The Deer Hunter

A behind?the?scenes? look at the making of the Oscar winning film. 'One Shot' the making of The Deer Hunter is written by Jay Glennie, with unparalleled access to the Robert De Niro Archives.The large format book takes a comprehensive look at the landmark British film. Released to celebrate the film winning the most coveted of movie awards, the Best Picture Oscar in 1979 'One Shot' includes exclusive interviews with cast & crew (including Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Chris Walken, John Savage and many more), EMI Film producers, Universal Studio executives and a loving foreword from Jeff Bridges for his friend, director Michael Cimino.Featuring stunning on?location images, many of which have never been published before, this book is the definitive account of the unlikely and often difficult journey from page to screen of Michael Cimino's iconic film. A controversial film about a controversial war 'One Shot' details how Cimino took the playing the of Russian Roulette as a metaphor of the US involvement in Vietnam and in turn gave us one of cinemas greatest anti?war films ever. Glennie examines how with Cimino at the helm the film, initially contracted to have a running time of two hours, became a three hour and four minute epic, resulting in the budget doubling from $7 million to $14.5 million and the departure of two producers.From Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Chris Walken, famed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and their colleagues on the film we gain an understanding of the pressures and pleasures of shooting a film on location with a director who is determined to fulfil his vision.

Haunted by memories and driven by devotion to his childhood comrades, an American soldier who has escaped from a Vietcong prison returns to Saigon to find his two missing friends

The first biography of critically acclaimed then critically derided filmmaker Michael Cimino—and a reevaluation of the infamous film that destroyed his career The director Michael Cimino (1939–2016) is famous for two films: the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and Heaven’s Gate, the most notorious bomb of all time. Originally budgeted at $11 million, Cimino’s sprawling western went off the rails in Montana. The picture grew longer and longer, and the budget ballooned to over $40 million. When it was finally released, Heaven’s Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven’s Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. Elton’s Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker. Based on extensive interviews with Cimino’s peers and collaborators and enemies and friends, most of whom have never spoken before, it unravels the enigmas and falsehoods, many perpetrated by the director himself, which surround his life, and sheds new light on his extraordinary career. This is a story of the making of art, the business of Hollywood, and the costs of ambition, both financial and personal.

Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter was met with both critical and commercial success upon its release in 1978. However, it was also highly controversial and came to be seen as a powerful statement on the human cost of America's longest war and as a colonialist glorification of anti-Asian violence. Brad Prager's study of the film considers its significance as a war movie and contextualizes its critical reception. Drawing on an archive of contemporaneous materials, as well as an in-depth analysis of the film's lighting, mise-en-scène, multiple cameras and shifting depths of field, Prager examines how the film simultaneously presents itself as a work of cinematic realism, while problematically blurring the lines between fact and fiction. While Cimino felt he had no responsibility to historical truth, depicting a highly stylized version of his own fantasies about the Vietnam War, Prager argues that The Deer Hunter's formal elements were used to bolster his troubling depictions of war and race. Finally, comparing the film with later depictions of US-led intervention such as Albert and Allen Hughes's Dead Presidents (1995) and Spike Lee's Da Five Bloods (2020), Prager illuminates The Deer Hunter's major presumptions, blind spots and omissions, while also presenting a case for its classic status.

Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter was met with both critical and commercial success upon its release in 1978. However, it was also highly controversial and came to be seen as a powerful statement on the human cost of America's longest war and as a colonialist glorification of anti-Asian violence. Brad Prager's study of the film considers its significance as a war movie and contextualizes its critical reception. Drawing on an archive of contemporaneous materials, as well as an in-depth analysis of the film's lighting, mise-en-scène, multiple cameras and shifting depths of field, Prager examines how the film simultaneously presents itself as a work of cinematic realism, while problematically blurring the lines between fact and fiction. While Cimino felt he had no responsibility to historical truth, depicting a highly stylized version of his own fantasies about the Vietnam War, Prager argues that The Deer Hunter's formal elements were used to bolster his troubling depictions of war and race. Finally, comparing the film with later depictions of US-led intervention such as Albert and Allen Hughes's Dead Presidents (1995) and Spike Lee's Da Five Bloods (2020), Prager illuminates The Deer Hunter's major presumptions, blind spots and omissions, while also presenting a case for its classic status.