Regardless of credits to come, it seems a safe bet that people will always associate Michael Cimino with two movies. The first, "The Deer Hunter" (1978), won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director and provided him with the clout to let his megalomania run amok filming the second. That unqualified disaster, "Heaven's Gate" (1980), was responsible for bringing down a troubled United Artists, a studio that had managed to endure from the glory days of Chaplin, Griffith, Pickford and Fairbanks.

A successful commercials director noted for his sophisticated camera work and arty filming techniques, Cimino relocated from NYC to L.A. in 1971 to pursue a career in features. He earned his first writing credit for co-scripting (with Deric Washburn and Steven Bochco) the Douglas Trumbull ecological sci-fi drama "Silent Running" (1971). His second, Ted Post's "Magnum Force" (1971), introduced Cimino to Clint Eastwood who agreed to play the lead in "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" (1974) and hired the writer to direct as well. Cimino's debut drew praise for its "attention to minor details and incidental characters," and earned Jeff Bridges a surprising Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Yet, amidst mostly glowing reviews, some critics deemed his impressive first effort somewhat lacking in control, an ominous portent of things to come.

On the strength of "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot", Cimino was able to interest EMI in an outline for a story about the Vietnam War that would become "The Deer Hunter". Serving as producer as well as director, he traveled 150,000 miles scouting the American locations alone, often accompanied by star Robert De Niro, studying the places and people that would become an integral part of the film. (Few professional actors apart from the principals appeared). Great performances by the cast, which included John Savage, Meryl Streep, John Cazale and Christopher Walken in an Oscar-winning turn, bolstered the script, and the movie, derided by many as racist and fascist, stirred audiences deeply and provoked intense discussion and controversy, particularly for its now infamous scenes of soldiers playing Russian roulette. Though complaints that he manipulated history ring true, Cimino was never striving for literal accuracy, and "The Deer Hunter" at three hours remains a work of great and disturbing cinematic power, a picture large enough to carry its defects.

"Heaven's Gate", however, gave new meaning to the word excess, and the miscasting of several principal roles was perhaps the least egregious of its unredeemable flaws. Cimino brought it in ridiculously over budget and excessively long (219 minutes), concentrating much attention and expense on the film's big set pieces and pointless, but beautifully choreographed, sequences. He further compounded the awfulness of his script with a totally unwarranted reverence. The narrative line was virtually non-existent, and the resultant series of unconnected, hopelessly confusing scenes was made worse by cacophonous background noises in Dolby which drowned out the actors' voices. Critics and audiences were in universal agreement as to the film's complete absence of merit, and United Artists immediately withdrew it from exhibition. An abbreviated version met with no greater success in 1981.

People remember Michael Cimino as the man who toppled a studio, so it is little wonder that he has worked intermittently since the fiasco of "Heaven's Gate". He abandoned whatever economy he practiced as a New York commercial director soon after arriving in Hollywood, and his later movies (including "Year of the Dragon" 1985, "The Sicilian" 1987 and "Sunchaser" 1996) have exhibited, albeit to a lesser degree, enough signs of his signature excess to deter the cautious soul from hiring him. No one could deny Cimino's directorial talent, but until he proves he can exercise a sense of proportion, mainstream Hollywood never again may take him seriously.