The recent death of movie director Michael Cimino brought to mind when I worked in his financially disastrous film “Heaven’s Gate” and wrote about my observations, stirring up a great controversy.

Much of the press and Cimino defenders wrote that it was my article published in 1979 while the movie was being filmed that started a cascade of negative publicity about the directorial and financial excesses of production, culminating in scathing reviews once the picture came out in 1980.

Cimino himself phoned me at home in Montana after my piece was published and articles by others followed and he was getting criticism for his directorial obsessions, film-making expenses and various controversies during the shooting.

“Do you realize what you have done to me?” Cimino said.

I tried to calm him down and said I was just reporting what I witnessed in the movie-making as an extra and undercover reporter for two months. But Cimino couldn’t see that it was his overspending and controversies with extras, the U.S. National Park Service and others that I wrote about that were behind the negative reaction, including from his bosses at United Artists. He said my story was ruining his career.

My article was first published simultaneously in the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, along with undercover photos I took. Later, several other major metropolitan newspapers also published my story and photos. Publicity was international.

It all started in April 1979 when I read that the Western “Heaven’s Gate” would be filmed in western Montana, including in Glacier National Park. I was a freelance writer and owned a cherry orchard in the area, after having been a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Congressional Quarterly, The Sacramento Bee and others. I phoned the production company’s office about doing a feature article on the local filming, but was told the set was closed to the press and no interviews would be given.

I heard about auditions for extras from a local radio ad, went to a tryout and was hired. Hundreds of locals were hired and Cimino personally approved 19th-century period costumes for each. In my case, prior to beginning of filming, Cimino made three costume changes after saying Polaroid photos showed an “imbalance of color and fitness.”

The pay was minimum wage ($30 a day for 10 hours with one meal that we had to pay $3 for), but I figured that was better than nothing and I planned to write an article from the inside about how the movie was made and freelance it to a magazine or newspaper. I envisioned it merely as a soft uncontroversial feature. It turned out that I was present for two months at a disaster in the making. “Heaven’s Gate” ended up as one of the biggest money losing and least-watched films of all time and helped sink United Artists. It also resulted in motion picture companies no longer giving directors free reign.

One day on the movie set at a Western town constructed in a Glacier National Park campground parking lot, I was sporting a bushy beard and was neatly dressed in 19th-century brown woolen coat, burgundy pants, tie, vest and gray cloth cap. In my hands was an 1897 Winchester rifle.

Led by actor Jeff Bridges, I and a horde of 250 extras — immigrant settlers to the West and still dressed in coats and ties from the East — poured out of a huge tent building in the Western town of Sweetwater.

Having learned that local cattlemen had hired a band of mercenaries from Texas to kill us, we decided to fight for our lives. At the urging of Bridges, we armed ourselves with rifles, shotguns and pitchforks and jumped on wagons and horses in a chaotic scene.

Director Cimino (fresh from multiple Academy Awards winner “The Deer Hunter”) looked on from his perch atop a ladder as cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond filmed the action at the Western town set built on the shores of Two Medicine Lake in the national park. The immigrants yelled and screamed in foreign languages and broken English and the wagons went every which way down the streets of Sweetwater, with the cold blue lake and snowcapped mountain peaks in the background.

Because of the mad rush there were several injuries as the scene was filmed over and over for several days. Some of the immigrants, mostly local extras, were brushed by horses and knocked into the mud. One minor actor had both feet stepped on by horses. Several persons tumbled out of lurching wagons.

The injuries continued over the several days of shooting the mob scene from different angles. I fell out of a wagon backward into the mud (uninjured) as a driver moved the wagon before I was completely in it. On another day a horse stepped on my foot and X-rays showed that one toe had a crushed bone. Some extras quit in disgust: “We’re doing things that stunt men should do,” said one. In another scene, an actor got severe injuries after a wagon he was driving overturned on him; he sued the movie company.

The number of injuries was just one of the controversies of the filming, Cimino’s first since picture-of-the-year and best-director awards for “The Deer Hunter.” Extras also complained about other working conditions, and turnover of the locals in the movie was high. The Forest Service and county commissioners made the company fix a road that was damaged during the spring thaw when movie trucks turned several miles of it into a rutted slough. And the National Park Service eventually kicked the movie company out of Glacier National Park before filming there was completed because of alleged damages and unkept promises, such as slaughtering cattle in the park and bringing in foreign trees. The filming caused debate among the local populace about whether the movie was an asset to the community, with some extras, environmentalists and park officials on one side and business owners on the other.

The movie was based on a true story of the last of the Western range wars in Johnson County, Wyo., in the 1890s and starred Kris Kristofferson, Bridges, Christopher Walken, French actress Isabelle Huppert and others. The cost of the filming was expensive. The sets were as elaborate as the background scenery was spectacular. A Western town was built on the Two Medicine Lake campground parking lot. It was complete with steepled church, livery stable, hotel, drug and hardware stores and a huge tent building used as a combination roller-skating rink and meeting house called Heaven’s Gate.

Cimino was meticulous and the scenes were filmed over and over and the movie went over budget as I watched. Takes routinely were done 20-25 times. One bullwhip scene with Kristofferson had 52 takes. The perfectionism resulted in the movie’s production budget escalating from the original estimate of $12 million to $36 million; eventually the movie cost United Artists $44 million in total expenses including promotion. The company tried to rein in the costs by setting a filming deadline and eventually taking over fiscal control of the film from Cimino and producer Joann Carelli.

I quit the movie after two months work to write about it and to return to my cherry orchard as harvest neared. My article generated controversy and interest about the movie, the various filming controversies and Cimino’s spending. I also had taken photos on the set in secret from a camera I had hidden in my costume and sold them to the publications. Former United Artists senior vice president Steven Bach cited my articles and a lengthy interview with me in a book, “Final Cut,” that he later wrote on the downfall of United Artists and its sale to MGM because of money problems caused by “Heaven’s Gate.”

The movie itself was panned by critics, some of whom had scathing reviews, and pulled by United Artists and shortened by more than an hour from the original 3 hours and 40 minutes. After being re-released it again got poor reviews.

I saw myself in the movie in three scenes, but had to point myself out to my then wife because the camera went so fast and because I was in a costume and with a beard. In one scene I was watching a cockfight, in another I was in a hammock strung from a ceiling, and in the third I was in the street mob scene led by actor Bridges. In other large group shots, such as in a street and on the roof of a freight train, I couldn’t find myself. I thought of it all as a memorable adventure.

Unfortunately, Cimino blamed me personally for the film’s demise and that of his movie directing career. His phone call was out of the blue to my Montana home. He was upset about my writing and the negative publicity. There wasn’t much of a conversation; he just complained about me. Eventually, he hung up.

I never heard from Cimino again, but I followed his career. A documentary film was made years later for TV about the “Heaven’s Gate” controversy. I sold the film company some still photos I took on the set. They wanted to interview me, but I was hundreds of miles away the day they were interviewing people in northwestern Montana. The pro-Cimino documentary cited my writing as the initial cause of the landslide of bad publicity.

I think I was given too much blame by critics. Had the film been a masterpiece, as Cimino had intended, it would have had good reviews and the earlier publicity disregarded. Along with many of the Montana extras I knew, I found the movie boring and too long, although it had great cinematography. After it was released I wrote for the LA Times about the reactions of locals who worked in it.

Although I never knew Cimino personally, except for seeing him direct daily for two months, his death surprisingly greatly upset me. I read many articles about his death and they kept me awake at night. I was sorry that Cimino couldn’t have bounced back from one disastrous film, albeit a big one in monetary terms, and made a comeback to bring his career back to “The Deer Hunter” level.

Much of Cimino’s life since “Heaven’s Gate” seems to have been an unfortunate tragedy, never getting back to his previous career level, according to what I have read. Would taking more responsibility for his actions and mistakes in “Heaven’s Gate” have resulted in a better direction for his life and career? I don’t know. The film is seen in a more positive light in some circles nowadays, and some credit Cimino as a visionary although at too great an expense for the movie company. I hope he is at peace.

C. 2016 Les Gapay