Early Milius's first completed script was
Los Gringos (1968). "It actually wasn't bad", 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." Milius's name had been mentioned in a 1968
Time magazine article about the new generation of Hollywood filmmakers, which also referred to
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." Milius began to get writing commissions. He wrote a script entitled
The Texans for
Al Ruddy at Paramount, a contemporary version of
Red River (1948) (never made, although
Sam Peckinpah was going to direct it in 1979)— Milius later said it "wasn't very good". He also wrote an original called
Truck Driver (aka
The Haul) which was purchased by Levy-Garner-Laven, although that film too was not 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.") Eventually,
Robert Redford agreed to play the lead and
Sydney Pollack signed to direct.
Dirty Harry and Judge Roy Bean Milius wrote an uncredited draft of
Dirty Harry (1971). He says his contribution to the film was "A lot of guns. And the attitude of Dirty Harry, being a cop who was ruthless. I think it's fairly obvious if you look at the rest of my work what parts are mine. The cop being the same as the killer except he has a badge. And being lonely." Directed by
John Huston and starring
Paul Newman, it was a moderate hit, although Milius disliked the final result. "I fought every day", he said. "And I was blooded well. I was treated horribly." More popular was
Jeremiah Johnson. Milius did some work with
David Giler on the script which became
The Black Bird. By now Milius was one of the most sought after screenwriters in Hollywood, seen as a colorful character with a talent for lively interviews. His self-styled "Zen Anarchist"/"American samurai" persona made him stand out in Hollywood. For instance, he rewrote
Dirty Harry only on the condition that he be given an expensive gun. He was also one of the inspirations for the character of John Milner in the enormously successful
American Graffiti (1973). He also wrote the first draft of the
Dirty Harry sequel,
Magnum Force (1973). Milius later said "I don't like
Magnum Force. Of all the films I had anything to do with, I like it least. They changed a lot of things in a cheap and distasteful manner." Gangster films were popular at the time and
AIP offered him the chance to direct one if he would write it for a fraction of his regular fee. The movie was moderately successful and launched Milius's directing career. He worked on the script for a TV sequel,
Melvin Purvis: G-Man (1974), a pilot for a proposed series about
Melvin Purvis (there was a second TV movie, but no series), but did not like the director,
Dan Curtis, or the experience of working for TV. In 1974,
David Picker announced he would produce
Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail directed by Milius and written by
Winfred Blevins, about
Theodore Roosevelt. The film was never made. Neither was
The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy, a proposed biopic about the
famous anti-Communist Senator, which Milius declared interest in making.
The Wind and the Lion Milius next wrote and directed the popular adventure film
The Wind and the Lion (1975), which starred
Sean Connery and
Candice Bergen. He later said he felt this was his first "real" movie. He intended to follow this with
Give Your Heart to the Hawks, a story about mountain man
Jedediah Smith in the 1820s based on the novel by Winfred Blevins "It's my interpretation of Jedediah Smith, which might not be exactly historical", said Milius. "It'll be about exploration, about the need to see what's over the next ridge and what that does, what price you pay, to find out. Like Dirty Harry, Smith is a classic lone man, with a searing loneliness about him. A leader of men is always alone." Milius did come close to making
Extreme Prejudice, based on his script, in 1976. However he decided to make
Big Wednesday instead;
Extreme Prejudice would be made a decade later, much rewritten, and directed by
Walter Hill.
Big Wednesday and the A Team In 1975, Milius formed his own production company, The A Team, with
Buzz Feitshans, who had edited
Dillinger. They had a five-year deal with Warner Bros.. Milius said, "Our motto is Civitas Sine Prudentia, which really translates to Social Irresponsibility; I believe in it. It's refreshing, it's liberating. Americans are basically socially irresponsible ... Who else would have invented the atomic bomb quite the same way? The Nazis would have invented it with the desire to conquer the world; we were the only people that could have invented it with the desire not to conquer the world" Its first production was an autobiographical surfing picture,
Big Wednesday (1978), which he called "a surfing
How Green Was My Valley". Milius's friendship with George Lucas saw him given a percentage of the profits for
Star Wars, which Mike Medavoy estimated earned Milius $1.5 million—in exchange Milius gave Lucas a percentage of the profits for
Big Wednesday which amounted to virtually nothing. In 1979, Milius said "the ultimate aim of the A Team is that it will become a company that makes lots of projects. I shall be the figurehead and the father figure and take a percentage and I won't have to do anything except go off and direct my movie once every three years." The A Team made a number of movies not directed by Milius. Notably, they produced the first three films from
Robert Zemeckis and
Bob Gale:
I Wanna Hold Your Hand,
1941 (directed by
Steven Spielberg), and
Used Cars. He also produced
Hardcore, directed by friend
Paul Schrader. Schrader once described Milius's writing as containing too many good lines and scenes. He says
Warren Beatty once "told John something I've been telling him too: 'You come too soon and you come too often.'... He's so full of juice he just can't stop coming, rather than holding back and tightening the situation and building characters. That releasing diffuses the energy, the characters are too broad because they never have time to build up the inner strength."
Apocalypse Now Milius says he was offered $17,000 to rewrite
Skin Game (1971) but then
Francis Ford Coppola made a competing offer of $15,000 for Milius to write
Apocalypse Now. which George Lucas intended to direct as a follow-up to his first feature
THX 1138 (1971). Milius says Coppola: Offered that wonderful fork in the road where I could go do my own thing rather than just rewrite some piece of crap that would probably be rewritten by somebody else. That was the most important decision I made in my life as a writer. That sort of steered me onto the path of doing my own work and being a little more like a novelist ... I tackled an unpopular subject that no one was going to make a movie about where the chances were really slim that I could pull it off. There was no book, nothing but me and the blank page. And that was wonderful because I had followed my heart. One of the nicest times in my life was writing
Apocalypse Now. It was not made. Spielberg said in 1978 that Milius was key to the group of young filmmakers known as the
New Hollywood, which included himself, Lucas, and Coppola: John is our Scoutmaster. He's the one who will tell you to go on a trip and only take enough food, enough water for one day, and make you stay out longer than that. He's the one who says, "Be a man. I don't want to see any tears." He's a terrific raconteur, a wonderful story teller. John has more life than all the rest of us put together. (
Quentin Tarantino said he could imagine the film
Deliverance being about "Hollywood filmmakers: you can imagine Spielberg, Lucas, and Scorsese as the husbands. And you can really imagine John Milius as Lewis.")
1980s In 1982, Milius directorial effort
Conan the Barbarian was released, based on the fantasy novel by the same name. The film is credited for turning its lead,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, into a star. Milius was interested in the project since the late 1970s. While he was about to get hired for scripting duties, he had to pass due to his commitment to
Big Wednesday. Instead,
Oliver Stone was hired to write the project. Eventually, producer
Dino De Laurentiis with whom Milius had contractual obligations joined the project. Milius returned to the project as its director re-working Stone's script. Upon its release the film was popular. The film was the 15th highest grossing film in the USA that year, making $39,565,475 domestically. In 1983, he was among the producers of
Ted Kotcheff's
Uncommon Valor, and credited as a "spiritual adviser" in the action film
Lone Wolf McQuade. In 1984, he directed the popular action film,
Red Dawn. The film is about a Russian invasion in the United States, and a rogue commando group of teenagers standing up to the invaders. Some critics perceived it to be "warmongering propaganda" while Milius said it was "anti-war". The film was the 19th highest grossing film in the USA that year, making $38,376,497 domestically. He wrote and directed an episode for
The New Twilight Zone (1985) and a story of his, "Viking Bikers from Hell", was used in an episode of
Miami Vice (
season 3, episode 22). In 1986, it was reported that he was writing the script for
Fatal Beauty which he hoped to direct with
Cher; the film was made by
Tom Holland and starred
Whoopi Goldberg. There was some talk that he would direct a movie for
HBO,
Capone, but it was not made. In the late 1980s Milius wrote and directed a
Pacific War adventure film
Farewell to the King (1989). This flopped at the box office. In 1989, he tried to get funding for adaptations of
Allan W. Eckert's "The Frontiersmen: A Narrative", about settling the
Ohio River Valley, and "Half of the Sky", about a
Rocky Mountains explorer.
Sean Connery was hired to star in the film
The Hunt for Red October for producer
Mace Neufeld, based on
Tom Clancy's
novel of the same name. Connery thought the script was "too American" and insisted Neufeld hire John Milius to rewrite the Russian sequences. Connery thought with Milius, he could "get a different sort of image, different speech patterns." Neufeld then hired Milius to write and direct
Flight of the Intruder, based on the book by
Stephen Coonts. It too was not a financial success. "I think the culture had changed and that is why my films were less accepted", he reflected later. "I still think those are also great films,
Farewell to the King especially." The film of
Hunt for the Red October had been a big success, however, and Milius remained in high demand as a screenwriter: he did several drafts of another Clancy adaptation,
Clear and Present Danger (1994), which was another hit. Milius worked on a number on unfilmed scripts, including
Bad Iron, a biker movie written by Kent Anderson, which he intended to produce. He was going to direct a film about
Alexander the Great starring
Jean-Claude Van Damme but that was put on hold when a
miniseries on the same topic was made by Italian TV. He wrote ''
Harlot's Ghost, for Francis Ford Coppola, based on a novel by Norman Mailer; Milius described it as "a cross between The Godfather and Apocalypse Now.'' It's about families and duplicity and danger, but this time provoked by the government." He adapted the
Sgt. Rock comics for producer
Joel Silver, with either
Renny Harlin and
Paul Verhoeven attached at certain points respectively. And also wrote a version of
Die Hard 3, co-written with Barry Beckerman. In the early 1990s he wrote
Texas Rangers, about the establishment of that organization, for
Frank Price at Columbia. He hoped to direct the film, but could not raise the funding. However, financing fell through. He was going to direct an adaptation of
Tom Clancy's novel
Without Remorse with
Gary Sinise and
Laurence Fishburne, but the project folded in 1995, two weeks before shooting was to commence due to the financial collapse of
Savoy Pictures. A Milius script that was filmed was his biopic of
Geronimo,
Geronimo: An American Legend, for Walter Hill. He also directed two films for cable:
Motorcycle Gang (1994) and
Rough Riders (1997).
2000s In 2000, Milius was hired to work as a creative consultant with the
Institute for Creative Technologies to pre-visualize the challenges to peace that America will face and the advanced virtual reality technologies necessary to train U.S. troops for the future. "Through his enormous body of work, John has shown a deep understanding of the human condition and the ways that conflict can be resolved", said ICT executive director Richard Lindheim. "Furthermore our efforts will benefit greatly from his vision of the world in the near future, and the techniques and procedures that will be needed to maintain security." That year he also wrote two biopics:
Le May for Robert Zemeckis, about
Curtis LeMay; Later, in 2019 Arnold Schwarzenegger met with Milius to discuss the status of the project. "We're on the same page," he said. "We both want to get it done." He also developed
Jornada del Muerto (
Journey of Death) (2003), a biker film starring
Triple H and wrote a pilot for a TV show for UPN,
Delta, about a military special ops team that takes on terrorists. None of these movies were made. He tried to get a job as a staff writer on the TV show
Deadwood; showrunner
David Milch was reluctant as he did not consider Milius a staff writer. Milius pleaded that he needed the money in order to pay for his son's tuition at law school, so Milch simply paid the fees. Milius's career recovered when he helped create the
BBC/HBO television series
Rome, which allowed him to repay Milch. He wrote some pilots which did not go to series—
Dodge City (circa 2005)—a Western series for CBS, and
Saigon Bureau (2008)—about the AIP Bureau of
photojournalists in the
Vietnam War, a collaboration with
Chris Noth based on the book
Requiem. He also wrote a script about the
Battle of Chosin Reservoir in the
Korean War,
The Chosin Few for Mark Cuban's 2929 Entertainment, and
The Iron Horsemen, a motorcycle feature.
Health problems In 2010 Milius was working on a new project, a film biography of
Genghis Khan, when he had a stroke. For a while he was unable to speak or move, but ultimately he recovered.
Video games In March 2011, Milius was a story consultant for the video game
Homefront about a North Korean conquest of America. == Influence ==