Джон Милиус: Американский кинорежиссер и сценарист

American filmmaker (born 1944)

John Frederick Milius ('/m//ɪ//l//i//ə//s/; born April 11, 1944) is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. He was a writer for the first two Dirty Harry films, received an Academy Award nomination as screenwriter of Apocalypse Now (1979), and wrote and directed The Wind and the Lion (1975), Conan the Barbarian (1982), and Red Dawn (1984). He later served as the co creator of the Primetime Emmy Award winning television series Rome (2005–2007).

Milius was born April 11, 1944, in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of three children to Elizabeth Marie ( Roe; 1906–2010) and William Styx Milius (1889–1975), who was a shoe manufacturer. He is Jewish. When Milius was seven, his father sold Milius Shoe Company, which his grandfather George W. Milius had founded in 1923, and retired. He moved the family to Bel Air, California. John Milius became an enthusiastic surfer. At 14, his parents sent him to a small private school, the Lowell Whiteman School, in the mountains of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, because he "was a juvenile delinquent". Milius became a voracious reader and started to write short stories: "I had learned very early, to write in almost any style. I could write in fluent Hemingway, or in fluent Melville, or Conrad, or Jack Kerouac, and whatever." "My religion is surfing", Milius said in 1976, adding that "the other thing that influenced me throughout my youth was my involvement with things Japanese. I studied judo, kendo, and painting. I felt more comfortable with things Japanese and with Japanese people than I did with Europeans feudalism in any country, at any period, fascinates me I understand the reasoning of people in Asia, it makes sense to me. Zen is very sensible, the whole way of feeling things is logical, whereas many of the Western motivated things—greed, business sense—I'm not comfortable with, I don't understand their rationale." "It was totally demoralizing", he said later. "I missed going to my war. It probably caused me to be obsessed with war ever since." Milius studied film at the University of Southern California School of Cinema Television, which he chose because it was an elitist school that trained people for Hollywood. His classmates included George Lucas, Basil Poledouris, Randal Kleiser and Donald F. Glut. Milius says he was influenced by his teacher, Irwin Blacker:
<blockquote>He gave you the screenplay form, which I hated so much, and if you made one mistake on the form, you flunked the class. His attitude was that the least you can learn is the form. "I can't grade you on the content. I can't tell you whether this is a better story for you to write than that, you know? And I can't teach you how to write the content, but I can certainly demand that you do it in the proper form." He never talked about character arcs or anything like that; he simply talked about telling a good yarn, telling a good story. He said, "Do whatever you need to do. Be as radical and as outrageous as you can be. Take any kind of approach you want to take. Feel free to flash back, feel free to flash forward, feel free to flash back in the middle of a flashback. Feel free to use narration, all the tools are there for you to use." and screened around the country in various festivals; it was praised by Vincent Canby of The New York Times. Milius received a job offer to work in animation but he turned it down as he could not see himself "sitting there drawing cell after cell."

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 says, "Neither of them were ever made, but I was able to option them. I had them rented out for like $5,000 a year." 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.

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.

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 a 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." 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."

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 the 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).

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.

In March 2011, Milius was a story consultant for the video game Homefront about a North Korean conquest of America.