enjoyed tremendous popularity and influence. Producer Charles Joffe told filmmaker Xan Cassavetes that the primary reason Woody Allen's Annie Hall won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1977 was because it had played so frequently on Z Channel during the weeks the awards were being voted on. Jerry Harvey's first significant coup came in 1982, when studio executive David Chasman alerted him that the director's cut of Heaven's Gate, written and directed by Michael Cimino, was lying fallow in a British vault. Few had seen this version since its one-week run in Manhattan, in November 1980. (The film had been so viciously attacked that it was generally believed, even by studio insiders, that Cimino's original version had ceased to exist altogether.) Harvey retrieved this one remaining print and gave it a highly publicized "world premiere" on December 24, 1982. The success of this airing was consequential. Cimino's version was shortly released on home video, where it is now the only version available. Although Harvey saw to it that "Z" (as it was affectionately known by its subscribers and devotees) kept commercial pace with its rivals HBO, Showtime and The Movie Channel by showing the latest box office hits, Z's primary appeal to viewers lay in its devotion to films that were passionate, and personal. A 2004 documentary directed by Xan Cassavetes, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, detailed Harvey's life and accomplishments. Altman and Harris attested to Harvey's great sympathy and inspirational value as a champion of film. Younger filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, and Jim Jarmusch likewise acknowledged the influence of "The Z" on their own work. Personal life The film also chronicles Harvey's often-tragic history with women. One of Harvey's older sisters, Ann, committed suicide, in 1978; but while the oldest sister, Mary, was believed to have committed suicide in 1975 (as a body had washed up on the beach), she was alive at least as late as 2004, as she was tracked down by one of two children she had borne and subsequently put up for adoption. Mary suffered from one or more mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, and lived in a halfway house in Silverlake as late as 2008, when the facility was torn down in order to build luxury condos. However, Mary's survival was unknown to Harvey, and these deaths haunted him, helping destroy two longtime relationships: first with actress Doreen Ringer-Ross, who lived with Harvey