STACK October 2016 Issue 144

24 / 125

Wayne’s clumsy and outdated
film, movies based on the
Vietnam war became taboo for
Hollywood and perceived as not
financially viable. Throughout
the proceeding decade, none
of the Hollywood studios would
seriously consider producing a
major theatrical film about the
Vietnam conflict. But in 1978,
that view changed dramatically.
The film everyone in
Tinseltown was talking about
that summer wasThe Deer
Hunter,helmed
by a young director
named Michael
Cimino. The
film had been
financed by the
British production
company EMI.
Universal Studios,
who owned
the US
domestic distribution rights, were extremely
apprehensive about some of the scenes in
the film that dealt with the torture inflicted on
American POWs by the Viet Cong.
Following long and bitter discussions
with Cimino, Universal’s executive made a
decision: the film would open in December at
just one theatre in New York and one in Los
In the summer of 1978, the hot topic
around Hollywood was Vietnam. Not the
war itself - which had ended three years
earlier in an ignominious American defeat that
had scarred the national psyche - but a major
motion picture with a Vietnam war theme,
scheduled for release later that year. War
movies, and in particular those with a WWII
theme, had always been big money spinners
for the Hollywood studios. But the political
factors of the controversial and hugely
unpopular Vietnam conflict was a subject
fraught with disaster for US filmmakers
George C. Scott’s oft quoted line from
Patton (1970), that “Americans
love a winner and will not tolerate
a loser”, served as a perfect
truism for the American public’s
attitude to the war film genre.
John Wayne discovered this
to his cost when he injected a
WWII masculine gung-ho theme
into his Vietnam-based The
Green Berets(1968); the
popular actor was stunned by
the vitriolic backlash the film
received from both critics
and the public when it was
released.
As a direct consequence of
Heaven's Gate (1980) Directed by Michael Cimino
Part 1 of 2
24 OCTOBER 2016
EXTRAS
visit
Hollywood studios did not
once seriously consider
producing a major
theatrical film about the
Vietnam conflict. But in
1978 that view changed
dramatically
The Movie That
A Hollywood
Film Company
Destroyed
Michael
Cimino
directing
Robert De
Niro in
a scene
from The
Deer Hunter