I don’t know what took me so long, but I finally signed up for the Netflix. I figure I spend at least $20 a month on late fees from my local video emporiums, so it seems to be the sensible thing to do (since Netflix has no late fees). I suppose I should feel a twinge of guilt about abandoning the local businesses, but I’m not, really – there’s still plenty of oddities and items of dubious legality I’ll only be able to find at your Vulcan or I Luv Video. But why should I pay $10-15 just because I keep forgetting to return that rented copy of Big Fish? (That was a hypothetical example. I have not seen Big Fish. I’m afraid it will make me want to jump off a ferry.)

Anyway, I had seen a Trio documentary based on Final Cut, a book I read some years ago about the making of Heaven’s Gate and subsequent unmaking of United Artists. Somehow I’d never gotten around to seeing Heaven’s Gate, so I made it one of my inaugural Netflix offerings. Could it possibly be as bad as its reputation, or was it a neglected masterpiece just waiting to be rediscovered?

Well, let me tell ya, I spent four days trying to get through this thing. It opens with a commencement scene at Harvard in 1870, in which fortysomethings like Kris Kristofferson and John Hurt would have me believe they are fresh-faced college graduates. I guess people looked older in them days, but we’re talking about two of the craggiest actors of our time here. Anyway, this scene sets the pace for the movie, which is roughly equivalent to my grandmother’s pace in the Boston Marathon. (That was a facetious analogy. My grandmother has not, to my knowledge, participated in the Boston Marathon.)

Seriously, the West was settled in less time than it takes Kristofferson to get off his train in Wyoming. Pretty much every scene goes on approximately three times longer than it should. Michael Cimino really thought he was making an epic here – every half-hour or so there’s a new would-be tour-de-force of a set piece, but the only one that really works is the roller-skating sequence that ends with Kristofferson helping drunken Jeff Bridges out the door into a gorgeous sepia-toned Vilmos Zsigmond cloud o’ dust, then going back in to dance with his gal. And even that could have ended a minute or two sooner.

Anyway, on my fourth attempt at getting to the end of this thing, the picture finally fades to black and this word comes up on the screen: INTERMISSION. Well, that was the end of it for me. Maybe the second half is mind-blowing, but I’ll never know.