This movie is notorious for the amount of animal abuse that took place during production, including real cockfights and decapitated chickens. Horses were tortured, and at least four died. The outcry prompted the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers to contractually authorize the American Humane Society to monitor the use of all animals in all filmed media.
Sir John Hurt spent so long waiting around for something to do that he made The Elephant Man (1980), then came back to shoot more scenes for this movie.
Wondering why they were paying so much to rent the land where they were filming, United Artists checked local records. The owner turned out to be writer and director Michael Cimino.
Willem Dafoe, in his feature-film debut, appears briefly as a cockfighter in the crowd. His role was supposed to be much larger, but he was fired before most of it was filmed. He was originally cast because director Michael Cimino wanted actors who looked foreign and could speak in another language. During his audition, Dafoe had greatly impressed Cimino with a monologue in Dutch that a friend had written down for him in phonetic English. However, during the shoot, Cimino wanted Dafoe to improvise another text, which he couldn't since he didn't really speak Dutch. Annoyed, Cimino then added Dafoe to a crowd of other actors. During an 8-hour lighting set-up, an extra told him a joke to pass the time, to which Dafoe laughed audibly. Cimino heard this and told Dafoe to go to his hotel room, where he was later told by an assistant director that he had shot all of his scenes admirably, and they no longer needed him. Consequently, Dafoe is uncredited in the final cut. Humiliated by the experience, he was surprised that years later Cimino asked him to appear in a movie he was making; Dafoe said no. He later narrated Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate (2004).
Jeff Bridges salvaged the log cabin from the set of this movie, and now uses it as a family getaway in Montana.