Happy Birthday John Milius! (Part 1)

John Frederick Milius was born on the 11th of April 1944 in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. 

He is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer.

When Milius was seven, his father sold his business "Milius Shoe Company" that had been started by his grandfather in 1923, With his new found wealth his father retired moved the family to Bel Air, California.

John Milius became an enthusiastic surfer. At 14, his parents then sent him to a small private school in the mountains of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, because he was becoming

"a juvenile delinquent". At school Milius became a voracious reader and started to write short stories,

"I had learned very early, to write in almost any style. I could write in fluent Hemingway, or in fluent Melville, or Conrad, or Jack Kerouac, and whatever."

"My religion is surfing", Milius said in 1976, adding that "the other thing that influenced me throughout my youth was my involvement with things Japanese. I studied judo, kendo, and painting. I felt more comfortable with things Japanese and with Japanese people than I did with Europeans ... feudalism in any country, at any period, fascinates me ... I understand the reasoning of people in Asia, it makes sense to me. Zen is very sensible, the whole way of feeling things is logical, whereas many of the Western-motivated things—greed, business sense—I'm not comfortable with, I don't understand their rationale."

Milius attempted to join the Marine Corps to volunteer for Vietnam War service in the late 1960s, but was rejected due to a "chronic" asthma.

"I'd have given anything to be a Marine", said Milius. "It was totally demoralizing", he said later. "I missed going to my war. It probably caused me to be obsessed with war ever since."

During a rainy day on a summer vacation in Hawaii in 1962, he stumbled upon a movie theatre showing a week of Akira Kurosawa films and fell in love with cinema.

So he went and studied film at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, which he chose because it was an elitist school that trained people for Hollywood. His classmates included George Lucas, Basil Poledouris (composer, conductor of film & television scores) & Randal Kleiser (film and television director, producer, screenwriter and actor, best known for directing the 1978 film Grease)

Milius's first completed script was "Los Gringos" (1968).

He later said. "It was sort of like The Wild Bunch ... there was a lot of killing and shooting and riding and dust ... sombreros. ... It was a pretty good idea, actually. It had everything, and it was certainly as original as The Wild Bunch, but it wasn't as skillfully written as later stuff."

He followed this with "The Last Resort" (1969) Neither films were ever made, but due to them being optioned by production companies they still earned  him $5,000.

Milius then got a summer job working in the story department of American International Pictures worked at AIP under producer Larry Gordon (who went on to be a legendary Film Producer of exploitation/ Blaxploitation and action films) reading scripts. They eventually collaborated on a rewrite of the screenplay for the movie The Devil's 8 (1968) an action drama about moonshine drivers which totally ripped off "The Dirty Dozen" (1968).

To mix things up The Devil's 8 (1968) was actually made! 

In a contemporary review for the Los Angeles Times, critic Kevin Thomas called The Devil's 8 "an amiably preposterous, rambunctious picture ... As silly as it is, The Devil's 8 at least moves mercifully fast, has a sense of humor and packs plenty of action."

But he co-wrote a movie that was actually made! 

Milius's name was mentioned in a 1968 Time magazine article about the new generation of Hollywood filmmakers along with George Lucas and Martin Scorsese. This was read by Mike Medavoy, who became Milius's agent. Medavoy called Milius

"a badboy mad genius in a teenager's body, but he was a good and fast writer with original ideas."

John began to get writing commissions. He wrote a script entitled "The Texans" for Paramount, a contemporary version of Red River from 1948, It didn't get made although Sam Peckinpah was briefly onboard to direct, Milius later said "it wasn't very good".

He also wrote an original called "Truck Driver" (aka The Haul) which was purchased by a Hollywood production company, although this was also never made. Milius later said he "didn't do a good job" with these two early scripts "because in both cases I was influenced by the people who had hired me. They said put this in and put that in, and I went along with it. Every time I went along with something in my whole career it usually didn't work. Usually there's a price to pay. You think of selling out, but there is a price to pay. Usually what people want you to do is make it current."

In 1971 Milius was hired to do a rewrite on a script...  You may have heard of...

The same year he wrote the script for the 1971 "Evel Knievel" bio pic that starred George Hamilton, which took 8 times its budget at the Box Office. 

He wrote "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" (1972) that starred Paul Newman
Jacqueline Bisset, the film was a massive hit taking $16,530,578 at the Box Office against a production budget of $4 million.

In 1972 John Milius's script "Jeremiah Johnson" was made by Warner Bros. directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford. It took $44.7 million at the Box Office against a Budget of $3.1 million. 

In 1973 Milius was hired to come up with the original story then co-wrote the screenplay for "Magnum Force" the sequel "Dirty Harry" (1971) so this time he was very much credited and it was also a massive hit. 

"Being a director is the only way anyone will listen to you in Hollywood, It's the next best thing to being a star." John Milius

Gangster films were popular at the time so American Independent Pictures offered John the chance to direct one if he would write it for a fraction of his regular fee.

Milius agreed and wrote and directed "Dillinger" (1973).

"I deliberately chose Dillinger because he was a pure criminal", said Milius. "Robbing banks to right social wrongs did not come into it."

The movie was moderately successful and launched Milius's directing career.

Film critics at the time grouped Milius in with the emerging "movie brats" generation of filmmakers that included George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick &

Martin Scorsese. 

John Milius had a busy year in 1975 not only did he write and direct "The Wind and the Lion" but he was called in again for some more uncredited "Script Doctoring", It is an open secret in Hollywood that he did a rewrite on...

Milius apparently did a hefty rewrite and tightened up the dialog for the film in general and he wrote the "USS Indianapolis" monologue which is delivered by Robert Shaw as Quint and I think its one of the most powerful scenes in Cinema.  

Also In 1975, Milius formed his own production company called "The A Team", with Buzz Feitshans, who had edited "Dillinger". They had secured a five-year deal with Warner Bros.

The A Team motto was "Civitas Sine Prudentia", which translates as "Social Irresponsibility"

"I believe in it" said MIlius.

Their first production was an autobiographical surfing picture, "Big Wednesday" (1978)

Milius wrote the script with his friend and fellow surfer, journalist Denny Aaberg.

It was inspired by a short story Aaberg had published in a 1974 Surfer Magazine entitled

"No Pants Mance", When writing the script Milius and Aaberg interviewed a lot of their surfer friends from the 1960's. Aaberg said "it took about a year to write" the script. "We very much want it to be authentic. That's important to me because I'm a real surfer. So's John."

Disappointingly the critics were not kind to "Big Wednesday" Janet Maslin, critic for The New York Times wrote, "The surprise is not that Mr. Milius has made such a resoundingly awful film, but rather that he's made a bland one"

Due to the scale of the production the film cost $11 million to make and bombed at the box office taking in less than half of its budget.

Milius's friendship with George Lucas saw the pair trade percentage points of the profits of their upcoming films, Milius received a share in the profits from "Star Wars" (1977) and Lucas was entitled to a profit share in "Big Wednesday" (1978) It is estimated Milius pocketed

$1.5 million ($7m adjusted for inflation) from Star Wars and Lucas received zero from Milius's picture, (I'm sure Lucas was just happy he didn't get an invoice)

But as you will be more than aware Box Office performance is not a metric to gauge a films quality. Big Wednesday has gone on to be a true cult classic. 

The story goes back in the early 1970's Milius was offered $17,000 to rewrite the film

"Skin Game" (1971) but then Francis Ford Coppola made a competing offer of $15,000 for Milius to write him an adaptation of the legendary 1899 novel "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad but change the setting from the Congo to The Vietnam War.

John took Coppola up on his offer and later he said,

"One of the nicest times in my life was writing Apocalypse Now."