Despite his role in Cimino's Heaven's Gate, Steven Bach appreciation and understanding of film extends far beyond what he is most associated with. Final Cut is not only one of the most intriguing books on the industry, it is also an exemplary memoir and piece of non-fiction writing.
Steven Bach, who as a studio executive at United Artists took the fall for the colossal failure of the western epic “Heaven’s Gate” but went on to write “Final Cut,” a gripping insider account of the debacle, died on Wednesday at his home in Arlington, Vt. He was 70 and also had a home in Munich.
The cause was cancer, said Robert Lescher, his agent.
At United Artists, where he became senior vice president in charge of worldwide production in 1978, Mr. Bach had the misfortune to be associated with one of the greatest cinematic disasters in Hollywood history, the 1980 film “Heaven’s Gate,” a sprawling historical drama about range wars in Wyoming in the 1890s. Under the direction of Michael Cimino, whose film “The Deer Hunter” had recently won five Academy Awards, the film grew to enormous length — the first version screened in New York ran three and a half hours — and ended up costing $36 million, five times the budget of an average studio film at the time.
The reviews were savage, even after the film had been drastically shortened.
“If the film was formless at four hours, it was insipid at 140 minutes,” Roger Ebert wrote. “At either length it is so incompetently photographed and edited that there are times when we are not even sure which character we are looking at.”
The box office was worse. “It is as if somebody called every household in the country and said, ‘There will be a curse on your family if you go see this picture,’ ” one United Artists executive said.
In the aftermath Mr. Bach was fired. He turned around and documented his experience in “Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of ‘Heaven’s Gate’ ” (1985), regarded as a classic insider account of Hollywood.
“It is the best book ever written about the making of a movie,” the film critic David Thomson said. “It gives you an understanding of the battles, the egos, and how a film like that could come about. It’s all the more remarkable because he’s one of the stooges in the story: he let it happen, and he admits that.”
Mr. Bach was born in Pocatello, Idaho, and attended high school in Boise. After studying at the Sorbonne and earning a degree in French and English from Northwestern University in 1961, he taught American literature at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill.
In 1966 he moved to Los Angeles and, after working in public relations, earned a doctorate in film at the University of Southern California, writing a dissertation on the films of Josef von Sternberg.
For the next decade he worked as a story editor on theatrical and film projects with the producer Gabriel Katzka, and as executive story editor for Palomar Pictures International, which produced “Sleuth” and “The Heartbreak Kid.”
As a partner in Pantheon Pictures in the early 1970s, he helped produce the plays “The Comedians” and “Anna Christie,” with Liv Ullmann, on Broadway, and several films, including “The Parallax View,” “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” and “Mr. Billion.”
As vice president and head of international production at United Artists, Mr. Bach did more than preside over the “Heaven’s Gate” affair. He helped bring to the screen critically or commercially successful films like “Raging Bull,” “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” “Stardust Memories,” “Annie Hall,” “Eye of the Needle,” “Cutter and Bone” and “True Confessions.”
No matter. Close proximity to “Heaven’s Gate” sealed his fate and that of the studio, which was sold to MGM while “Heaven’s Gate” was being shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
Mr. Bach, regarded as perhaps too much of an intellectual and a gentleman to run a studio, turned his hand to writing and teaching. He wrote three well-received biographies: “Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend” (1992), “Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart” (2001) and “Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl” (2007).
In the late 1990s he taught in the film program at Columbia University and for the last decade he taught film and literature at Bennington College.
He is survived by his companion, Werner Röhr.
He lived long enough to see critical opinion begin to shift on “Heaven’s Gate.” “That’s the final irony,” Mr. Thomson said. “I think it’s a much more interesting picture than its legend would lead one to believe. It wouldn’t surprise me if one day it’s regarded as a great film.”
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