“In The Hit, Stephen Frears eschewed car chases, gunfights and sex, [and] blurred the traditional roles of captive and captor, [and] poeticized a story that germinates in baseness, and focused on a hero who finally lets down the audience. In manipulating the tenets of the gangster film, the western, the road movie and even film noir, Frears questioned their validity. And although The Hit is full of incident, it dwells on the internal life rather than the external. This lifts The Hit into a metaphysical realm where bullets have no reach.” — from a Graham Fuller essay, “The Hit: Road to Nowhere,” which is included in the Criterion DVD package.

I’ve read a lot about Michael Cimino over the years. I’ve heard many stories about him. Last August I read Anne Thompson‘s piece, “Six Reasons Why Michael Cimino Will Never Work in Hollywood Again,” which was fairly tough on the guy. I’ve read Stephen Bach‘s “Final Cut” twice. Everybody said he could be pugnacious and even rude at times. Not always but now and then. But to the best of my recollection nobody and I mean nobody ever mentioned a very basic fact, which is that Cimino was a little guy — only 5’5″.

Not every short guy is contentious or pushy or intractable, but omitting the fact that a guy was modestly proportioned is a curious thing. 5’5″ is Randy Newman short. Two or three inches taller than Mickey Rooney, okay, but one inch shorter than Alan Ladd, and I’ve read that Ladd always felt a little fucked up about his height. It seems to me that anyone assessing the character of a short guy would have to at least mention that he’s short. (And therefore may have felt motivated to compensate by being a bit tougher.) But no one mentioned this about Cimino. Because no one wants to me called a size-ist.

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Respected critic and screenwriter F.X. Feeney was the gentlest, kindest and most ardent journalist ally the late Michael Cimino ever had. Feeney was the principle voice of the revisionist reappraisal of Heaven’s Gate, for one thing — a reappraisal that led to Criterion remastering the original three hour and 39 minute cut on Bluray. Feeney so cared about Cimino’s vision that in 1987 he flew to Paris on his own dime to catch the 146-minute director’s cut of The Sicilian. (A 115-minute version played in the U.S.). Feeney and Cimino were also personal pals.

When news of Cimino’s death hit yesterday afternoon, I asked F.X. if he wanted to post some kind of tribute or appraisal. He sent the following late last night:

Michael Cimino, Chris Lambert during filming of The Sicilian.

Michael Cimino [1939 – 2016]

Imagine my astonishment, bracketing his name with these dates. The world has lost a great artist, and I’ve lost a great friend.

First, let’s define “a great artist.” Michael Cimino made films like nobody else. He never imitated. His first loyalty was never to any movie tradition, but to the life and lives of whatever human beings were under his scrutiny. Time and again, he had the courage –indeed the steely backbone and gambler’s bravery — to take his time with any given scene or sequence, confident that audiences are interested in human beings, first and last.

What movie compares on any level with The Deer Hunter? Its first hour is taken up with a wedding and a hunt. The Vietnam War is a lightning parenthesis. That prison scene is a shock from which no audience recovers – and the film’s epic power is in its silences, particularly as embodied by the three men who return from war, each bearing within themselves an experience that they can’t communicate, not to their beloved townsfolk, not even to one another. Each is individually scarred.

The hymn “God Bless America” has never been rendered in such delicate, fragile yet indelible affirmation as it is in The Deer Hunter’s final moments.

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Director Michael Cimino has died of an unannounced cause. He was probably 77. He was respected for his directorial command and tenacity (certainly by the F.X. Feeney-led revisionists) and if nothing else was clearly an exacting visual composer. But his rep was compromised by two things. Well, one thing really — Heaven’s Gate, the ruinous 1980 epic that bombed at the box-office, all but murdered Cimino’s career, destroyed United Artists and brought about a seismic change in Hollywood culture — the death of the auteurist era that had begun in the late ’60s/early ’70s.

The other compromising thing was more of a curiosity, which was Cimino’s decision to completely transform himself in the ’90s from the slightly heavyset, jowly-looking New York guy he was in the ’70s and ’80s into an androgynous, rail-thin, plastic-surgerized life form that seemed even more extreme than what Michael Jackson eventually did to himself.

Say what you will about The Deer Hunter or Year of the Dragon or The Sicilian or Thunderbolt or Lightfoot, but there’s one thing you have to admit about Cimino, who made them all. The failure of Heaven’s Gate, which had been an albatross around Cimino’s neck for the last 35 years of his life, pretty much destroyed the mystique of the great, bowed-down-to Hollywood director.

Before Heaven’s Gate, brand-name directors had real power. After Heaven’s Gate, they had less or a lot less. It brought about the near-total collapse of a general belief that movies were mainly about directorial vision, at least in the hands of a celebrated few, and it emboldened the corporate guys and led to a mindset by which movies began to be seen as top-down, kid-friendly, high-concept product.

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Three or four days ago The Cinemaholic posted a checklist piece called “The 25 Most Awaited Movies of the Second Half of 2016.” I’ve been meaning to get into this but putting it off. Here are seven reactions, starting at the back at the line. I won’t finish the whole thing until tonight or more likely tomorrow morning, especially in lieu of the death of Michael Cimino:

25. John Cameron Mitchell‘s How to Talk to Girls at Parties (A24). Featuring: Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, Ruth Wilson. Synopsis: Female alien (presumably Fanning) hooks up with two earthling girls in London suburb of Croydon. HE suspicion/presumption: 21st Century Earth Girls Are Easy without the music? Bottom line: Iffy, don’t count your chickens.

24. Alexandros Avranas‘ True Crimes. Brett Ratner‘s RatPac among the producers. Featuring: Jim Carrey, Kasia Koleczek, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Marton Csokas. HE suspicion/presumption: Shot late last year in Krakow (i.e., November and December) and based on a 2008 New Yorker article by David Grann, film turns on a crime novel offering clues to a real-life murder of a businessman. I’m not saying I’m hugely concerned about a Ratpac film costarring Csokas, but I am a little bit. Bottom line: I’m not saying “forget it” but at the same time I’m not feeling the right kind of vibes.

23. Scott Derrickson‘s Doctor Strange(Disney, 11.4). Featuring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Michael Stuhlbarg, Mads Mikkelsen, Tilda Swinton. HE suspicion/presumption: Same old Marvel bag of tricks. No, thanks. Bottom line: I’m sure it’ll be hugely popular, but this list isn’t about popcorn films.

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This morning Hillary Clinton sat for a three-and-a-half-hour grilling with FBI investigators over her use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has said she’ll accept (i.e., won’t overrule or sidestep) the FBI’s recommendations in this matter, which are expected to be announced sometime before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia (7.25 thru 7.28) or within two or three weeks.

The FBI is not going to recommend a criminal indictment, of course, as director James Comey realizes this would significantly increase the chances of Donald Trump winning the general election, and who would want that on their head? Right now Comey holds the keys to the kingdom, but he didn’t get to where he is today by being indifferent to political reality.

And yet too much time and effort have been invested in this matter for the FBI to just say “okay, there’s nothing here.” They’re at least going to admonish Clinton for acting in a smug or cavalier fashion about the law and slap her wrist in some fashion.

When this happens the voters who long ago bought into Trump’s “Crooked Hillary” narrative will have more coal in that engine, and those who never thought the matter was worth this much time and attention will shake their heads and say “she can’t help herself…one way or another she’s always taking shots over the appearance of ethical failings and/or poor strategic thinking.”

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The last time I bought seats at a baseball game…I don’t want to talk about it. $230 for three Mets-Giants tickets near the left-field line, and it was so cold and rainy we didn’t even attend. Never again, but cost-wise today’s concert prices are even more ludicrous. There was some thought this morning about attending one of the Hollywood Bowl’s Independence Day concert-plus-fireworks shows being held this weekend (tonight, tomorrow and Monday night). Decent seats are going for $250-plus each, or $500-and-change with a date. Not to mention the attendant costs. The inflation factor is off the charts. I was somewhere between poor and living on a tight budget in the ’70s and ’80s, and yet somehow I managed to afford tickets to dozens of concerts. Concerts were regular and vital back then — they kept my heart pumping. But I will not pay today’s absurd prices. I could always sit in the shitty seats, I suppose, but even they aren’t a bargain. The anger I used to feel about the astronomical price of CDs at Tower Records back in the ’80s and ’90s is nothing compared to this. Remember the old Tower Records slogan, “No Music, No Life“? Well, live music today can go fuck itself.

Hollywood has been making Tarzan flicks for over 80 years now, and the basic concept — a white child from a wealthy family lost in the jungle and raised by apes — has never changed. If you’re going to make yet another one, as Warner Bros. has done, you can’t mess with this. I’m making this point because Lewis Beale‘s 7.1 complaint piece for CNN.com (“The Problem With Tarzan“) doesn’t seem to agree. He writes that “this new take on the Edgar Rice Burroughs creation, which first appeared in print in 1912, is…a total anachronism in an era of heightened race consciousness. And by greenlighting this film, it seems that Warner Bros., the film’s distributor, did not get the memo that the new movie, while not overtly racist, remains the product of an early 20th-Century colonial mentality — yet another example of the developed world patronizing the Third World.” Warner Bros. greenlighted The Legend of Tarzan for the same kneejerk reason they greenlight everything else — i.e., because they figured the brand is still marketable. Over and out.

“This 1960 picture, long considered lost, and newly restored courtesy of the bold indie distributor Cinelicious Pics, is a sex-crime thriller that teeters on the edge of morbidity before its galvanic climax. Seen today, it’s also a fascinating mélange of cinematic semiotics.” — from Glenn Kenny‘s 6.30 N.Y. Times review (“Once Lost, Private Property Is A Genuine Rediscovery”) of Private Property.

Leslie Stevens‘ 1960 film, which costars Corey Allen (“Buzz” in Rebel Without A Cause), Warren Oates and Kate Manx, will screen on Thursday (7.7) at the Aero.

I’ve never used “semiotics” in a review and I probably never will, but that’s okay — there’s no right or wrong way of conveying passion. I don’t recall having used “galvanic” either, but give me time.

Sidenote: The aspect ratio of the Private Property trailer seems to be 1.37, which is probably some kind of mistake, right? I’m sure that the film itself will be presented in 1.85. The 1.85 fascists have been explaining for years that almost all standard Academy-ratio films were projected at 1.85 from roughly 1954 onward. (Occasional detours into 1.66 happened from time to time, but 1.85 generally ruled the roost.) If Private Property is screened at 1.37 at the Aero I’m sure that Bob Furmanek or Pete Apruzzese will have an explanation.

The out-of-print Twilight Time Bluray of Bring Me The Head Of Alfred Garcia is going for $153 on Amazon. I bought this Spanish Bluray for $28 or something like that. Isolated English track. First-rate mastering. Perfectly acceptable. The Twilight Time version couldn’t look any better. Update: I just watched the whole thing, and have therefore been reminded what I managed to forget over the years — the ending of this 1974 Sam Peckinpah film stinks.

Variety‘s Dave McNary is reporting that Steven Spielberg‘s The BFG is a shortfaller, based on early Friday estimates. This is music to my jaundiced ears, of course, but why? Why have American families said “maybe but not so much” to an expensive, technically accomplished giant-in-a-fairytale movie by the great Spielberg? I was no fan after catching The BFG in Cannes, but I didn’t fantasize for an instant that families wouldn’t embrace it.

McNary says The BFG “is underperforming forecasts, which had projected an opening in the $30 million range. Friday’s debut day looked likely to hit between $6 million and $8 million [for a] disappoint $25 million. The Roald Dahl adaptation has received plenty of affection from critics with a 73% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, thanks to Mark Rylance’s motion-capture work as a giant who befriends an orphan girl. But The BFG will likely struggle to break even, given its high-priced $140 million budget, funded by Amblin Partners, Disney and Walden Media.”