Cimino’s Defeat

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American film director Michael Cimino is now classified like Erich Von Stroheim and Orson Welles as a genius who couldn’t be reined in, going way over budget with costly ideas and turning in director’s cuts that were too long to release. However, don’t attend Eric Faris’ Cimino’s Defeat expecting to learn long hidden secret facts about the disastrous filming of Heaven’s Gate for United Artists in Montana in 1979. You might learn that the budget burgeoned from $11 million to $16 million and that $150,000 was spent to paint the grass green for a single scene, all of which has been thoroughly documented elsewhere and earlier. (Actually, the film ending up costing $44 million and bankrupting United Artists which was then sold to MGM and stopped being a producing entity.)

Although the Heaven’s Gate disaster has had two major studies published about it, the 1985 Final Cut by Steven Bach (head of East Coast and European production of United Artists at the time the film was being made) and Charles Elton’s Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven’s Gate and the Price of a Vision (2022), the play has several unexplained mistakes in facts and history. UA production executive on the film was David Field, not Jack. Producer Joann Carelli was famously reticent and spoke little and was seen less on set so that her vivacious, loquacious portrayal here is mainly fictitious. Not only did Derric Washburn win screenwriting credit from the Writer’s Guild for his work on The Deer Hunter which he co-wrote with Cimino but he did attend the Academy Awards in 1979.

He did, however, miss encountering his partner from whom he was estranged when the movie failed to win the Best Oscar Screenplay Award. Although Heaven’s Gate was a critical fiasco on release in 1980, ironically since 2012 when the restored version was shown at the Venice and New York Film Festivals and released by The Criterion Collection, it has now been hailed as a masterpiece but Cimino died four years later and did not get to capitalize on this late acclaim. None of this is reported correctly by the play.

A woman named Nicki wanders through the play, with little explanation. She is actually Cimino in later life, but audiences who have not read the Elton study are not likely to know that the film director wore women’s clothes in his last decade and may have transitioned into a woman. The play is organized around three major scenes each set indoors but without an intermission: the dining room of the Los Angeles Marquee Hotel (a nonexistent place) in 1976, the Presidential Suite at the Outlaw’s Inn in Montana during the 1979 filming, and ending in a room in Cimino’s Beverly Hills Mansion in the 2000’s.

Act One mainly concerns the conflict between Cimino and Washburn, making it clear that the director treated his associates very badly. The second act deals with executive producers Field and Kavanagh’s attempt to see the dailies and rein in the ever-expanding budget while visiting Cimino and producer Joann Carelli on set in Montana. Composer David Mansfield and film editor Peggy Shaw have cameos in this scene. The last act alternates between Cimino and Joann’s arguments about the way the film has been received by the critics, and Nicki (Cimino in later life) and a waitress named Cindy Lee she has picked up for companionship and invited home to audition for a part in a new screenplay, not funded.

As co-directed by Sam Cini and Ryan Czwerwonko, most of the actors behave like badly behaved teenagers and are mostly one dimensional. Tad D’Agostino’s Cimino is simply the brooding misunderstood genius who wants to be left alone. Gia Bonello as Joann, his confidante and enabler, is flirtatious and mysterious. As UA production executive Field, Jeremy Cohen is simply exasperated by his treatment by Cimino and Joann, unable to fire the director because of contractual arrangements. As his assistant Derek Kavaugh, Trevor Clarkson is asked to be unbelievably petulant and whiney. Matthew Zimmerman’s Washburn is bitter and angry.

Kristiana Priscantelli as film editor Penny Shaw who we were are told is 21 years old at the time (but was actually 26) would never have talked to the producers as she does in the play. Priscantelli given a more believable role as waitress Cindy Lee who is looking for a break in Hollywood as an actress when she meets Nicki who is said to have an Oscar for The Deer Hunter. It is difficult to analyze Hannah Hale’s acting as alcoholic Nicki as there is no correlation to the Michael Cimino that we have previously seen. As film composer David Mansfield, Joey D’Amore does little with an underwritten role.

The uncredited set design uses an armchair, sofa, a café table and two chairs throughout so that no changes are needed, although this tends to make the play feel like it is taking place all in the same room. Madeline Rostmeyer’s costumes are satisfactory though film executive Kavanaugh’s suit doesn’t fit as one would expect Hollywood upper echelon to be dressed impeccably while his boss Field seems overdressed for the Montana wild. The uncredited lighting is suitable without being atmospheric.

Eric Faris’ Cimino’s Defeat seems under researched while attempting to make a play from a few salient facts. At times the play seems endless, at others repetitious with all the arguments that never reach any conclusions. A good deal of the play seems amateurish though this may be the fault of co-directors Sam Cini and Ryan Czerwonko who allow for much ranting and raving from the actors. There may well be a play in the Heaven’s Gate debacle but this isn’t it.

Cimino’s Defeat (through February 14, 2026)

Torn Page, 435 W. 22^nd Street

For tickets, visit http://www.adultfilm.nyc

Running time: 90 minutes without an intermission