John Milius

John Milius
Born	John Frederick Milius
Occupation(s)	Screenwriter Film director Film producer
Years active	1966 - present

John Frederick Milius (born April 11, 1944) is an American screenwriter, director, and producer of motion pictures. He helped write Dirty Harry and Apocalypse Now and directed Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn.

Life

Milius was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Elizabeth (née Roe) and William Styx Milius, who was a shoe manufacturer. Milius attempted to join the Marine Corps in the late nineteen-sixties, but was rejected due to chronic asthma. He ascribes his fascination with guns and the military to this disappointment. He is also involved in a military think tank, the Centre for Creative Technology, as a consultant.

Milius is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association, is an avid firearms collector and authority on firearms, and is a vocal opponent of "overbearing" attempted gun control legislation. Milius, a very popular personality among gun hobbyists, can be routinely seen visiting local gun shops and shooting and socializing with the public at target ranges near his residence in Southern California when not at remote movie locations.

His filmmaking idols are John Ford and Akira Kurosawa; he has also mentioned Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, David Lean, and his friend and mentor John Huston as important influences as well. His favorite film is reportedly David Lean's Bridge on the River Kwai, although he has also named The Seven Samurai, The Searchers, and The Battle of Algiers as such in other interviews.

Milius has been married three times. His current marriage (since 1992) is to actress Elan Oberon (who appeared in his 1989 film Farewell to the King). He has two children by his first wife, Renee Fabri.

Career

A former student at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, Milius started his movie career in a student film contest in 1967, taking first prize for his entry Marcello I'm Bored.

Milius wrote, co-wrote or directed the popular and critically acclaimed films Dirty Harry (uncredited), Apocalypse Now, Big Wednesday, Dillinger, The Wind and the Lion, Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, and Clear and Present Danger. Milius coined the famous "Charlie don't surf" and "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" lines from Apocalypse Now.

Milius is a frequent guest on The History Channel's show Modern Marvels. He appears in episodes that deal with firearms, with the caption "Film-maker/Weapons Expert" or a similar variation. Milius has worked with a number of actors on multiple films, including Ben Johnson, Steve Kanaly, Roy Jenson, Geoffrey Lewis, Brian Keith, and Vladek Sheybal.

Milius insisted that part of his payment for writing Jeremiah Johnson be in antique weapons. Milius also considers Theodore Roosevelt a personal hero, feeling that he can relate to Roosevelt on many levels, such as physical illness and a shared love of firearms and the outdoors. He has made two films featuring Roosevelt: The Wind and the Lion (where he was played by Brian Keith) and the made-for-TV film Rough Riders (where Tom Berenger took the role). He considered himself too much in awe of Roosevelt to do a full-on biopic of him, but says he hopes to make a third film to complete a Roosevelt trilogy - though with Martin Scorsese's upcoming adaptation of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, that seems unlikely.

Through work on (The) Rough Riders (1997) (TV), he became an instrumental force in causing President Theodore Roosevelt to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (posthumously), for acts of conspicuous gallantry while in combat on San Juan Hill.

Milius is currently writing and directing the movie Journey of Death, a western starring WWE superstar Triple H.

Milius, a self-professed Southern California surfer in his youth, has woven his enthusiasm for surfing and the 1960s surf culture into some of his projects during his film-making career: He directed and co-wrote Big Wednesday, a drama-adventure about a group of young surfers and friends during the Vietnam era, and his screenplay for Apocalypse Now contains clever weaving of 1960s surf dialogue for the soldier characters early in the film (capped by the proclamation "Charlie (slang reference to the Viet Cong) don't surf!"). Then later in the film were the memorable, yet camp and surreal, scenes of soldiers surfing the Vietnam beaches during the battle to overtake a Viet Cong-controlled village. Milius also appears in two filmed interview segments of the 2004 big wave surfing documentary, Riding Giants, fondly reminiscing of the 1960s surfing culture he experienced and his personal conflicts between school studies and surfing in his youth. He was an acquaintance of Miki (Da Cat) Dora, a prominent iconoclastic surfer from the 1960s who surf doubled in Gidget and other surf genre films of that period. He was quoted as saying knowing Miki helped him understand the importance of questioning authority and the presumed order of things.

External links

• John Milius' filmography
• John Milius at IMDb