“The whorehouse, that’s my house”: the most unusual prop Jeff Bridges ever took from a movie set
It’s an accepted part of the business that actors will take things from set as reminders or mementoes, even if Jeff Bridges went several steps further than most when he ended up with a brand new abode.
Stars regularly go on record to reveal they’ve pilfered costumes, props, weapons, or even furniture to take pride of place in their home, but Bridges was thinking bigger. Well, maybe he wasn’t thinking at all, because it sounds like a nightmare to transport.
That being said, it’s entirely fitting that following one of the most famously troubled productions in Hollywood history, which went so far behind schedule and so vastly over budget that it almost killed the director’s career completely and changed the face of the industry forever, entire sets were being handed over to the people who worked on the movie without a care in the world.
Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate ended up as a cautionary tale for studio executives across Tinseltown, with the people in charge realising that perhaps ‘New Hollywood’ had run its course when one of its many breakthrough talents indulged themselves far too much on the promise of complete autonomy.
The film went four times over its original budget, Cimino’s desire for perfection slowed everything to a crawl, he was having massive sets constructed and then torn down when he decided on a whim that he didn’t want to use them anymore, giving rise to a transformative disaster that benefitted very few people.
Fortunately, Bridges was one of those who did benefit, getting himself a house out of the bargain. When the shooting had finally wrapped, and nobody had any inclination of what would befall the period-accurate production design, Cimino simply opted to hand an entire ranch over to the actor, no questions asked.
“He got a bad rap on Heaven’s Gate,” Bridges reflected to Business Insider before revealing the origins of his digs. “I actually live in the hog ranch from Heaven’s Gate in Montana. Mike gave me that set, the whorehouse, that’s my house. Yeah, that’s right. And every couple of years, we’ll watch the movie, and it’s like watching home movies, seeing the ranch onscreen.”
Once everyone had put the nightmares of making Heaven’s Gate behind them, Bridges had himself a new house, but he still had to get it to where he wanted to be. The actor resided in Arizona’s Paradise Alley, which meant he had to have the whorehouse, cabin, and barn from the film deconstructed, packed onto a flatbed truck, and then relocated 200 miles south of Montana.
Most movies would have torn down the sets and had them recycled for further usage, but as history knows all too well, Heaven’s Gate was far from the average production.
