Kris Kristofferson’s 1980 Western Misfire Almost Starred John Wayne Instead

Under the best of conditions, Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate” was never going to be an easy sell to a studio, nor to moviegoers. Written in 1971, seven years before the writer-director’s “The Deer Hunter” won five Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), the film was to be an epic account of the Johnson County, Wyoming range wars waged by cattlemens’ associations versus alleged rustlers (many of whom were simply small farmers and ranchers). This might all sound terribly exciting, fraught with action even, but even on a commercial success like “The Deer Hunter,” Cimino evinced an unconventional method of storytelling. He liked to soak the audience in the distinct lives of his characters so that the small and/or massive tragedies of their lives — and just about everyone meets a tragic terminus in Cimino’s prime work — resonate with a sense of the personal. He wants us to know these people.

So it makes sense that Cimino, when he tried to get “Heaven’s Gate” before cameras earlier in the 1970s, sought out John Wayne for the lead role of Averill, a Harvard-educated marshal who can only keep the peace for so long in Johnson County before the big-money ranchers start executing the so-called outlaws on their death list.

Wayne would’ve brought amazing gravitas to the part of Averill, and clearly, the script was good enough to merit a greenlight in the late 1970s, despite its daunting length and expense (the failed $44 million production infamously spurred Transamerica to sell United Artists to MGM in 1981). So what happened?

Wayne was riding as high in the saddle as ever after winning the 1969 Best Actor Oscar for “True Grit,” but his health was shaky. He’d fought off cancer in the mid-1960s, but decades of heavy smoking and drinking had taken their toll on the once athletic star’s body. Factor in Cimino’s exacting methods (he wasn’t above shooting 50-plus takes of the same scene if he wasn’t getting precisely what he wanted out of his actors), and it’s easy to see the no-nonsense Duke skedaddling from the production early and angrily. He’d worked with some of the best directors to ever do it (e.g. John Ford and Howard Hawks), and loved them in large part because they weren’t precious. They were prolific artists, and both were as eager to move on to the next project as Wayne.

Wayne was also in his sixties when he was to have played Averill, and honestly, he looked older than that onscreen. The legendary actor and musician Kris Kristofferson, who wound up playing Averill (and who passed away yesterday at the age of 88), was in his forties when he took on the part, and it’s hard to imagine a better, more ruggedly handsome fit.

It might seem strange to say anything worked out for the best in relation to “Heaven’s Gate,” though Christopher Walken thinks it deserves better, but hopefully the loss of Kristofferson will inspire more people to give the immensely underrated and misunderstood movie a shot. I think it’s a classic — difficult to be sure, and long in runtime, but ultimately rewarding in a way few Hollywood films have the patience to be.