- Gapay, a freelance writer and former Wall Street Journal reporter, wanted to do a story on the filming of the movie "Heaven's Gate" near where he lived in western Montana. Unable to obtain any cooperation from the film company, he got a job on the film as an extra. He used that position to write, unknown to the production company, an extensive story for the Los Angeles Times on the making of - and many problems on - the film.
- Born in Hungary.
- In a 2003 piece for the Los Angeles Times by Kristina Sauerwein, Gapay was tracked down. He was by then almost 60 years old and homeless, living out of a Toyota pickup while doing freelance writing on library computers. Gapay himself wrote about his homelessness for USA Today and the Los Angeles Times. Eventually, he got an apartment for low-income seniors. He wrote a remembrance piece about director Michael Cimino after Cimino's death in 2016 for the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana.
- Former staff-writer for The Wall Street Journal.
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