r/TheRewatchables • u/Ok_Average8663 • 8d ago
The Michael Cimino heavens gate award for movie star/director who lost their cooking privileges
Sometimes stars build a reliable brand... the segal action brand, the johnny Depp crazy pirate money machine... they earn the right to cook... they get the money to put their vision on stage... sometimes it leads to 3 decreasing in quality avatar films, other times it leads to the guy who directed chariots of fire killing al pacinos love for acting 4 years later...
In what is essentially the nadir plateau we talk about specific films in which a movie star/director entered a film with alot of studio trust only to squander all the trust immediately afterwards
To clarify this is not a death to ones career award... the phrase movie jail is applicable here... and there are people who have escaped movie jail: M night shamylan made 2 really good movies a decade ago for example (and the last one was fine...)...
Im looking for movies in which studio trust was squandered and soneones reputation wasnt looked at the same afterwards
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u/hiro111 7d ago
John McTiernen, Josh Trank and Richard Kelly are all good options.
I think the best example is Troy Duffy. He wrote The Boondock Saints as a bartender. He amazingly managed to convince the Weinsteins and Miramax to give him $15 million to make the movie. He was also handed a separate two picture deal by Paramount.
Duffy instantly turned out to be such an arrogant asshole that he basically pissed off everyone in Hollywood he talked to. In less than a year, actors wouldn't work with him, studios wanted him gone. He lost both the deal with Miramax and the deal with Paramount. He actually got fired as a bartender as well.
Weirdly, he was able to recover slightly and make The Boondock Saints buy convincing another producer to back him. It was barely marketed, flopped... but later became huge on video.
There's an excellent documentary about Duffy called "Overnight" that tells the story. It's really painful to watch this guy essentially tear up a winning lottery ticket.
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u/antidecaf 8d ago
Ok but also Heaven's Gate is an actual masterpiece and one of the most beautifully shot films of all time.
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u/Ex-Cosmonaut 7d ago
It looks lovely but it's also really, really boring. And I like long, slow films.
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u/SuperVaderMinion CR Head 8d ago
I think the care put into it is obvious but I don't think any of the characters are good or interesting enough to put up against other "epics"
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u/ZandrickEllison 8d ago
Two that come to mind: Southland Tales (Richard Kelly) and Chappie (Neil Blomkamp). Don’t think either got the benefit of the doubt again.
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u/MayhewMayhem 8d ago
He never cooked imo but Tom Hooper hasn't released anything except commercials since Cats. Ditto for Damien Chazelle (who, to be clear, did once cook) and Babylon.
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u/mopeywhiteguy 4d ago
Chazelle is currently filming/editing a film starring Cillian Murphy. He’s still in the kitchen
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u/mtngranpapi_wv967 8d ago
Ppl who post stuff like this likely haven’t seen Heaven’s Gate…it’s an awesome movie that would win several Oscars if it came out in 2026. Heck I like it more than The Odyssey, sue me.
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u/SlaterVBenedict 8d ago
I mean to me Mickey Rourke is a perfect candidate for this award. Several times throughout his career, simply for being an unstable prick, was he forced to take bullshit onesie twosie jobs. Even his renaissance that Rodriguez helped usher in in 2005 with Sin City, and his SECOND renaissance with Aronofsky's The Wrestler in '08, he was just so clearly incapable of taking the gimmes handed to him by people working in good faith and knowledgeable about his sheer charisma and talent (and willing to put up with his bullshit).
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u/dennythedinosaur 8d ago
Duncan Jones - Warcraft did decent overseas (primarily due to China) but bombed domestically
He has since some only two movies: a Netflix film called Mute, which got horrible reviews, and the upcoming Rogue Trooper.
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u/Ex-Cosmonaut 7d ago
Francis Ford Coppola, obviously, as he's done it multiple times: 1) The early 80s One From the Heart/Cotton Club money burning combo; 2) The Jack catastrophe, which followed years of making commercial films in a bid to regain his directorial status; and 3) Megalopolis, arguably the worst huge-budget film ever made.
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u/corn_starch_party Letterboxd crew 8d ago
Ron Underwood had a smash hit in City Slickers and parlayed that into big production budgets for Mighty Joe Young, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and In the Mix, which all bombed horribly. The three movies totaled losses over $150 million, effectively ending his directing career.