Michael Cimino

Michael Antonio Cimino ( chim-EE-noh, Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo tʃiˈmiːno]; February 3, 1939 – July 2, 2016) was an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. Notorious for his obsessive attention to detail and determination for perfection, Cimino achieved widespread fame with The Deer Hunter (1978), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. With a background in painting and architecture, Cimino began his career as a commercial director in New York before moving to Los Angeles in the early 1970s to take up screenwriting. After co-writing the scripts for both Silent Running (1972) and Magnum Force (1973), he wrote the preliminary script for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974).