The summer Hollywood came to town

The filming of "Heaven's Gate" was a financial salvation for Kalispell in the summer of 1979, a year when dry gas pumps and soaring prices created a gloomy outlook for tourism.

But then came director Michael Cimino and movie stars Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston - and some welcome opportunities for employment.

Workers were needed to help construct the fictional town of Sweetwater, built near East Glacier, and props such as a roller-skating rink near Kalispell. Motel rooms were full for months, and around 1,200 extras were hired for varying lengths of time.

In an October 1980 article reprinted in the Kalispell Weekly News by American Film writer Rex McGee, the president of Kalispell's Chamber of Commerce estimated that United Artists poured nearly $14 million into the Flathead Valley economy.

There were some problems. Glacier National Park had to evict the film crews from Two Medicine for "alleged damage and unkept promises."

Reporter Les Gapay, working as an extra on the film, described the filming of one battle scene:

"Because of the mad rush, there are several injuries as the scene is filmed over and over for several days … One extra almost comes to blows with a crew member who tries to speed up the movement of the wagons and horses by telling one driver, 'If people don't move out of the way, run them over.'"

Carol Free of Kalispell experienced some of the confusion firsthand.

Free and her two children, Michael and Suzanne, earned parts as extras. Michael was 11 at the time and Suzanne was 9.

Twenty-five years later, Free said she probably would not do it over again.

Free said she and her children, all playing immigrants, spent most of their time during the spring and summer of 1979 on the East Glacier set.

Though Free said she wanted her children to see how a movie was made, to see what lies behind the make-believe, she wasn't prepared to expose her children to the adult realities found on the set.

Some of the hardships came from Cimino's uncompromising quest for cinematic perfection; others had to do with the company the extras kept during the filming.

Free said the extras were from two camps: the true locals and the "groupies," people she said followed film productions and nabbed jobs as extras.

The groupies, Free said, were the ones who forced them to ask for an extra bus.

"We finally insisted on having our own nonsmoking buses," Free said. "And it wasn't for tobacco; that wasn't what was going on."

The filming schedule was often erratic. Free said the children were often not told until 8 p.m. that their presence was needed on the set the next day at 6 a.m. They then rode buses from the Snowline Tree Co. building south of Kalispell, where the costumes were kept, to East Glacier.

Free said that at first, the basic needs of the children on the set were sometimes ignored, often because Cimino refused to break for meals.

"I'm sure it drove the caterer crazy, it [the filming] would go on and on and on," Free said. "At first they didn't provide breakfast, until several people said, 'Hey, if you don't have lunch until 3 in the afternoon, kids can't do this.'"

There was one frightening incident for everyone on the set, Free said, when Kris Kristofferson and Isabelle Huppert drove a wagon past a church, their relationship supposedly shocking the church-goers as they left the services. She said that scene was reshot about 50 times, until the filming was cut short by an accident. Kristofferson ended up needing stitches.

"On one of the takes, the carriage did go over, and it was good you had Montana people there who could handle the horses immediately," she said. "All of us mothers were grabbing our kids and getting them out of the way."

Eric Wood of Kalispell was one of those Montanans on the set who knew his way around horses. During a casting call at the Flathead County Fairgrounds, he earned his spot in "Heaven's Gate" with his riding skills and his "look."

"I was there from the first day to the last day of filming," he said.

Wood, who was 16 at the time, did a number of stunts in the film, many of which, he laments, ended up on the cutting-room floor. He is listed in the credits as "Immigrant."

He had acted in community theater productions before taking a role in "Heaven's Gate," and was part of many stage and screen productions afterward. His later experiences with other directors made him realize that Cimino's filmmaking philosophy was not the norm.

Wood experienced Cimino's obsessiveness firsthand, spending one day repeating 72 times his part in a short argument scene, found within the overall cockfighting scene.

"Then the cockfight itself takes maybe two minutes of the movie, and we took about two weeks to film it," Wood said.

Wood said he believed Cimino's eye for detail caused him to lose sight of the story at times.

"Everything had to be just perfect," Wood said.

As Wood tells it, in one segment of the cockfighting scene, Jeff Bridges and Kris Kristofferson are talking, and through a dirty window, on a dusty street, Cimino noticed a woman in the background with zippers on her boots.

"We couldn't film any more until she was back from wardrobe and back in position, and it took a couple of hours," he said. "You would never, ever have seen it on the film, that she had zippers rather than buttons on her boots. But because he noticed it, it had to stop and be fixed."

Wood was one of two Flathead Valley faces to appear in the documentary "Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate." Wood and Glacier Film Equipment Co.'s Dicky Deets, a key grip on "Heaven's Gate," were both interviewed in Kalispell by Viewfinder Productions.

In the documentary, Wood adds to the explanation of the filming of the battle scenes near Polebridge.

"You'd race around and around at a dead gallop in a circle," he said. "There was noise, chaos, dust… "

Deets talks about one day when the crew waited from morning to well into the late afternoon, under Cimino's instructions, for the right light to illuminate one shot.

Cimino's fanaticism didn't detract from the experience for Wood.

"It was very positive," Wood said. "I enjoyed the heck out of doing it. It was a lot of fun."

Norton Buffalo, who is listed in the credits as a private, also has no regrets about his involvement with the project.

It was during the filming that Buffalo, a world-renowned blues harmonica player and now a favorite with Flathead Valley music fans, first became acquainted with Northwest Montana.

For Buffalo, the experience was like six months of summer camp.

"Working on 'Heaven's Gate,' I became an excellent horseman and a great skater," he said in an e-mail describing his time on the "Heaven's Gate" set.

At 8 a.m. each day the group would head for the roller rink and skate for two hours, followed by two hours on horseback at the fairgrounds. After lunch, cast members headed into the woods for shooting clinics.

"We were a ragtag bunch and at first glance it looked pretty hopeless that the bunch of us would be able to do what was necessary in those scenes," he said. "Many of these actors were city bred and were out of place in all those departments."

After Cimino started paying closer attention to the progress of his actors' skill levels, they started skating and riding between four and five hours each day, Buffalo said.

"We, the crew, actors, directors and locals that were part of the film became a family," he said. "I shared my music and my friendship while I was there and have been forever blessed by the time I spent in Montana working on this film. Oh what a time I had."

He said he believes Cimino was unfairly maligned in Hollywood, and that, with an open mind, "Heaven's Gate" can be perceived as a worthwhile undertaking.

"I feel that the film fails to develop some of the characters well enough to understand why they are in the film, but I feel as a whole piece that it is a beautiful film depicting a difficult time in the history of the West."

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4431 or by e-mail at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com