MICHAEL CIMINO, the Oscar-winning director whose film “The Deer Hunter” became one of the great triumphs of Hollywood’s 1970s heyday, and whose disastrous “Heaven’s Gate” helped bring that era to a close, has died.

    Cimino died Saturday at 77, Los Angeles County acting coroner’s Lt. B. Kim confirmed. He said Cimino had been living in Beverly Hills but did not yet have further details on the circumstances of his death.

    Eric Weissmann, a friend and former lawyer of Cimino’s, said friends had been unable to reach Cimino by phone for the last few days and called the police, who found him dead in his bed.

    Cimino’s masterpiece was 1978’s “The Deer Hunter,” the story of the Vietnam War’s effect on a small steel-working town in Pennsylvania. The film won five Academy Awards, including best picture and best director for Cimino. It helped lift the emerging-legend status of Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep. Christopher Walken also won an Oscar for best supporting actor.

    Despite controversy over its portrayal of the North Vietnamese and use of the violent game Russian roulette, the film was praised by some critics as the best American movies since “The Godfather” six years earlier.

    Cimino’s emerging career then took a U-turn with 1980’s “Heaven’s Gate,” a Western starring Kris Kristofferson and Walken that was a critical and financial disaster.

    Its initial budget of US$11.5 million would balloon to US$44 million after marketing. While those numbers are meager by today’s standards, at the time they were enough to hasten the demise of United Artists, and of Cimino’s career. Some say it helped bring down the director-driven renaissance that had fueled much of the great work of the 1970s, giving way to a business-and-blockbuster mentality that would dominate the decades that followed.

    Cimino became an eccentric figure even for Hollywood, living in solitude, constantly changing his appearance, claiming allergies to both alcohol and sunshine.

    Born in New York City and raised on Long Island, Cimino graduated from Yale in 1961, and he earned a master’s degree from the University of New Haven in 1963, both in painting.

    His first film came with 1974’s “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,” a heist picture with Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges playing the title characters that led to his landing “The Deer Hunter.”

    Cimino worked only sporadically in the years that followed “Heaven’s Gate,” and with no success. His remaining films were 1985’s “Year of the Dragon,” 1987’s “The Sicilian,” 1990’s “Desperate Hours,” and 1996’s “Sunchaser.”(SD-Agencies)