Milius

Directed by Zak Knutson and Joey Figueroa, the new documentary Milius shines a spotlight on a fascinating character, the screenwriter and director John Milius.  In the seventies, Milius was part of a tight group of friends and filmmakers — including George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg – who were about to revolutionize movie-making.  Milius found great success early-on as the screenwriter of the first two Dirty Harry movies.  He wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse Now, and he wrote Quint’s famous and powerful monologue about the U.S.S. Indianapolis in Jaws.  He eventually began directing films as well, and he wrote and directed Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn.

This documentary is a fascinating and well-researched look at Mr. Milus’ life and career.  The early sections of the film chart Milus’ youth and how he discovered a love of film when his asthma washed him out of the military.  We dive deeply into the friendship between film-school buddies Lucas, Coppola, and Spielberg, and we get some great stories from the making of Mr. Milius’ films.

But, of course, what’s really great about Milius is the look at the character of John Milius himself.  Mr. Milius is a man about whom there are a lot of legends in Hollywood.  This big, bearded, bear of a man was well-known as a garrulous raconteur and outspoken personality.  He was said to be opinionated and stubborn, a gun-toting, motorcycle-riding right-winger.  (Rumor has it that John Goodman’s performance as Walter in The Big Lebowski was based directly on Milius.  Mr. Goodman denies that in the film, though one of my favorite moments in the documentary is when Mr. Milius’ kids laughingly recount seeing that movie for the first time and being stunned by the apparent recreation of their dad.)

The documentary is filled with great stories about John Milius.  We hear the famous tale of him pulling a gun on a studio exec during a meeting, and many others.  While I knew the famous story of Mr. Milius’ writing Quint’s speech for Jaws, I was also interested to learn how many other films he’d done uncredited script-doctoring for.  Most notably, it seems that Mr. Milius is responsible for many of Sean Connery’s best speeches in The Hunt for Red October.  Who knew??

It’s fascinating to watch the many interview subjects express different opinions as to whether the character that Milius presented to the world was really who he was or just that, a character he was putting on.

I was very impressed by the wealth of Hollywood power-players interviewed for the film.  Many well-known names appear to talk about Milius, including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Martin Scorsese, Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale, Richard Dreyfuss, Clint Eastwood, Sam Elliott, George Hamilton, Kathleen Kennedy, James Earl Jones, Michael Mann, Ed O’Neill, Elvis Mitchell, Walter Murch, Paul Schrader, Bryan Singer, Charlie Sheen, Sylvester Stallone, Oliver Stone, Matthew Weiner, and many many others.  The result is a very thorough, deep look at Mr. Milius’ life and work, and his perception in Hollywood.

There’s a sense of sadness that imbues much of the documentary, because film-fans know that following Red Dawn in 1984, Milius’ career appeared to flame out.  In the two decades since, Mr. Milius only directed two additional films, neither of which got any notice.  (They were 1989’s Farewell to the King and 1991’s Flight of the Intruder.)  The big question I wanted answered, going into this film, was: what the heck happened to this incredibly talented writer/director?  Why has he been unable to get any of his projects off the ground in the past two decades??

The film spends quite a lot of time attempting to answer that question.  And while we learn that perhaps some of Mr. Milius’ outspokenness and arrogance at last caught up to him, it still seems to me quite a tragedy that the past two decades haven’t seen many more movies written by the man who wrote Apocalypse Now.

I also was quite unaware of the terrible stroke Mr. Milius suffered a few years ago, which robbed him of the ability to speak.  Steven Spielberg gets a little choked up about the horror of this great story-teller losing his power of speech, and indeed it’s devastating to contemplate.  In the final moments of the documentary, we see that Mr. Milius has made incredible strides in recovering from the stroke, but it seems pretty certain that his days as a screenwriter and/or as a director are over.  While we won’t be getting any new films from this great story-teller, one hopes that perhaps his many unmade scripts might someday see the light of day.

I found Milius to be a fascinating, entertaining look at this charismatic man behind so many great movies.  I’m sad that more of John Milius’ work didn’t reach our movie screens, but I am hugely in awe of his great body of work that did.  This film is a fun, in-depth exploration of this talented Hollywood character.