial losses, and the film industry as a whole;all told through poetic prose. The story is captivating and keeps you engaged. It’s a must read for anyone interested in the death of The New Hollywood movement of cinema.

[Matthew Fitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to admit my initial excitement to read this book diminished in the middle part where it became difficult to slog through. I think b/c I was hoping for another “Easy Riders/Raging Bulls”. It does pick up at the end and I hope to someday see Heaven’s Gate to judge for myself does financial disaster also equal awful film.