The making-of behind this film has been much discussed and is actually more interesting than the film itself. "Heaven's Gate" is a brand of notoriety, a textbook example of what happens when a director's ego runs riot. Michael Cimino was clearly still reeling high from the Oscar success of The Deer Hunter, so millions were spent, overspent, and overspent some more to suit the director's "vision", the end result not being the masterpiece Cimino envisioned but a wreck of a movie which one critic described as being like "a forced four-hour walking tour of one's living room". It performed disastrously at the box office and effectively ended the Hollywood Renaissance period (1969-1980) that had given us masterpieces like The Godfather. (Of course, whether the film's commercial failure really was responsible or whether Heaven's Gate is merely a convenient scapegoat is an entirely different topic for discussion...)