Milius has had some wine. He has an intermediary tell Kael that he would like a \u201cconference\u201d with her. A message comes back: Kael wants to know if Milius, who in meetings with executives was fond of displaying pistols, is armed.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell her I\u2019m not armed,\u201d Milius says. \u201cBut I myself am a weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n
I love this episode because it illustrates the mythic dimensions of Milius\u2019 reputation in Hollywood, the way in which he came to resemble the charismatic and unpredictable and dangerous heroes he created for the screen. And Kael\u2019s reluctance to confront the filmmaker whose art she did so much to degrade, her alternation between rhetorical ferocity and social cowardice, is characteristic of certain types of left-wing movie folk, as we see today in the studio reaction to threats made against The Interview<\/em>.<\/p>\n Indeed, there may be no better moment than now to reflect on the life and work of John Milius, the Romantic genius whose influence spans the films he wrote, the films he directed, and the films such as American Graffiti <\/em>(1973) and The Big Lebowski<\/em>\u00a0 (1998) whose characters he inspired. The documentary Milius<\/em><\/a> (2013) is available for free on Amazon Prime. It is the best place to start for someone eager to learn more about Hollywood\u2019s most notorious conservative, a natural storyteller attracted to, as his daughter puts it, \u201cthe extreme man who knows no fear.\u201d<\/p>\n Born in 1944 to a Jewish family in St. Louis, Milius\u2019 childhood heroes were Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, and Chuck Yeager. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was seven years old. Milius was a troublemaker, a raconteur, a tall and hefty teenager who surfed and shot and dreamed of a military career. But he couldn\u2019t enlist: asthma. \u201cIt was totally demoralizing,\u201d he once said.<\/p>\n Milius\u2019 inability to fight in Vietnam led to a profound crisis of identity. What to do? One day he wandered into a retrospective of the films of Akira Kurosawa. He found his calling somewhere in the images of armored samurai enforcing ancient codes of honor. He enrolled in the film school at the University of Southern California. It was, he said, \u201cthe West Point of Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n Milius was among the early graduates of film programs at USC (George Lucas), UCLA (Francis Ford Coppola), and NYU (Martin Scorsese) who established the contemporary movie experience. They were joined early on by Steven Spielberg, who had been rejected from USC twice but won a job at Universal television nonetheless. The group socialized, promoted, and collaborated with each other.<\/p>\n Milius was known for his writing ability, his girth, his bravado, his hijinks, his politics. He was skeptical of government and defended the Second Amendment and supported the war in Vietnam. He mocked the counterculture that was on its way to becoming the dominant culture. The hero of the student revolutionaries was Ch\u00e9 Guevara. Milius\u2019 was Theodore Roosevelt.<\/p>\n These were not the dominant opinions in Hollywood. Hippies often wore buttons emblazoned with peace signs and the slogan, \u201cNirvana Now.\u201d Milius changed the peace sign into the silhouette of a B-52 and replaced the slogan with \u201cApocalypse Now.\u201d Nor were his antagonisms limited to his generation. One day an instructor told George Lucas that a film of his could not be shown because it would make the other students feel inadequate. Milius punched the instructor in the face.<\/p>\n By the time he graduated in 1967 those traits of Milius\u2019 personality that would most inform his work were set: stubborn independence, an oppositional mentality, ambivalence toward authority, and a fascination with manliness, with confidence in the face of risk<\/a>, with extremity, violence, heroism, and honor. He was a cinematic Romantic trafficking in intense emotions, in heightened dangers, in pristine settings and noble savages.<\/p>\n And he was one of the first members of his class to get an actual job. The B-movie studio American International Pictures (AIP) hired Miliius as a writer. His first script was a remake of the Dirty Dozen<\/em> called The Devil\u2019s Eight <\/em>(1969)\u2014eight, because AIP couldn\u2019t afford 12 actors. Next George Hamilton asked him to script a biopic of daredevil Evel Kenievel<\/em> (1971). The subject of compensation arose. What do you want? Hamilton asked. Milius answered: \u201cI want girls, gold, and guns.\u201d<\/p>\n It was the sort of exchange that one expects to find in a Milius screenplay: the uncompromising and emphatic demand of a rugged, authentic, and independent man. Milius became famous for the sound bite, the killer speech, the character or turn of phrase that would haunt audiences after repeat viewings. From Dirty Harry![\"Dirty](\"http:\/\/s3.freebeacon.com\/up\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-23-at-11.25.50-AM.png\")
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