Michael Cimino, ‘Deer Hunter’ Director, Dies At Age 77

Michael Cimino, director of the award-winning film Deer Hunter, died on Saturday at his home in Los Angeles.

Michael Cimino, ‘Deer Hunter’ Director, Dead

Cimino’s death was confirmed by Eric Weissman, his attorney. No cause of death was given.

Cimino’s 1978 Vietnam War film Deer Hunter won five Oscars — including Best Picture and Directing.

The film starred Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken and John Savage as workers in western Pennsylvania who bond over liquor and hunting before being shipped out to Vietnam. It also starred Meryl Streep in her first major film role.

The director’s next film, Heaven’s Gate, an epic Western about a battle between immigrants and land barons in 1970s Wyoming, wasn’t successful.  

The movie cost a reported $40 million to produce — the film was panned by critics, and earned less than $4 million at the box office; causing financial problems for United Artists, the studio that bankrolled the film.

Cimino’s career took a big hit and the director went on to make only four more films — and couldn’t create another film as successful as his first.

“Nobody lives without making mistakes,” Cimino told Vanity Fair in 2010. “I never second-guess myself. You can’t look back. I don’t believe in defeat.”

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro had kind words to say about Cimino after the reports of his death.

“Say what you will about Michael Cimino but when he was ‘on,’ he had more power, fierce intelligence and real vision, than most anyone else,” Toro wrote on Twitter.