Final Cut

Back in print with a new introduction and epilogue by the author, this modern classic is "one of the few indispensable books about Hollywood." --Jack Kroll, Newsweek. "What altered Hollywood irrevocably was the notorious 1980 film Heaven's Gate." --Irwin Winkler, The New York Times, 1/14/99. Heaven's Gate is probably the most discussed, least seen film in modern movie history. Its notoriety is so great that it has become a generic term for disaster, for ego run rampant, for epic mismanagement, for wanton extravagance. It was also the watershed film of the '80s--not for its cinematic qualities, but for its effect on Hollywood and the way movies were and were not made for years afterward. For Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate did not merely fail; the film did the unthinkable: it sank a studio. Less than a month after the picture's second release, United Artists--the company founded in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin--for all practical purposes ceased to exist. What happened? Why? How? In answering these questions, combining wit, extraordinary anecdotes, and historical perspective, Steven Bach 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.