Michelangelo Antonioni
«Zabriskie Point»

«Zabriskie Point» was to be Antonioni's greatest triumph, a bold affirmation of his commercial ascendance in America, and a provocative document of the political injustice, civil warfare, and extreme moral and cultural polarities defining the end of the 1960s. The eagerly awaited successor to his stunning 1966 success, «Blow-Up,» the film was to be nothing less than Antonioni's portrait of the United States—and by extension, Western society—at war with itself. And it was to be a film made with the kind of financial largess, technical facilities, and corporate indulgence that only a major, old-school Hollywood studio like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in its infinite blockbuster fantasies, could sanction.
But just about everything that could go wrong with the project did go wrong, and Antonioni's great dream would prove to be his worst nightmare. Released in March 1970 after nearly two arduous years in production—a period that included long, exhausting shoots on location in the California desert, pitched battles between Antonioni and M-G-M executives, and a protracted, frustrating search for the perfect musical score. «Zabriskie Point» was one of the most extraordinary disasters in modern cinematic history. Where «Blow-Up» (the first release in Antonioni's three-picture deal with M-G-M) had taken in more than $20 million at the box office, «Zabriskie Point» made less than a tenth of that—a mere $900,000—in its humiliatingly brief theatrical run.

(Source: http://www.sci.fi/~phinnweb/links/cinema/directors/antonioni/zabriskie/)