Original subtitles

WwW.SubYab.CoM MILIUS : I'm not a pure filmmaker.

MILIUS : I don't sit there and say...

"Oh, the juxtaposition of images and color and graphics."

MILIUS : I don't give a damn about that stuff.

So, my whole concept of what I do...

goes back to the old theme of telling the story...

of the Homeric thing of being able to tell the tale of the Trojan Wars...

again and again and passed down until finally, you know, it's written down by somebody.

Nobody knows who Homer was, you know.

KILGORE : We'll come in low out of the rising sun.

At about a mile out, we'll put on the music.

Music?

Yeah, I use Wagner. Scares the hell out of the slopes. My boys love it.

( "FLIGHT OF THE VALKYRIES" PLAYING )

I'm John Milius, I'm a filmmaker, an historian and a storyteller.

AL RUDDY : John Milius had more movies made...

than any writer in the history of Hollywood.

He was really one of the first guys who said, "Hey, this is how people talk."

Do I feel lucky?

Well, do ya', punk?

He doesn't write for pussies and he doesn't write for women.

He writes for men, because he's a man.

He's not one of those directors that just goes from one movie to the next and he's a hired gun.

It has to be in him.

He made the most defining films of those decades.

This man participated in or directly wrote and directed...

these great films with these great parts in it.

It's pretty staggering to-- to realize the journey he took to get there.

What's interesting about John is he has a personality that is bigger than the movies.

John is such an interesting person, and such a great storyteller, just in life.

Francis couldn't tell a story like John.

George is a great storyteller. He couldn't tell a story like John. None of us.

I mean, he's a poet from the top of his head to the bottom of his toes.

He likes to blow it up, bigger than life.

And then he's created this... persona.

I've heard that he referred to himself as a Zen anarchist.

This gun-toting kind of Wild Bill character--

I hear Milius pulled a gun on some executive.

I like John, because he says what he thinks...

although I sometimes worry that he doesn't think.

RANDAL KLEISER : He's the Teddy bear with an AK-47.

He wanted to make himself into a legend.

MILIUS : I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri.

It was a nice, Midwestern kind of life, you know?

Everything was normal, you know, it snowed in the winter.

MILIUS : My family was okay, they were pretty dysfunctional.

MILIUS : All three children usually were trying to kill each other.

My dad's father, my grandfather.

had a shoe company called Milius Shoe Company.

And he had basically retired when my dad was young.

MILIUS : My father was quite a bit old, he was 58 when he sired me.

So I really came from more of a different generation.

My heroes, when I was a little kid...

were the incomparable Gene Autry, Roy Rogers.

John Wayne was an equal influence.

Oddly enough, Chuck Yeager...

because he broke the sound barrier and he was the greatest test pilot.

We'd stayed in St. Louis, you know, until I was seven.

We'd moved to California.

AMANDA MILIUS : It was right around the Bel-Air Country Club.

My dad was becoming, you know...

a teenager and he really rebelled.

I think he didn't like that kind of country club sort of society.

And I don't think it likes him.

There's something about his personality that is sort of oppositional.

If the counter-culture was going left, he was gonna go right...

to be the opposite of the counter-culture.

He was trying to be as controversial in a way as possible.

So for everything he did, he was going to push off in a different direction.

You know, the day would come when I'd been in school long enough and I'd be, you know...

drafted or enlist and go to Vietnam and probably never come back.

Matter of fact, I didn't plan on coming back.

MILIUS : I was gonna be a Naval aviator...

and I planned that I probably wouldn't live past 26, because I didn't see any point in it.

You know, he came from a generation that had an education...

that espoused learning about the Classics.

It was his way of living through those characters...

that he was exercising that sort of deep-seeded issue within himself...

to be that guy who goes into the military and sacrifices his life...

or is willing to sacrifice his life.

He couldn't do those things.

Then he had this moment...

where he was kind of aware of his lack of importance in the world...

and that he hadn't done anything of meaning.

And I wandered into a theater, and they were playing a week of Kurosawa films.

MILIUS : I saw just about everything he made.

It never occurred to me what a director was.

And after seeing those Kurosawa films...

I realized that the idea of making films or writing films or something like that...

and though I wanted a military career...

I never was able to have a military career, because I had asthma.

Um, you know, being a director is about the next best thing.

MILIUS : And I ended up at USC. SC is the West Point of Hollywood.

I think at that time there were only three film schools in the United States.

WALTER MURCH : It's hard to imagine that today...

but it was NYU in New York, USC and UCLA.

BRYAN SINGER : What USC is now is very different than what it was then.

They were working out of these small shacks--

MILIUS : Which had been converted into classrooms and a production stage.

Now it's harder to get into the film school than med school.

There's thousands and thousands of students trying to be directors today.

Back then, there was just a handful of us.

Sort of the pack at USC, there was a group of us.

I don't know, probably a dozen or so who really loved movies.

Really were aggressive and were very consumed by making movies...

and we were part of that group.

Now, John, on the other hand, was this big, burly guy that was a complete Californian...

who was a big surfer...

and just had this huge, sort of dominant physical presence.

I met John in the dark.

It was at a screening of some student films from the previous year.

After one film, this voice from the back, which I came to recognize as John's voice...

said, "This film doesn't have enough moxie!"

I remember John came in once, I'll never forget.

He's probably forgotten this.

He came in, he had a huge sombrero on, and he came in looking like a Mexican bandito.

And he was a very intimidating figure like that.

You gotta remember this was college in the 60's...

and John's point of view was considerably different...

than most people's point of view at the school there.

ANNOUNCER : Draft card burnings became common...

and the chant of "Hell no, we won't go!" was the theme of the protest generation.

Hippies used to wear buttons that said "Nirvana Now"...

and they had a piece sign on them.

And it was like Nirvana Now, you know?

And so I took one of those buttons and modified it...

so that the peace sign looked like a B-52... and put Apocalypse Now.

And then I put one with just a mushroom cloud, you know, let's get it over with!

Talking once and he said, "You know, I'm really a hippie.

People think that I'm right-wing, but I'm really a hippie.

It's just that the hippies wouldn't elect me king and I want to be king."

There's a story that I believe to be true...

because I was there, that I've heard has been denied.

When I did my five-week project...

we did a wide-screen color movie with lots of extras and things.

Come to the Five-Week screening, they wouldn't show it.

It was all finished and everything.

And the instructor said...

"Well, we don't want to show it, because none of the other students are finished...

and this would be an embarrassment to them."

So, John got really mad at the teacher and punched him.

GEORGE LUCAS : John was on one of the opposing crews.

Even though we were on opposing teams, he would still stand up for you.

Esprit de corps was very important to him.

HARRISON FORD : He looks up to John as a big brother figure.

Obviously there's real loyalty and friendship between the two of them and a lot of history.

I'm not sure it's a big brother or a crazy uncle.

It was George and John, it was just a group that all the names were kind of bunched up.

And always orbiting around the student film festivals that they would have every year.

So, I saw his short film before I ever saw John.

"Marcello I'm So Bored".

That was a fabled film, as John was working on it...

because he was saying, "This will be the greatest film ever seen."

One of the characters, I think it's the Marcello character, says...

"I'm gonna be big, really big! I want to be really, really big"...

and it was obvious that this was a guy with an enormous talent for dialogue.

And that was my first exposure to what a John Milius was.

MILIUS : That and THX basically papered the walls.

We won a lot of stuff with those films.

If you went to film school...

the chances of going in the film industry were still pretty slim.

Forget it, you're never gonna work.

Don't try to make films that you think will appeal to Hollywood, because it's not gonna work.

Any of us had as much of a chance of getting in...

as the proverbial snowball in hell.

Even though there was no future, this was a great moment...

where you could actually make as many movies as you could possibly get away with.

STEVEN SPIELBERG : When he was coming up, of all of them...

John was considered the shining star.

John was considered the most talented and the one that was gonna be the great director.

Willard Huyck got me a job immediately the summer I got out...

working at American International Pictures, AIP.

BUZZ FEITSHANS : We were known as King of the B Movie.

MILIUS : We make exploitation films here.

We make things like "Rape Squad" or "White Mama, Black Mama".

I hired two young men, hot-shot graduates from SC Film School...

a surly rascal named Willard Huyck...

and the other a bombastic big guy and darty little eyes...

lot of fire and bullshit, his name was John Milius.

I was fired for insubordination...

and Willard was fired for surliness.

And then we were re-hired the next Monday to write a script.

I had an idea for a movie...

it was kind of something stolen from The Dirty Dozen.

But they didn't have enough money for a full dozen...

so it's called "The Devil's 8".

All right, they're coming your way. Let me take it.

Wait a second! This thing's going to explode!

One thing about you, Burl, you bluff easy, but you make damn, good whiskey.

It was so bad.

RANDAL KLEISER : There's a kind of a changing of the guard that happened...

and John was at the forefront of getting into Hollywood...

because his name was in the Hollywood Reporter.

And we all went, "Wow, look! John's name is in the Hollywood Reporter!"

Because nobody from any film school had ever gotten into the business.

And this was like cracking into it.

PETER BART : Nothing was working about Hollywood...

and the audience had basically abandoned the movie business.

The star system had broken down...

and all the studios were basically going under.

GEORGE LUCAS : This was in the mid-60's, and all the people, the Warners...

the Zuckers, the Zanucks...

all the people that created the industry were retiring...

and selling the studios to corporations...

that really didn't know that much about making movies.

So the way people get out of slumps is by making some radical choices.

It's a radical choice that becomes a hit that pulls everything out of the slump.

It's not by being conventional.

What was clear is that a new generation had to, you know, insert itself.

MARTIN SCORSESE : People like Milius and George Lucas and Coppola...

they all were lucky to come along at that time.

They fought their way out of the trenches and into public sight.

They basically went out there to change the world.

Instead of doors being slammed in their faces...

the studios were really welcoming all the new voices.

Man, we were there at the second California Gold Rush.

We were there at the biggest moment in movie history.

What can you do? How can you help us?

And John was a-- you know, he can write.

AL RUDDY : When I was a young, aspiring producer...

I called up an agent, a friend of mine, Mike Medavoy.

I walk into Al's office, and I said, "Look, I represent this really young, talented guy."

If you hire this guy, I'll owe you one big.

I'll always be indebted. Oh, I said okay.

So he gives me the name of this writer, John Milius.

I drive to the apartment.

Door opens up, this huge bear of a guy.

The apartment was a little crowded, just the two of us being there.

But to complicate matters...

John had a Rhodesian Ridgeback, which is a large dog.

It's the size of almost a small Great Dane.

He pushes the dog aside, now I'm sitting on the couch...

and the dog, he tried to jump on the couch...

and I'm trying to tell John my story, what I'm looking for.

And in typical John Milius-style, he said...

"I'll tell you what, I like your story, but I'll take the job on one other condition."

I said, "What's that?" "You just have to take this dog with you."

Ladies and gentlemen, you have no idea how good it makes me feel to be here today.

I had asked for a bunch of really interesting Hollywood writers...

to come and meet with me...

and in comes Malick and Huycks and John.

I didn't know John, I just knew of him.

I- I just want to tell you about this guy, Evel Knievel...

and Milius said, "That's just great!"

He just saw that that was Americana...

and a crazy character that represented America and he got it.

So, then I tried to negotiate with him, and I said...

"You know what, John, I'm already making lots of movies."

I said, "I know, I know you're an important writer." I said, "What do you want?"

He said, "I want girls, gold and guns."

So I called one of my guys and said go get me some of those old piston-sprung hookers...

that you know running around Hollywood.

So they said, "Where is this gonna be?"

I said, "I have a house in Palm Springs. Anything he needs you attend to."

Let me ask you something, I said, "You want the gold, we're gonna get that for you...

but would you like some motorcycles?"

"Motorcycles," he said.

So I got him motorcycles and he was riding on the motorcycles and he was in love.

He couldn't wait to get down to Palm Springs.

A week's gone by and I call my guys up, I have two guys attending.

I said, "How's it going?" They said, "Not good."

I said, "What do you mean, not good?" He said, "He hasn't written anything." Uh-huh.

He took the script that this English guy wrote, Alan Caillou wrote out by the pool.

He beat it with an oar until it sunk.

So, I said, "You tell him, and tell him it comes from me.

He can't take the gun, there'd be no more riding the motorcycles...

and the girls won't mount up if he doesn't come through."

I was in the Plaza Hotel in New York.

15 telegrams arrive for me.

I realize I've this incredible film...

on telegrams, starting to come in...

and it goes like 140 telegrams or 50 telegrams.

I love what I'm reading.

I think he wrote it in three days, four days.

And he was now a terror.

You know, John was definitely, as a writer, valuable to the studios.

They loved me because I had written "Dirty Harry".

PETER BART : You know, John's name's not even on the script...

but he saved that movie.

Character definition that came from that great dialogue.

I mean, after two lines from Dirty Harry, you knew exactly who he was.

Being this is a .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world...

and would blow your head clean off...

you've got to ask yourself one question.

Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

I think he liked the grandiose.

He liked something that was-- something that would appeal to--

you know, bordering on the line...

pushing people to the edge of where you go from reality to ridiculous.

But sometimes ridiculous is more fun.

Those kind of lines always hang with you.

"Dirty Harry" was a big hit. I did "Magnum Force" after that.

John, you know, was a really good writer.

I mean, you know, that's how you become a favorite.

MILIUS : I remember that Frank Wells, who was the head of the studio.

He summoned me.

There was a note on my desk when I came in in the morning...

that Mr. Wells would like to see you.

Oh, my god, the boss! The head of the whole studio...

wants to see me for lunch today. What did I do, you know?

I went over there and he said, "Sit down, John."

He said, "We're very proud of you, you know, you've done all these movies here.

You're our best writer."

We really are very proud of you and we'd like to show--

but, you know, uh...

you have this coat that you always wear."

John came to my house for dinner one night...

and we had a nice dinner and everybody left and that was that.

And about three days later, I said to my wife...

"Is something wrong with your nose, because there's a dead rat in the house."

I said, "Yeah, yeah, that's my Spanish suede coat."

And he said, "Do you have it with you"

He said, "We're going to burn it."

And I open the closet door and almost fainted...

because John had left his coat in there by mistake. And that was the dead rat.

Burn my suede coat, but I've had that-- He says, "I want you to look out...

in the Horseshoe Driveway there at Warner Brothers."

He says, "See that? That's a limousine.

You're gonna get in that limousine and they're gonna take you to Beverly Hills.

And there's a salesman there, he's gonna fit you out with two sport coats...

two tweed sport coats, the best they have.

Because we're very proud of you and we want you to look good and we just want to burn that one."

I'm gonna feel like I'm losing something, but I guess I'm gaining something, too.

He says, "That's a good way to look at it."

I mean, every script of John's was great, you know.

It didn't necessarily happen in the first round...

but John was not the greatest at rewriting himself...

because I think he thought that everything he wrote was exactly the way he wanted it.

"Jeremiah Johnson", they really only shot about 60 percent of the script.

John Milius' screenplay was mythical, as all of Milius' material is mythical.

But John Milius' screenplay was primarily a piece of violence...

as almost all of Milius' stuff is.

The original Milius script was about a guy who ran out and ate trees and ate livers.

Ripped Indians' bodies apart and ate the livers and blood and screamed.

The work that John did dealt with something very primal...

and very truthful to the human condition is--

and was not shy in any way expressing political opinions...

or behavior that was not fashionable.

In those days, Milius was terribly proud...

of his sort of macho image and played it to the hilt.

Half kidding, half not.

You know, he drove around with a bunch of shotguns in his car and hunting dogs.

John, you know, was very charismatic in that way...

because he aspired to be bigger than life.

Well, I think John, in many ways, has a kind of jealousy for the characters he's written...

and would like to slip into their costumes and play them.

AMANDA MILIUS : Those are the kind of characters he likes...

so he wants to be like that.

That's his favorite thing, is the kind of extreme man that has no fear.

I didn't really believe it that much, but I thought it was a gas.

MARTIN SCORSESE : John Milius is, you know, a symbol of what the 70's was.

Probably at heart, we're not terribly far apart.

John is a romantic, I think at heart, like I am, probably.

And he loved the picture "Jeremiah Johnson" when it was finished.

I think that John's sense of storytelling...

a sense is dramatic, a sense of the extreme.

He understands that movies need to be big to be interesting.

He got a job to write "Judge Roy Bean".

"Judge Roy Bean" was one of the most brilliant screenplays I've ever read.

It was just-- it was just magnificent.

You know, polished and good, you know, just blew everybody away.

The work reflected a stand that was impenetratable, you couldn't change it...

this guy really believed in what he was saying.

It was sent to Lee Marvin and Lee Marvin got the script.

His agent had sent it and he was reading it and he really liked it and he got drunk.

And he, you know, left it on his chair, and went off and passed out somewhere.

And Newman picked it up and started reading it, and took it away.

He called his people in Los Angeles and said, "Buy this script! I want to do this."

And so they came to me and they said now we want to buy the script.

I said, "Fine, I want to direct it."

They said, "No, no, that's not possible."

So there were two prices, one that was very cheap with me directing it...

and one that kept going up and up if they wanted it without me.

And they finally paid the price without me.

MILIUS : In 1972, 1973, that was a hell of a lot of money.

LAWRENCE GORDON : You know, there is no good movie without a good script.

The law says that the guilty shall be punished.

And I say it should be done in broad daylight in the open, not sneaking around.

It wasn't at all the same movie.

I mean, Huston wasn't the right person to direct it...

and Newman certainly wasn't the right person to act in it.

And they're all terrific people.

Paul Newman is one of the nicest and most intelligent people in the world.

I can't say anything against him, he just wasn't right for that movie.

As I got to be more and more expensive...

I knew that there was a certain amount of power and that I could parlay...

that into having somebody let me direct eventually.

I wanted to be a director, largely out of self defense.

This process of submitting the script to somebody who was not a creative person.

Somebody who went to Stanford or Harvard who had not a creative, in his words...

not a creative bone in their body and have them edit his script.

It utterly frustrated him, he hated it.

He hated the people who would review his scripts...

and he thought that it was a corruption of what he did.

We had this woman who was our contact with the studio...

and she came in one day and John started telling this story to her.

It was a rather detailed story.

When he got through, she just stood up and said, "That's not something that we want to do."

I think you better re-think that...

that's not a really good story," and she walked out.

John said, "Well, some people don't like Macbeth."

He had told her the story of Macbeth and she didn't know!

MARTIN SCORSESE : John Milius, he was a major figure at that time...

in my eyes and many people, as a power player in Hollywood.

I gotta 16 millimeter print of "Hell's Angels", the Howard Hughes film.

I remember Spielberg, Schrader, I think, was there, John and a few others.

And I said you have to see this thing, because the aerial sequences are amazing.

And George was about to make Star Wars.

Anyway, we showed the film, and of course it was 16 millimeter black and white.

No tinted scenes, no two-color process, it's kind of a mess.

Yet, the power of the picture was so strong, the moment the last reel finished...

John got up and the projector bulb was still flashing on the screen.

He said, "I want to say that this is the kind of film that should be made!

And it's the kind of thing we should have our minds into!"

It was a rally to make pictures that matter...

to feel so strongly about, to get up and make a speech.

Immediately as the 16 millimeter film is winding out of the projector...

this is passion of film making.

What he wanted to do is be able to control the vision he saw, he'd be able to carry out.

And I think that that was why he wanted to direct.

So I called him, told him I wanted to come by and see him.

He said, "Come over to my house tonight. I'm having people over for dinner."

He was holding court at the table.

He was "big dealing" me, as they say, and very rude to me.

And I finally got pissed off and said, "Well, look, thanks, I gotta go."

"We're you going, big boy?"

And I said, "I'm leaving, I've had enough of your bullshit, I'm going."

"I don't write for that cheap-ass AIP money any more."

"That's okay, I was gonna let you direct the movie."

He says, "You're gonna let me direct it?" I says, "Yeah, I'm gonna let you direct it."

And, of course, I would have paid him.

John, John Dillinger.

All right, everybody, hold it right where you are. This is a robbery.

He wanted to make movies about adults finally. They were enormous morality plays.

He didn't romanticize Dillinger...

in a way that Coppola romanticized the Corleone family.

He basically still said that as interesting a guy John Dillinger is, he's a criminal.

Who'd you kill, Reed?

Caught my wife and a Bible salesman, I got them in a flagrant delecto.

Let him out.

My expectations were very high, because that was the most money AIP had ever spent on a movie.

I think they were hoping to just get their money back.

LAWRENCE GORDON : Got well-reviewed, well-received. It met every expectation.

I'd put "Dillinger" right up there with "Bonnie and Clyde".

It was a great folk crime drama.

He took the genre and explored it to its fullest.

With "Dillinger", we had to move on.

A lot of John's ethics come from a time past.

And so a lot of people, when they see John or talk to John...

they sort of confuse him in a contemporary sense.

You think of him more as a man out of his time.

The movie that really is John, and sort of has a lot of his personality in it...

and really has a lot of his sense of his character...

and his beliefs is "The Wind and the Lion".

Herb Jaffe over at UA liked "Dillinger", liked me, thought I was a very talented writer.

And I told him the story of "The Wind and the Lion", and he said, "Go to it".

"The Wind and the Lion" is a crazy movie. I mean great, entertaining, but crazy.

Let's cast Sean Connery as a desert prince.

It was fun, you know, and Candy Bergen who is smitten by him.

This President Roosevelt, he would try and take it himself?

He certainly would. He is a man of grit and strong moral fiber.

He does not kidnap women and children.

And I think Teddy Roosevelt in that movie is really saying a lot of John's philosophy.

I mean John loved Teddy Roosevelt, obviously...

but when Teddy Roosevelt is describing the American character...

in terms of the grizzly bear that he's killed...

that is quintessential John Milius.

American grizzly bear was a symbol of the American character.

Strength, intelligence and ferocity.

A little blind and reckless at times, but courageous beyond all doubt.

It's fabulous.

And I was thinking that he was making this at the same time that we were making "Star Wars".

For all the mildness of George and the wildness of John...

it's the same story, it's coming of age, it's history and adventure.

GEORGE LUCAS : Those people live by the code that John lives by...

and if you understand that, you understand John.

We always worked on each other's projects, just like at school in the beginning.

I mean, when I did "The Wind and the Lion", George and his wife Marsha came...

and she was a great editor and he was a great editor...

so they told me how to move scenes around.

And Steven was always around. Steven and I hung around all the time, you know.

And so Steven was always over at my house or something.

We were always thinking of ideas and stuff.

Spielberg would call him up every once in a while and say, "Hey, I need a new idea for this."

And so John was the idea man.

Well, John had come down to the Shark Shack with me several times.

The Shark Shack was out in the San Fernando Valley.

And it was where we were building the mechanical shark and John really enjoyed it...

because he liked to kind of like stick his whole body into the maw of the shark.

You have to imagine John, who always had some girth, thrust into the shark.

And all you saw was his rear end and his legs.

And you would suddenly hear John yelling "Jaws!"...

and it would echo throughout the belly of the polyurethane, mechanical steel shark.

But because of that, you know, John was interested.

I gave John the script to read, and John read the script and thought it was a good script.

I gave him some books, that were really terrifying books about tiger hunting...

and he employed a lot of those ideas in "Jaws".

Steven had a great respect and admiration for John's ability with dialogue.

And I said, "John, I got this scene about the U.S.S. Indianapolis...

it's only two paragraphs long.

But I think this could be an epiphany for all the other guys on the boat.

The Richard Dreyfuss character, the Roy Scheider character, and the Robert Shaw character.

To be able to share this kind of catharsis about what happened in 1945.

But it's too short, and Howard's not doing any more writing on the movie...

and will you take a crack at this?"

And he said, "Sure!"

MILIUS : I wrote it over the phone.

STEVEN SPIELBERG : I got a ten-page monologue back from John...

a ten-page monologue which basically was very close to what's in the movie.

It was the perfect way of letting the world know...

and the perfect way for us to know about his personality, about Quint.

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief.

It was coming back from the island of Tinian.

The Lady had just delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb.

Robert Shaw read all ten pages and he loved every word...

but Robert said, "I can't say all this, it's too much to memorize."

It was a very compelling speech, but it was a movie by itself. It was a movie within a movie.

So Robert Shaw sat down and Robert cut the speech in half.

He did all the editing himself. He brought it down to five pages.

Another thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes...

black eyes like a doll's eyes.

My favorite shot in the story of that scene...

is when he's in the middle of it and there's this shot on me and I'm going--

What can you say when you hear a story like that?

But it's Milius' words and Shaw's editing that wound up in the final film.

He has, of course, the gift of the writer.

He knows how to write lines that deliver, sum up everything...

and it's not that the scenes of the lines really stand out...

it's that they sum up the story and the picture they're a part of.

He knows how to put the words together.

I had the opportunity at that point, there was a crossroads...

where I was gonna rewrite something else at Warner Brothers...

but I didn't like the way the movies were done...

and they had tried again and again in Hollywood to do Heart of Darkness.

Orson Welles had tried it and all these other people had tried it and nobody could do it.

Nobody could lick "Heart of Darkness".

That was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

And I was always talking about how I want do a Vietnam movie.

Nobody in Hollywood wanted to touch the hot button of Vietnam at that time.

It had "The Deer Hunter" but Apocalypse Now" is different.

WALTER MURCH : And nobody wanted to make a kind of renegade film about the war...

which is what "Apocalypse Now" in its DNA is.

And it was a great moment, because I took that fork in the road that...

you know, was dangerous.

But I said I really should do my own work.

One of my favorite movies was "Dr. Strangelove"...

and I wanted to do a kind of "Dr. Strangelove" about the Vietnam War...

and shoot it in 16 millimeter and have it be very realistic...

and John had this completely series of crazy incidents...

that he had gleaned from veterans that had come back.

and friends of his that had been over there.

It was his way of exorcising that inability to be that hero...

to be that guy who goes into the military and sacrifices his life...

or is willing to sacrifice his life.

He couldn't do those things, so instead he wrote about it.

And very few people have that, it's a God-given talent. That's a talent that he had.

He might have gone to school and been taught it...

but ultimately that's something he had within himself.

MILIUS : When I took something that was an absolute masterpiece of literature...

and had to do it, had to make it into something, I couldn't make it...

I couldn't take that and say I'm just gonna do an adaptation of "Heart of Darkness".

I had to change "Heart of Darkness" severely and increase its horsepower tremendously...

to make something that would equal the book.

And I think I roundly succeeded, but only by upping the ante tremendously.

So I was around George a lot and Francis.

They were always talking about Milius and "Apocalypse Now".

I heard it talked about so often.

GEORGE LUCAS : I told Francis, I said, "Look, if I don't get THX off the ground...

I'm gonna go with John and we're gonna try to do this thing 'Apocalypse Now'".

MILIUS : It was a Zoetrope project when Francis Coppola had his big deal at Warner Brothers.

BRYAN SINGER : Zoetrope felt very much at the time like a group of filmmakers...

who were trying to do what Chaplin and Pickford...

and all those folks were doing back at United Artists.

Form a company of filmmakers for filmmakers, by filmmakers.

The word got around that after, I think, "Godfather II"...

for the conversation, maybe, it was said that Francis was gonna direct it.

You know, he was very happy when Francis took over "Apocalypse Now".

Francis' vision of "Apocalypse Now" was about 180 degrees off from what George's vision was.

Francis was gonna do this giant, grand thing...

and I was gonna do this crazy documentary-ish anti-war film, which was not what John wanted.

At one point Francis turned to him and told him, he said...

"Just write every scene you've ever thought of and ever wanted to put in a movie."

You smell that? Do you smell that?

What?

Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that.

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

The line everybody remembers is him kind of inhaling and saying...

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

Yeah, people come up to me on the street today like, "I love the smell of napalm".

I'm more like, "I never knew it."

The fact that that line got picked out by history as an emblematic line is something...

it's very hard to track.

Having said that, "Charlie don't surf." is a button line.

Well, I mean, it's pretty hairy in there, isn't it? It's Charlie's Point.

Charlie don't surf.

What he does is he writes very dynamic and interesting and compelling characters...

and then the dialogue comes from the character. "Charlie don't surf."

That doesn't sound good coming from me, but coming from, you know...

the character that Robert Duvall played, it's magnificent.

During some of the ADR, I guess it would have been John and Francis...

weren't pleased with the tone of the voiceover work.

What if he were here... the man they call insane?

I'm sorry, Martin, I liked the tone you had before starting. This is a little too light now.

He had a pistol in his satchel...

and he walked up and he put down his Colt 45, 1911 government model.

My dad's a total pacifist, like hates weapons.

Martin Sheen looked and went, "What's this for?" "Put your hand on it.

This is loaded, take a little CS, one out the spout, cocked and locked. Now read it."

Dad said it made him nervous.

He was distracted enough by it not to obsess or focus too much on how he was delivering stuff.

WILLARD : Charging a man with murder in this place...

is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.

I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?

Not a lot of writers can do what John has done.

It feels like a guy who takes the world of words seriously...

and somebody who knows how to frame a large concept or construct.

And let a great actor say a great line, but the line also feels like it's winking at you.

The line feels like it's serious...

but there's also entertainment value within the line.

Everything memorable of "Apocalypse Now" was invented by John Milius.

The horror.

The horror.

He really was taken and swept away by Conrad...

and the journey or the voyage of the individual to some form of self-realization.

Despite what his politics are outside of the film's...

the agenda in the film is always, even though it becomes about courage and honor...

it's really about fear.

It's about how people deal with fear...

and that is the writer part of him that I identify with...

where there is a dark place that has to do with "Do I have the guts to do this?"

You know, it is about "The Heart of Darkness".

He understands the heart.

I was flying back to LA with Francis and he says..

"I'm willing to die making this movie.

And if I die making this movie, George will take over.

And if George dies, you'll take over. And somehow this movie will get made."

OLIVER STONE : John invested his soul in that movie and it shows.

It's a beautiful epic.

Coppola and John did amazing things, they took it out of this world, which is wonderful.

It's a larger than life movie.

It's Sturm and Drang, it's Wagner, it's opera.

It was a fitting tribute...

to go someplace dressed in clothes that John wouldn't be caught dead in...

but out of respect for the Academy, he wore, because he was nominated.

ANNOUNCER : And the award goes to... Kramer vs. Kramer.

But "Apocalypse", you know, was beat out in every regard...

from a picture most people don't remember today.

The Academy, in their wisdom, just said well, "Kramer", a little film.

You know, a personal film, not a big historical epic.

That's the irony of popular success.

And it made perfect sense, it made perfect sense that after the Oscars...

John would want to go to a place that he feels comfortable in.

Not at so much the Governor's Ball, but to Tommy's Burger...

and just sit there in full tuxedo, all of us.

One of the greatest Oscar after parties I ever went to.

Glory, and all those things are quite empty words.

Awards and money and everything else, are always hollow.

The only reward you ever get is when somebody really likes it and it moved them, you know?

A guy came up who'd gotten the Medal of Honor and thanked me for making the movie.

He said, "At least somebody understands what we have to do and why we are soldiers."

That's the only reward you ever get.

People who try to go their own way...

and find what is the relevant art for themselves...

very often are out of synch by being a little ahead of the time.

We'd all started making pictures late 60's, early 70's.

Milius, Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas.

Schrader, Terry Malick was there.

We shared that perspective of having a film say what we wanted it to say.

Your good writing is somewhat autobiographical, because that's really what you feel.

That's the passion that comes out.

And John kind of saw surfing as this wonderful art-Zen-Buddhist, Kurosawa kind of thing.

MILIUS : Even though I regularly went surfing and I was still good...

I realized that I wasn't as good anymore.

And that I was drifting away from the beach and from the people.

And that in time, I probably would drift so far away that I really didn't know it anymore.

So I parlayed all that into saying, "Well, I want to do my personal film.

I want to do a film about surfing."

GERRY LOPEZ I mean, Hollywood, you know, hadn't done surfing that much justice.

You know, the Hollywood version of surfing was pretty far off from what the reality of it was.

Beach Blanket Bingo

That's the name of the That's the name of the

That's the name of the game

They never really got it.

John got in touch with me...

and, you know, it's John's style to just have conversations with people...

in a way of gathering material.

DENNY AABERG : You know, we'd get lunch and sit down...

and turn on a tape recorder and start talking stories.

When we started in the late 50's, early 60's...

surfing really wasn't a nationwide word, you know?

A lot of people didn't understand surfing.

It took some guts to go out there in big waves and challenge yourself.

( THEME TO "BIG WEDNESDAY" PLAYING )

Everybody expected that to be the small movie that does really well...

it was going to be the picture that year at Warner Brothers.

But sometimes, I think the producers would get a little impatient..

because John liked to take his time, you know?

I got a note one time from Warner Brothers, and they said...

"We would like you to make some changes to the script and we're sending over some ideas.

And would you please blue-page this script for us...

so that we can see our changes?"

John took the thing and he said, "Okay, here are the pages that we gave them.

Go out and put them on blue paper and then send them back to them."

And that's what we did.

We gave them the original script on blue pages...

and we got a call and they said, "Oh, it's fantastic!"

So obviously nobody had ever read them.

STEVEN SPIELBERG : You know he is the 300-pound gorilla.

I mean, people loved him, people hated him.

John was always, and I think is today, regarded as kind of a maverick.

You know, this wild anarchist, is that fair to say?

DENNY AABERG "Big Wednesday", as John says, was a very personal movie.

Both of us drew from people we knew from the beach.

We tried to make it as real as possible, and authentic...

so all those characters, one way or another, were based on somebody we actually knew.

The name The Bear, really wasn't so much his nickname...

although The Bear character in "Big Wednesday" was really based on him...

somebody that had a commanding presence and then it was the storyteller...

and the leader of the group, you know, and all those things that John is.

WILLIAM KATT : He was very much the commander of that set...

and John really commanded that setting like a general.

Many, many, many lunches, we'd find John in the water.

He'd have the water cleared and he'd be out there surfing.

If Gary Busey or myself or Jan or Michael...

if we didn't know our lines or we were uncertain about it, we could get John to tell a story.

And that would buy us at least an hour.

But all of that is part of that package of John Milius.

He's still very much in control of the set...

and the one thing you can't say about John Milius is that he wastes time.

GERRY LOPEZ : I think "Big Wednesday" is a romantic movie.

The romance is surfing, you know, and John's tremendous love for that time of his life.

I'm doing a lot of surfing, man.

No, just when it's necessary.

Let's go ride some waves.

NAT SEGALOFF : Well, I think that was a big part of John's childhood.

Growing up and becoming a man and learning how to tell stories.

There's never been a surfing movie in history like "Big Wednesday".

It wasn't a documentary.

JACK My friends and I would sleep in our cars...

and the smell of the offshore wind would often wake us.

And each morning, we knew this would be a special day.

STEVEN SPIELBERG : I'd wanted to see "Big Wednesday"...

long before it was ever released, because it didn't release...

it was allowed to escape.

They had these partnerships and they basically sold the movie...

and once they had sold the movie, there wasn't any incentive...

for them to put more money into the advertising and publicity department.

It was killed by the executives at Warner Brothers.

Sort of a "Yes, we like it, but we don't really believe in it."

It wasn't received as well as had been anticipated, only in the coastal cities.

But there were some people who simply didn't like John...

didn't like the Kurosawa-ness he was trying to give the film...

and thought it was too mythical and metaphoric.

GERRY LOPEZ : Boy, the reviews were bad...

you know, they called it the "Endless Bummer".

They had to pull it from distribution.

I don't think the criticism hurt John.

He felt that it affected how many people saw his movies...

and I think for any of those guys, it was about getting people to see their movies.

There was a whole new generation of films that were kind of coming into the fold.

He wanted to be John Ford, and he wanted to have those movies that got out there.

Francis, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and John Milius...

were sort of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or whatever you want to call it.

The enfant terrible of a new generation in Hollywood.

Well, of course, George went and did "Star Wars" and Steven was coming off "Close Encounters"...

and movies were starting to move into that blockbuster arena.

I first met John as a young screenwriter in Hollywood in the mid-70's, late 70'S...

he was quite successful and well-known as the author of "Apocalypse Now".

I met him and he was a blustering--

fascinated by guns and my own experience in Vietnam...

and asked me a lot of questions and, John had a love of war which I didn't.

So we were coming at it from completely different points of view...

and I guess he saw me as a lefty and I saw him as a crazed right-wing nut case.

But we enjoyed each other, we laughed and I had written "Conan the Barbarian".

What I liked about "Conan" and I think what John liked about it...

was that there was a primal presence behind it.

And that was Howard's celebration of the barbarian...

and the barbarian's ethos in drinking and eating, sex, life.

It seemed like that was something he worked on more than anything I can remember.

And he religiously worked on it, all the time...

and constantly was reworking it, and really was passionate about it.

And that was really the sort of, you know, if anything, a comeback.

I knew that that was a very, very important project to John.

We ended up selling the damn thing to Dino De Laurentiis.

He had the intention of scoring as much cash as he could and getting out.

And as John wrapped up the conversation, he said...

"Well, Conan had to spend time on the wheel of pain and I had to spend time with Dino."

OLIVER STONE : When he was working with Dino on Conan, John loves to have an enemy.

Dino had, at the time, a huge desk, it was enormous...

and John and I were sitting in two chairs on the other side of this huge desk.

And the chairs were very low, so when you were sitting there just normally, the desk was here.

Dino said, "Well, who do you want to be in this movie?"

And we said, "Arnold Schwarzenegger."

And he jumped up on top of his desk and walked across the desk, and said...

"I'm not doing this movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger!"

And John said, "Oh, okay, okay." He sits down, he says, "Now, who you want?"

John sat there, he said, "Dustin Hoffman."

"Ah, get out! Go make the movie."

Well, I loved what he did with Conan...

and he was sort of responsible for getting Arnold going with that picture.

REPORTER : I was thinking very clearly about it, you created Arnold Schwarzenegger.

MILIUS : You know when I was trying to talk Dino into using Arnold...

I said if we could have Arnold, we'd have to build him.

I was always told that my body and my accent...

would be all obstacles to being a leading man...

and so John kind of has confirmed the opposite.

He totally understood you know, my style of acting.

Conan, what is best in life?

To crash your enemies, see them driven before you.

And hear the lamentation of their women.

When Arnold got on the set, I heard him say...

"John, I'm not an actor like these guys...

so you tell me what to do, when to do it and how to do it."

John's eyes lit up. I think there's nothing more he wanted to hear than that.

When that was achieved, all Arnold had to do was stand there...

be in front of the camera and listen... and execute.

He didn't have to think, didn't have to rationalize, didn't have to think about character...

and I says, "John, would you direct me that way, too?"

Because it was a wonderful way to work.

If you trust your director...

just count on him to tell you when to twitch, when to blink, when to breathe.

Now that's real trust.

He really made it a joy to get into acting...

and it made it a joy to be part of a big project like that.

I think my favorite movie that John directed was "Conan".

It just had a very strong effect on me as a kid.

CLINT EASTWOOD : That picture did well.

The first one, which was R-rated...

got a lot of protest from parents whose kids went to see it...

and who found it to be extremely gruesome and extremely bloody.

And it basically is just a movie comic book.

If anybody thought it was violent...

I believe it was because the violence was effective.

Now John doesn't kill people in his films unless there's a reason.

He doesn't have violence or death...

unless there's an important dramatic reason for it.

I think he took a genre...

that up until that time had been very tongue-in-cheek...

very swashbuckling...

and made it savage and sexual and violent and magical.

And it pre-dated, and yet...

inspired a slew, an endless slew...

of fantasy realm pieces that we see now like "Game of Thrones".

I think it encapsulated all the things that John was always taken with...

outside of the movie business, that he thought he could bring into the movie business.

Ironically, I think met much of that sensibility...

is what exists in a lot of the really successful comic book-type movies...

that are being made today, and I think John was probably a bit ahead of his time.

REPORTER : Would you have wanted to continue doing it?

Yeah, I would have loved to have made a trilogy.

If I had done the other two of the trilogy...

he would have been a marvelous hero like Achilles.

He would have been a hero who sulked and ran away and was forced into things...

and had great rages, great melancholies...

and unfortunately I never got to do that.

He made the most defining films of those decades.

I mean, he-- I think he ultimately was very political...

so even though his films were really heightened, like "Conan"...

they captured part of the political zeitgeist at that time.

"Ten Soldiers" was a very interesting screenplay...

by a young filmmaker named Kevin Reynolds.

When I read it, I said to myself...

this could be a fascinating low budget movie with an anti-war statement.

Either smartly or foolishly, I approached John about it.

I always felt there was another Milius who was not the NRA...

Teddy Roosevelt Milius...

but that he would see that it's possible to use this setting...

to make an interesting anti-war picture, if you will.

What's going on here, my friend?

MILIUS : The conventional war, the limited nuclear exchange...

was something we had been hearing about a lot in the news, you know.

It's a very alarming prospect, a limited nuclear exchange...

because that's-- it will lead to the type of war described in the movie.

They're gonna kill us, all of us!

So why should we be different?

Because we live here!

Instead of making "Lord of the Flies"...

he was going to make a picture who's sensibility was a little more NRA-ish.

Well, "Red Dawn" came out at a time where there was a lot of sensitivity...

and desire for some kind of harmony between the United States and Russia.

So to say, "Well, what if we went the other way?"

I mean, that was not a very popular thing...

and yet it was a question we were all asking at that time. What would that be like?

It was a fear we were all living with.

But again, that's just the kind of button pushing he was doing at that time.

PETER BART : And John was really just doing kind of a kid fantasy...

about what would happen if the bad guys came and took over my town?

Not bad for a bunch of kids, huh?

Your mom'd be real proud.

Wolverines!

I just always felt like there was a child-like quality...

about John in the midst of all of the bravado and intelligence that came through.

And it, like, kind of drove it all.

I have a healthy sense of the absurd.

But he's not only that guy.

I think it shows the utter futility, a certain desperate futility of war.

And in the end of the movie, in spite of all the heroism and valor shown...

and the reasons and the revenges on both sides and everything else.

All that's left is a plaque, you know, a lonely plaque...

in some desolate battlefield that no one ever goes to.

ERICA In the early days of World War III...

guerillas, mostly children, placed the names of their lost upon this rock.

They fought here alone and gave up their lives...

so that this nation shall not perish from the earth.

He's not afraid to take responsibility for his beliefs.

And even more than his beliefs...

he's not afraid to kind of like look the dragon in the face.

He is the guy who we ride into battle with "Ride of the Valkyries" blasting.

I mean, he is that guy.

That's a tough thing to do, take responsibility for that...

for really saying things.

Perfect example, and you know, I mean, I almost hate to say it...

but it's something that John, you know--

I remember at one point, John, in a somewhat joking mood--

He said, "My fantasy--", it's insane...

"was to fly across tree tops and drop fire on children."

And then that big smile.

DARREN DALTON : There's not a lot of people in Hollywood gonna say that.

Well, is he setting me up? Is he telling the truth? What's going on and...

yeah, okay, that maybe could happen. Oh, no, that's bullshit.

No, that wouldn't happen. Well, it might happen.

And I thought, I fucking love this guy.

COMMENTATOR : We look at the film that has taken America by storm.

A new American film has just been released in London...

that's already breaking box office records in America.

Soviet officials have gone on the offensive...

against what they see as an American 35 millimeter weapon.

So, then what is this picture that had landslide Reagan...

and his erstwhile saber-rattler, Alexander Haig cheering lustily in their seats?

Well, I'll tell you, it's called "Red Dawn" and it's a piece of right-wing jingoism.

In America, it caused a political storm.

They are promoting international hatred.

"Red Dawn", directed energetically...

but crudely by John Milius, is frankly ludicrous.

But I think it's more than that, I think it's highly irresponsible.

I think this is really a program designed for high school students...

not very bright high school students.

And by way of a footnote, let me add that the...

U.S. National Coalition On TV and Movie Violence...

the trans-Atlantic chapter of the Mary Whitehouse brigade...

has declared "Red Dawn" to be the most violent film ever.

It definitely had a cultural impact.

And although it was a huge hit...

it was not a hit among the people who supposedly are the opinion makers.

DARREN DALTON : Well, I took a lot of heat after doing the movie.

I remember one director in particular, I don't remember his name.

You know, I just came in for a reading for a movie, maybe a year or two afterwards.

And he said, "Oh, I see you were in "Red Dawn", "Red Dawn".

Why would you do a movie like "Red Dawn"?

That movie, more than anything, made him a pariah for a long time.

You just didn't want to be around this guy...

because his politics were just too out there.

We never set out to make a pro-war movie.

Whether it's intentional or unintentional...

John's work is filled with humanity...

and filled with ambiguity far more than his politics are.

And I love John, I love his character, and there's a wonderful side to him...

but I would never for one second would think that he has any sense of reality.

And it's funny probably for me to say that to you...

but I just don't think-- he's a cartoon when it comes to politics.

There's no progress in his thinking, it's just the right-wing--

I won't even say right-wing, because he thinks they're nut cases now.

But back in those days, everything he said about libertarianism...

he still believes in, he hasn't grown as a man that way.

"Red Dawn" brings us into a discussion of the R-word in Hollywood, which is Republican.

There is definitely a--

a preference, a political preference in Hollywood.

And there's a contention among the Republicans and right-wingers...

that they don't have as many opportunities as liberals or left-wingers do...

because Hollywood is basically a left-wing town.

And I think if you are a little outspoken like John, it can-- it can backfire on you.

Especially when other people are very adamant...

and extremely political, no question about it.

He made himself into this showman of the right in the period where...

not that it's changed that much, but Hollywood was defiantly liberal.

I think John actually enjoyed making people uncomfortable.

Um, he would say and do things for the shock value.

Yeah, it's hard to understand John in terms of-- I mean, I know John the person...

and he's sweet, lovable, wonderful, honest...

very loyal, you know, great guy.

And then he's created this... persona.

He once told me something really interesting.

He said, "I may not be the strongest guy or the most well-armed...

but you can put me in a room with a pencil and a piece of paper and I can kill anybody."

Discussing the persona of John Milius and how he would use this...

and of course we've got him wanting a gun every time he makes a deal.

Well, I remember we went into a meeting with Dan Melnick...

who was running MGM at the time.

Melnick was gonna give us his script notes. He's the president of the studio.

John comes in and he pulls out a pistol and he says...

"I just want you to know where we all stand on this, Dan."

What kind of notes is the head of the studio gonna give you...

when there's a .45 automatic sitting there on the table?

John just did it for effect, but it was a great effect and made everybody tell stories.

Well, once these stories started getting around...

you know, we're all paid professional liars in Hollywood...

we embellish these stories, they get embellished in the telling and, you know...

not too many people in Hollywood knew anybody that was running around with a gun.

Any of those stories, like a portion of those stories...

one of them maybe, you know, but a few of them.

If in fact they're true...

you know, that doesn't push up one's stock...

in terms of being in demand to come in and be embraced by a studio.

Back in school, it was a little more obvious that it was a created persona.

And it was built out of his passion...

and it was built out of his passion for samurai, for Teddy Roosevelt...

for, you know, people he admired and things he admired...

he constructed a character...

that embodied all the things he admired and loved.

And that character is very outrageous.

There are filmmakers, you know, John Milius is one of them...

who have a kind of tough guy front or bravado.

But it's partly show business and they use this front, who knows...

maybe to mask insecurities or what have you, but it's an act.

And in this town, they don't think like John thinks.

Less today than ever.

There's a danger in that whole business of misunderstanding of the situation.

Yes, it's a collaborative art, yet usually one person winds up with the credit and the blame.

The breaking point for me...

came when the Saturday Review put out a cover.

Title of the cover was The Brutalists.

And it was about the generation of young men in Hollywood...

who were addicted to violence...

and I really wanted to get out of that pigeon hole...

because I knew that once they have you in that hole...

you don't ever get out...

and I don't think John ever got out, and I think it did hurt his career.

I think probably John is his own worst enemy...

and I think it's a different time.

You know, the people who could make that transition from 70's and you know...

even the early 80's where it was a different kind of filmmaking then.

It was the auteur.

And that kind of doesn't suit well now...

in the kind of way that the studio system's been taken over by large corporations.

There is a pressure that goes on being inside a corporation...

that is often about conformity or, I'll say...

not wanting to risk one's job.

Um, which I think then sort of forces the creative process...

into a, I think narrower window.

Because there's a lot more marketing people...

that are running it today than there were in those days.

He has a really unique voice and for whatever reason...

it didn't get altered by the process over time.

But you get this public persona and it becomes a part of you.

I mean, whether you like it or not, the way the world perceives you creates a persona...

and that persona becomes real in the media, in the outside world...

and, you know, movies and everything that's done about you, books...

they use that persona rather than the real deal.

I think that's the one place where John shot himself in the foot.

That should have been the time when John grabbed everything.

We had just come off of "Red Dawn"...

you know, the movie before "Red Dawn" was "Conan".

It was very hard to get him the work.

I've been blacklisted probably since then, you know?

I've been blacklisted as surely as anybody in the 50's.

I don't believe that much in a blacklisting idea...

because I have been always out there as a Republican.

They don't care if you're a Libertarian, if you're an independent...

if you decline to state if you're Republican or Democrat, that means nothing to Hollywood.

They don't care if you're-- if you're Lenin himself.

In Hollywood, the only thing that means is money.

And whenever there's money involved, you know, you're--

hand in hand with that is fear.

You know, so people are afraid all the time...

and a guy like John that's a big personality, you know, I'm sure scares people.

It's funny that he would say he'd been blacklisted...

because he came up in that generation that finally changed the way movies were made...

and movies were graded by your success.

But if you say enough shit, or do enough shit, as in the case of Milius...

something-- you're bound to--

you're bound to pay at some point on some level.

You know, if you go four years, and it was--

"Farewell To the King", I think, was 1990.

And so by the time a movie like that comes out, that's--

gosh, that's six years after "Red Dawn".

He showed a certain naivety...

which is also fundamental to John Milius.

He doesn't realize that in Hollywood...

executives with little talent have long memories.

MILIUS : I've been very, very powerful with my influence...

on the Revolutionary Committee...

being that I'm the head of the IWA, the International Writers Army...

that are the terror arm of the Writer's Guild, you know?

You know, and they have stopped me in many of my projects...

one of which was to blow up Jeff Katzenberg's car. This is a symbol.

For a long time, people would put up with John...

to get the screenplays they wanted.

But when it came to "We had to put up with all of this to get the screenplay?"...

and we still haven't made the movie, let's get rid of him as the director.

And all those guys he came up with, Lucas and Spielberg and Randal Kleiser...

those guys, when they got to be successful, they could kind of write their own ticket.

And he chose not to be those guys.

He chose to not make projects that didn't interest him as a filmmaker.

I think that's maybe where his real purity lies.

As a writer, he could do anything.

You have to be interested in your work.

At a certain point, cashing a paycheck is not what it's about.

ED O'NEILL : I've read scripts that John has written that have never been done...

and I read one in particular I'll never forget he wrote.

One about Texas Rangers, that I think he kind of had an earmark for Clint Eastwood...

when Eastwood would have been perfect, you know?

You wonder how they wouldn't do it, you know, when they do so much shit.

Well, you know, like Sean Connery, for example...

never did anything John didn't rewrite his part.

I got a call and, "Mr. Neufeld?"

I said, "Yeah." He said, "Sean Connery."

I said, "Why not?"

"There aren't enough big speeches in this movie for me."

John was working in the office right next to me and the door was open...

and I quickly remembered that John had done "The Wind and the Lion" with Sean.

So, I said, "Well, what about John Milius?"

He said, "Oh, he's great. I love John, do you think you can get him?"

I said, "Just a moment..." and I put the phone on hold...

and I ran into the next office.

I said to John, "I've got Sean Connery on the phone.

He's about ready to do 'The Hunt For Red October'...

but he says he needs some big speeches."

John said, "Well, I'm great at that."

Once more, we play our dangerous game...

a game of chess, against our old adversary, the American Navy.

Basically John saved me on "The Hunt For Red October".

It became easy to not call him, except finally to do those rewrites, you know...

and you could make a very good living doing that...

but he couldn't be that person as a director.

It had to mean something to him, because he knew about the toil...

and the sum total of blood, sweat and effort...

it demanded to get a movie made.

He just couldn't divorce himself from that.

He had to be the guy who committed.

He wasn't satisfied with just writing. He wanted to direct.

And in between "Red Dawn", um, until the current...

until now is really "Flight of the Intruder" and "Rough Riders"...

I think are two over a 20-- that's something like a 20-year period.

And I always find myself wondering, too, if, during those rewrites...

it took up so much of his time that by the time he got ready to make another movie...

his moment had passed.

ETHAN MILIUS : Chuck Reedy was a close friend of my father's.

He was also, at the same time, my dad's accountant.

If you were to characterize somebody as a best friend...

Chuck Reedy would have been my dad's best friend.

There was something seedy about him and you could see it from a mile away.

Unfortunately my dad couldn't.

My dad discovered that Chuck was essentially...

stealing money from my dad.

He was about the worst I've ever seen him.

He had lost a substantial amount of money.

I don't think that he thought that he'd ever be able to earn back the money again.

That absolutely crushed my dad.

I was at dinner with John, all was not well...

and the subject of the conversation...

was about John wanting to write on "Deadwood".

John was trying to get on as a staff writer with David Milch, and David Milch said...

"I'm not doing it. I can't-- you're not a staff writer.

You wrote 'Apocalypse Now'.

I couldn't walk in the office and see you in there with the fucking staff writers".

And John said, "My son's going to law school."

And he had basically committed to paying for law school...

and then decommitted and said, "I can't afford it, I can't do it."

"And I can't afford to send him there. I can't get arrested."

You know, he laid it out, "I'm broke."

And Milch said, "I'll pay for his law school."

And John says, "It's three years, are you fucking crazy?" He said, "No, I'll do it."

And then he said something along the lines of, I have a friend who has scholarships.

Here's the kicker. I was having lunch with David Milch.

And he came in and said, "Would you believe this? This fucking crazy Milius paid me back?"

He said, "He's the first motherfucker that ever paid me back in my life."

When John did "Rome", John paid him back.

OLIVER STONE : But he hadn't directed anything...

since "Flight of the Intruder" and "Rough Riders".

So I think he's now working on "Genghis Khan"...

which he's been working on, this opus he's wanted to tell for, my god, 20 years.

John and I actually hadn't spoken for a number of years...

because we had had a disagreement at the end of "Farewell To the King".

It wasn't until "Genghis Khan" came along that we got back in business.

And when we sat down to talk about "Genghis Khan"...

we shared the same idea that this could be both a great film...

and a fitting re-entry for John Milius...

both as the director of the film and the screenwriter.

And the more that John got into what it must have been like for Genghis Khan...

to have conquered the known world, the more we became taken with the whole idea...

that this is one of those great untold stories of history.

It's kind of the culmination of a lot of the themes that I think that he's written about.

There's something when a creative person has an idea...

and it is, you know...

they've become in love with it and it lives within them.

And that's what he had, he was just amazingly involved in it.

It was his passion. He wanted to make this movie.

The only director that could have been better than John Milius...

to direct "Genghis Khan" would have been Attila the Hun.

And since he's dead, it goes to Milius.

But if it's going to be Milius directing John Milius' "Genghis Khan"...

audiences are expecting a little bit of rape...

a little bit of pillage.

Great characters facing great moral dilemmas.

John said, "You're right, then you have to let me write the second draft."

JOHN PLASTER : I'd been with John in New York for three days.

Doing research was always fun with John, because it was interesting research for me.

We were going out to dinner and it's just a continuing conversation.

We're walking down stairs to his car...

and in mid-step John stops talking...

and I'd just asked him a question.

And I asked him again, "John, what do you think about this scene?"

He didn't say anything.

I knew something was wrong, I immediately got in front of him...

and I looked into his face...

and he was disoriented and he was twitching on one side of his face.

Well, I knew right away that it was a stroke.

So I was calling 911 as I was shaking him and keeping him awake.

And again, by the grace of God...

there just happened to be an ambulance only-- not even ten minutes away.

ETHAN MILIUS : And then I remember getting the phone call...

hearing that my dad had a stroke.

I went into the hospital room and he was in the ICU.

He was sitting in that room and it was absolutely horrendous.

To see your dad, who is never at a loss for words, and there was no communication at all.

And we weren't sure, like, if you know, if he was going to have any brain functioning.

And he wasn't communicating, so we had no idea what was going to happen.

Everything I've ever talked to you about is about his communicating, his storytelling.

That's how people know him. He's a guy who likes talking and now he can't.

I can't think of a...

I can't think of a worse thing...

ever happening to a person who I knew.

And I'm talking about beyond people who have died before their time.

But I'm talking about a raconteur, one of the greatest raconteurs of my generation...

losing the ability to speak.

It's the worst thing that's ever happened to any of my friends.

I think I had my iPhone with me, and I would play music for him...

and around that time, I had gotten some of the music from "Conan".

I had played that, you know, because I thought something he could recognize...

and I started seeing a reaction.

And that was the first time he'd really communicated with anyone.

It was awesome. It was like he's going to-- you know, this--

it's not as bad as it could be.

And slowly he made, you know...

slight, incremental increases in his ability.

After the stroke, we stopped everything.

In November of-- what are we now

November of 2010, John moved back to the West Coast...

to start his physiotherapy and his speech therapy.

THERAPIST : Usually we can--

MILIUS : Okay, okay, okay, now, yes.

Now if you want to go back to-- there.

Yeah.

See, you can see all the--

He's had physical therapy, um, he's had speech therapy and occupational therapy.

So, what do you want to type?

Um, okay, uh.

Choose send.

Okay, area--

are-- no, um...

s-- uh, shar--

Okay... Where's your thing?

And you can see, just by sitting there and you talk to him...

and you can see the frustration is there, he's--

the words are all in there, they just can't come out.

And that's-- how horrible that must had to be.

ANDRE MORGAN : Incrementally, it's quite easy for me to see the progress...

he's making, but I'm not living it on the day-by-day basis.

And I know, from when I'm here, part of his frustration is...

he has the thought, he can't articulate it.

John, J-- J-- no.

I think he absolutely is progressing and he's able to communicate his ideas...

and he's got a tablet that he writes on.

You know, by filling in certain points...

you can actually have a conversation.

Unit 101?

Yes, yes, okay, okay.

Okay, yeah. See?

You need to spend more time with me, man. I speak John.

You know, so I'm very confident that he will get there...

but it's a journey of 1,000 miles.

And it's every day, heavy lifting.

He's making progress. He's coming back. He's working really hard.

Okay, yes! Yeah, oh, no. Oh, no!

But when you get in a room with John, he's still John...

his laugh hasn't changed.

His ability to express a joke...

not even in words anymore, but his ability to get you to laugh hasn't changed...

and he still fills the room with his presence.

He clearly is not where he was before...

but he has made incredible strides in terms of his ability to communicate...

and clearly understands everything that's going around him.

John was very distraught, because as you probably know...

shooting has been an integral part of his life for many years.

It takes a tremendous amount...

of concentration, eye-hand coordination.

John couldn't grasp the gun properly...

I put it in his hand, wrapped his hand around it, put the gun up.

First target he missed, very disappointed.

The second target he missed, disappointed, didn't want to continue.

The third target.

MAN : Pull!

JOHN STRONG : He hit it dead center.

MAN : Nice shot!

And he got the biggest smile on his face...

that I've ever seen on his face.

And it was like his rebirth. I'm back.

So he's been going for a while. He goes a lot...

and he's been getting better and better and better.

His motor skills, hand-eye coordination...

the computer... perfect.

Even though his speech ability is still being reformulated...

his memory is intact.

He remembered all of the things we had talked about.

As of five weeks ago, when I saw him last...

he had finished going through "Genghis Khan"...

and taking out a lot of the excess dialogue.

So, why don't you become my partner as a producer on the film?

He clearly continues to want to see that, maybe not directing it himself.

But he wants to see that movie expressed as the vision he created it.

MICHAEL MANN : I think what John's going through right now...

kind of evidences, you know, the big heart of this guy.

And the, you know, and the tremendous courage...

he has to overcome...

which I'm positive he will, one way or another...

the kind of handicaps imposed by the stroke he had.

John'll come back from anything...

and I hope that he comes back enough to where he's telling stories again...

and I don't mean sitting around on the set telling them.

But putting 'em on paper and getting 'em on paper and directing films again.

Having his material committed to film.

We had a dinner up in the colony one night, where a pizza guy came in...

and delivered a pizza and then was walking out, and saw one of the bear boards...

and came back in and was just like, "Man, you're John--"...

he was like, "My whole life was changed--" One of those things.

But I think, um...

the rumors of his vanishing...

from the Hollywood scene have been greatly exaggerated...

and, as General Macarthur said...

"He not only will come back...

but he is back."

Go ahead, make my day.

We got him.

REPORTER : Late Saturday morning, the U.S. got its big break.

An Iraqi in custody told the military where to find Sadam.

Nine hours later, U.S. troops launched Operation Red Dawn.

Blowing away doors...

600 soldiers of the Army's 4th Infantry...

and the top secret task force 121 of Special Forces...

attacked two separate farm houses southeast of Tikrit...

code named Wolverine One and Wolverine Two.

That's got to make him happy to know they used one of his titles as an operation.

Rarely do you meet a guy, he's not perfect by any means...

who has humor, gravitas, knowledge, spirit...

and the balls to deliver.

And it's important that they know that John Milius was responsible for a lot...

of the great stuff that came out of those pieces.

You think I'm fucking around here? Mark it zero!

Well, we would always talk about how that guy is just like Dad.

And seeing that character and within a second you're like that is uncanny.

Hell, I'd get you a tow by 3:00 this afternoon with nail polish.

I didn't use any kind of a model, but...

I'd be afraid to meet him.

John Milius, Rorion Gracie...

and Art Davie started the UFC back in 1993.

John and I used to sit on the mat after the classes...

and develop the concept for how should we create the arena...

where the guys could go and fight without giving the competitor...

the opportunity to run away.

So John would say, "What about a moat with alligators or sharks...

or an electric fence or something like that, you know?"

I says John, come on and write an episode, it was a phone call.

Come up and write an episode.

"Great, I got something I want to do." Called "Viking Bikers From Hell".

So I bought it on the title alone.

A lot of the seminal directors of my childhood...

at least the commercially successful ones, site it as their inspiration.

You know John made a lot of careers through his screenplays.

The amazing body of work the guy has created, and at the end of the day...

if somebody asked me to describe who the dude was, I'd say he was a storyteller.

I had lunch with Steven and George once, we were just talking about the past...

and they told me that they all swapped points on three movies...

"Star Wars", "Big Wednesday" and "Close Encounters".

And Steven says, "I'm still seeing money from "Star Wars".

And Lucas is like, "Yeah, whatever happened to our 'Big Wednesday' money?"

Think about it. Three guys swapping their gross points.

Who does that now? I mean, it's hard enough to get any gross points.

You can imagine what it was like back then.

And when he hired us to do "1941", he says, "You need guns, boys! You need guns!"

John gave us each Colt .45 automatics.

John says, "I know, we need to go over to Francis' house.

And I remember Francis was making pizza.

And Coppola is just outraged, "John , what are you doing? This is terrible."

He says, "Look, I'm making pizza, this gives life."

He said, "Guns symbolize death."

I don't recall that moment, no doubt John wrote it.

Pretty good at making shit up, huh?

MAN : That's awesome.