The orthodox way of dealing with maverick spenders was to punish them. Yet a growing number of CPOs are realising that staff who buck the trend could be doing them a favour.
The grass was the final straw. Executives from United Artists, already troubled by the soaring costs of Michael Cimino’s monumental Western Heaven’s Gate, went to visit him on location in 1979. The perfectionist director, who had just triumphed with The Deer Hunter, was filming the climactic battle sequence when Steven Bach and David Field arrived from the studio.