220 hour version

220 hours???? A man can only dream...

Actually, I bet you must be thinking of the amount of film that was shot prior to any editing.

Remember, Cimino broke the record with this movie, having shot over one million feet of film. That included several takes of various scenes. For example, the scene where Kristofferson swings the bull-whip was infamously filmed about 50 times.

Cimino's original version of the film lasted over 5 hours. When the studio heads saw it, they freaked out and demanded that it be cut in half. Cimini managed to cut it down to 3 1/2 hours. That is the version that went into initial release -- and is the version most widely available today. When the movie bombed at the box office, Cimino begged the studio to let him re-cut it again. The new version was cut down by over an hour, but did no better with the public.

Now, it would be interesting to see what Cimino's original 5+hour cut looked like. However, I fear that instead of providing great new footage, it would probably just cause the film as we know it to move at an even more elephantine pace. Cimino and his chief editor worked literally around the clock to whittle the massive 200+ hours down to the 5+hour version that he initially called his final cut. They had a very short timeframe to cut it further once UA demanded that they do so. Cimino always claimed that the rush-editing job is what led to the issues that the film has with it narrative.

Still, it would be cool if some company would give Cimino the time and resources to go back through all of his original film to piece together what he feels is the definitive volume -- much in the same way that an editor and Peckinpah historian "tried" to do with "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" a few years ago. A pity that this will probably never happen, due to the negative vibe surrounding "Heavens Gate". (As much as "Heaven's Gate" is revered in Europe, though, who knows?)