The classic Robert De Niro movie accused of “poking a stick in the eye of America”
Even though he enjoys few things more than firing foul-mouthed shots at the sitting president, Robert De Niro isn’t an unpatriotic man; he just hates the guy who’s currently in charge. However, one of his many classic movies was accused of being an insult to America, with the studio threatening to sit on it and delay its release until it was re-edited to their satisfaction.
Plenty of executives have meddled with films made under their watch, and rarely do things work out in favour of the filmmaker’s creative vision. Unfortunately, since the people in the expensive suits are the ones footing the bill, compromises often need to made, which are frequently to the detriment of the picture.
For several years after the end of the conflict, Hollywood was afraid to go anywhere near Vietnam War stories. John Wayne was skewered for the jingoistic Green Berets, and when ‘The Duke’ received such a vitriolic response for his attempt, the rest of the industry decided that using something so contentious and unpopular among the public as the backdrop to a prestige movie wasn’t the best idea.
Things had changed by the end of the 1970s, though, as you’d expect with the ‘New Hollywood’ era in full swing. Two of them even competed against each other at the 51st edition of the Academy Awards, with Hal Ashby’s Coming Home going head-to-head with Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter in virtually all of the major categories.
The two films were both in the running for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Actor’, ‘Best Supporting Actor’, ‘Best Supporting Actress’, ‘Best Original Screenplay’, and ‘Best Editing’, indicating that the industry’s aversion to Vietnam was beginning to soften. However, whereas Ashby’s effort went off without a hitch and didn’t generate any blowback, the same can’t be said of Cimino’s.
The auteur revealed to The Los Angeles Times before its release that Universal was “concerned about everything,” from the subject matter to the running time. According to Barry Spikings, who was in charge of The Deer Hunter‘s distributor, EMI Films, the director may have been underselling things slightly.
“I think they were shocked,” he said. “What really upset them was ‘God Bless America’. [Sid] Sheinberg thought it was anti-American. He was vehement. He said something like, ‘You’re poking a stick in the eye of America’. They really didn’t like the movie. And they certainly didn’t like it three hours and two minutes.”
Thom Mount, who was in charge of Universal’s day-to-day operations, concurred. “This was just a fucking continuing nightmare from the day Michael finished the picture to the day we released it,” he shared. “That was simply because he was wedded to everything he shot. The movie was endless. It was The Deer Hunter and the Hunter and the Hunter. The wedding sequence was a cinematic event all unto its own.”
Sheinberg threatened to hold off on debuting the movie until Cimino excised an hour of footage, while Mount dispatched the studio’s chief of post-production, Verna Fields: “I sicced Verna on Cimino,” he admitted. Despite the bad blood, animosity, and accusations of anti-Americanism, how long is the theatrical cut of The Deer Hunter? Three hours and two minutes, just as the director had intended.
