Frank Costello
Cimino spent two and a half years working with James Toback on "The Life and Dreams of Frank Costello", a biopic on the life of mafia boss Frank Costello, for 20th Century Fox. "We got a good screenplay together," said Cimino, "but again, the studio, 20th Century Fox in this case, was going through management changes and the script was put aside." Cimino added, ""Costello" took a long time because Costello himself had a long, interesting life. The selection of things to film was quite hard. While working on the Costello biopic, Cimino wrote a biography on Janis Joplin called "Pearl", also for 20th Century Fox. "It's almost a musical," replied Cimino, "I was working with Bo Goldman on that one and we were doing a series of rewrites." "All these projects were in the air at once," Cimino recalled, "I postponed "The Fountainhead" until we had a first draft on "Pearl", then after meetings with Jimmy began Frank Costello."