Firstly, Michael Cimino has joined Twitter. Yes, seriously. The director who has been the subject of much speculation and chatter over the past few decades after falling from grace with "Heaven's Gate" is enjoying a bit of return around the sun, feted at the Venice Film Festival as the restored version of the infamous picture screened during the summer. And with the Criterion Collection issuing it in a lovely edition (read our breakdown of the set right here) it looks like the press shy director is ready to straighten a few things out.
And indeed, he's only been online less than day and he's already dropped a pretty interesting nugget. Responding to a Twitter joke that he was going to direct an all-dancing "Star Wars: Episode 7" that would be 3.5 hours long, Cimino replied: "Unfair & unfunny. I made a unique pitch for the 2nd film in 1978/9."
Of course, he's talking about "Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back," and it's both pretty interesting and not that surprising. Lucas courted a lot of directors for the sequels, perhaps the most famous being David Lynch for "Star Wars: Episode VI – Return Of The Jedi" (you can check out the great anecdote about that right here). Hopefully Cimino will reveal a bit more about what his approach would've been, but for now, he says that he wants to release more of his films on Criterion. [via Bleeding Cool]
UPDATE: This twitter account is 110% fake.
We should have known that Cimino would never EVER list his birth year as 1939. That being said, with so many outlets being fooled, I wish that the person behind this account had stuck it out a bit longer.
It's just crazy enough to work.