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Old 06.09.2009., 17:35   #18
The one and only - John Milius



You know that line in "Dirty Harry" in which Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan describes the power of the .44 Magnum? John Milius wrote that line.

Remember the line in "Jaws" when Robert Shaw, playing the shark hunter, talks about his buddies being eaten alive by sharks during World War II? That was Milius.

How about the line in "Apocalypse Now," when Robert Duvall, playing a surf-loving Army colonel, says, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning"?

Milius again.




Clearly Milius is a talent. He's also a larger-than-life figure as underscored by some choice excerpts from the CNN article:


"Apocalypse Now" has its own morality, said Milius. "It has its own rules."

That might also be said about Milius himself -- who displays what might be described as a larger-than-life personality. He's said to be the model for the character Walter Sobchak in the Coen brothers' "The Big Lebowski," an item Milius doesn't dispute.

"They told me they based that character on me," Milius said, adding that he had previously turned down the Coens' offer to appear in their film "Barton Fink" as a studio chief.

*****

Robert Shaw's "Jaws" speech about how sharks attacked survivors of the torpedoed USS Indianapolis was written "literally over the phone," Milius said. "I gave it to them, and they went out and shot it." (Milius work on the film was uncredited; Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb are the credited screenwriters.)

And then there's the famous "napalm" line from "Apocalypse."

"I just wrote it -- it just came up," said Milius, describing the famous line uttered wistfully by Duvall's surfing Col. Bill Kilgore. "That's what happens. People love to think that all this stuff happens when you write a famous line -- that you really thought about it a lot."

*****

Although he admires a few scripts from modern-day Hollywood -- such as P.T. Anderson's "Boogie Nights," "Hard Eight" and "There Will Be Blood" -- most Hollywood scripts that get made today are "garbage," Milius said, written by "broken writers" with no "shame."

"There's no shame in the world, and without shame, you cannot have honor. Our world is ruled by consensus now. There is no sense of honor."

If that sounds like the lament of an outsider, Milius said it's probably because he feels like he's been treated like one through much of his career, given his reputation as a conservative and his opposition to gun-control laws.
"I've led a whole life behind enemy lines. I've been the victim of so much persecution," he said. "I'm the barbarian of Hollywood."
Milius -- writer, director, conservative, gun rights advocate, iconoclast.

And let's not forget surfer: But Milius isn't all blood and thunder. As a surfer, whose surfing exploits as a teen helped to forge his self-sufficient world view, he's lent his gruff voice as narrator to a new documentary about surfing soldiers during the Vietnam War. "Between the Lines" reveals a chapter of the war not widely known, outside the fiction of Duvall's character and his famous line, "Charlie don't surf."


'Apocalypse' writer: Most scripts today 'are garbage' (CNN)

Apocalypse Now - Helicopter Attack- Kilgore


Jaws The Indianapolis Speech

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