But who could play the madam? When the role was turned down by the era’s leading female stars, Jane Fonda and Diane Keaton, Cimino chose Isabelle Huppert, never mind that few people in America had heard of the French starlet. Bach and his fellow UA executive, David Field, were dismayed, but they struck a deal with their director. They would fly to Paris and meet Huppert, and if she impressed them, she could have the role. She didn’t.

In Final Cut, Bach says that Huppert was “too young... too French... too contemporary... too uncertain in her reading. She was simply wrong.” When Cimino dug in his heels, Bach raised one last ungentlemanly objection: “For Christ’s sake, Michael. Kristofferson and Walken are so much more attractive than she is that the audience will spend the entire film wondering why they’re [having sex with] her instead of each other!” But Cimino stuck to his guns and Bach and Field surrendered theirs. Production hadn’t even started, but everyone knew where they stood. Bach and Field had learnt that they couldn’t trust Cimino, and Cimino had learnt that he could get his own way.

Into the wild

Worse still, as far as the studio was concerned, was that the film was to be shot far from Hollywood, on location in Wyoming, and the only producer there to keep an eye on Cimino was his close friend, Joann Carelli. She wasn’t about to ask him to cut any corners. And so, Cimino set about making what is still the most gloriously scenic and meticulously detailed Western ever seen. Every ingredient had to be impeccable, even if that meant building a Wild West town, piling the roads with thousands of tonnes of earth, transporting a vintage steam train from a museum in Montana at a cost of $150,000, and signing up 1200 extras, all of whom were dressed in authentic period costumes, and many of whom were sent to a daily “Cimino Camp” where they were taught everything from horse-riding and shooting to rollerskating and cock-fighting. One day, a crowd of those extras sat around for hours while Cimino waited for the light to change, and when an Assistant Director suggested, mid-afternoon, that it might be time for a lunchbreak, Cimino snapped, “Lunch? This is bigger than lunch!” The cast and crew nicknamed him “Ayatollah Cimino”.