I'm first going to say that I ain't here to defend Deer Hunter. I found it to be a tedious and brooding mess that could have happened in 90 minutes.

Having said that, Cimino is probably the perfect counter-example to auteur theory, the pretentious film student's way of saying "nobody matters but the director."

Auteur theory was at its absolute fucking worst in the '70s because of three guys: Spielberg, Lucas and Coppola. Spielberg showed he could do a tight little movie on a nothing budget (Duel) so he was given a whole lot of money and made it all back 40-fold (Jaws). Lucas did the same with American Graffiti and Star Wars. Coppola did the same with Godfather and Apocalypse Now - the important thing there was that Apocalypse Now was a train wreck that skidded off the rails and needed to be rescued but is still considered a masterpiece (and made bank).

So Hollywood basically decided that the path forward was to throw money at "auteurs" because fuck, who's going to stand in the way of Spielberg. Never mind that Star Wars was heavily influenced and policed by George Lucas' first wife. Never mind that The Godfather owes more to Al Ruddy than it does Francis Coppola (there's a whole miniseries about that on Paramount Plus, it's really good). Never mind that Spielberg drifted almost immediately into producing and also directing, rather than just directing - Spielberg has made the impact he has because of who he chooses to work with and how he works with them, not by sitting in a corner and insisting that he gets his way.

Enter Michael Cimino.

Fundamentally, Deer Hunter is a coming-of-age story set in a steel town with side trips to an utterly fabricated Vietnam. It's Vilmos Zsigmond pointing a camera at Meryl Streep, Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken and John Cazale - it would have to be terrible to not be awesome.

Deer Hunter drags on the page. Like, it's boring to f'n READ. You're fundamentally left with a process movie whereby people walk around a lot and don't talk about anything. But Meryl Streep not talking to Bob DeNiro is fucking magnetic.

And so. Everyone was all in on auteur theory. Sure, five Oscars but its principle competitors were Midnight Express and Heaven Can Wait. Have you ever watched Heaven Can Wait? Would you have guessed it was nominated for nine oscars?

Yeah, this is the era Arthur got a sequel.

Note that Scorsese survived Auteur theory by never getting a big budget. Coppola was badly wounded by Cotton Club but that wasn't considered a bad film. Spielberg has never made a misstep and Lucas shifted to producing pretty much the minute Star Wars was in the can. But Cimino? He leaned into auteur theory. He got a big head. He turned out to be a royal pain in the ass. Did you know that Heaven's Gate was filmed almost entirely at magic hour? Yeah, fuck your ten hour shooting schedules we've got twenty minutes at dawn and twenty minutes at dusk. And the first cut was five hours long. And anybody sensible would have gone "are you out of your fucking mind" and taken the money away and thrown the project into completion but this was the era of - say it with me -

Auteur theory.

See, you can fuck up with a Cotton Club and know your next film will be smaller. You're easy to work with, everybody knows you, those are the breaks but you'll have to work harder for your money. But if you cost a fuck-ton and are impossible to work with?

When was the last time you thought about Megan Fox?

Cimino's best work is Silent Running which is a decidedly mid film. Silent Running, plus patience, plus discipline, plus affability, equals a long and steady career. Silent Running plus Deer Hunter? Yeah, lots of potential there! But there was a confluence of events that took the leash off a mediocre director and the result was expensive and terrible.

Five hours of Kris Kristofferson brooding in the dawn light isn't the same as Bob DeNiro and Meryl Streep almost-but-not-quite hooking up.