Alex_Lillquist’s review published on Letterboxd:
To make one of the greatest films/the greatest war film of all time (The Deer Hunter) is an accomplishment enough in any director's career. To just be given the opportunity to make a monster like Heaven's Gate is something even more spectacular and to actually make it along with:
-Abusing all your powers and actors.
-Being four days behind schedule on your fifth day of shooting.
-Going 4x over budget.
-Tearing down and rebuilding sets because the spacing didn't look right.
-Creating a working, expensive irrigation system to make the grass greener for your soon to be bloody battlefield.
-Having the studio pay you to shoot on your own land.
-Hiring and firing crew members weekly.
-Holding a loaded gun to Tom Noonan's head.
-Firing Willem Dafoe for laughing.
-Inventing new animal control laws.
-Shooting enough footage worth nine days of straight viewing.
-Hiring an armed guard to keep everyone away from the editing room.
-Turning in a 5+ hour cut of the film to only cut it down to 3.5
-Having Roger Ebert call it a bigger waste than Paint Your Wagon.
-Nearly bankrupting a studio only to be literally saved by James Bond.
-Destroying your once prominent future career and never truly recover.
Is something that will never be done again. Probably for the best. Your name might not be in the same league as Ford or Spielberg (had this not flopped your named would've damn well eventually been right next to them, if not higher), but there will be far few director's that can claim they were crazy (or dickish) enough to direct and release a masterwork like Heaven's Gate.
See ya, Michael.