John Milius

John Frederick Milius is an American screenwriter director and producer of motion pictures He was one of the writers for the first two Dirty Harry films received an Academy Award nomination as screenwriter of Apocalypse Now and wrote and directed The Wind and the Lion Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn He wrote a number of iconic film lines such as Charlie dont surf and I love the smell of napalm in the morning from Apocalypse Now and the famous Dirty Harry oneliners delivered by Clint Eastwood including Go ahead make my day and Ask yourself one question do I feel lucky Well do you punk Milius also wrote the USS Indianapolis monologue in the film Jaws the sequence performed by Robert Shaw After his work on Rough Riders 1997 Milius became an instrumental force in lobbying Congress to award President Theodore Roosevelt the Medal of Honor posthumously for acts of conspicuous gallantry while in combat on San Juan Hill Milius made two films featuring Roosevelt The Wind and the Lion where he was played by Brian Keith and the madeforTV film Rough Riders where Tom Berenger took the role The character of John Milner from the 1973 George Lucas film American Graffiti was inspired by Milius who was a good friend of Lucas while they were at USC film school Likewise the character Walter Sobchak in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski made by his friends the Coen Brothers was partly based on Milius The novella Blind Jozef Pronek and Dead Souls by Aleksandar Hemon features an episode with Milius who is described as sitting at a desk sucking on a cigar as long as a walking stick In 2013 a documentary about his life titled Milius was released Writer Nat Segaloff called Milius The best writer of the socalled USC Mafia a tightknit group that resuscitatedsome say homogenised American cinema in the 1970s Raised on Ford Hawks Lean and Kurosawa shaped by filmmakers as disparate as Fellini and Delmer Daves Milius favours history books over comic books character over special effects and heroes with roots in reality time place and customs Milius stories reflect his own deeply held ethic which embraces the values of tradition adventure spiritualism honour and an intense loyalty to friends Although he privately chafes at his public image as a guntoting liberal baiting provocateur he allows himself to be painted as such at times even holding the brush He plays the Hollywood game like a pro yet sticks to his own rules he is a romantic filmmaker who avoids love scenes his movies contain violence yet no death in them is without meaning Milius himself once said Never compromise excellence To write for someone else is the biggest mistake that any writer makes You should be your biggest competitor your biggest critic your biggest fan because you dont know what anybody else thinks How arrogant it is to assume that you know the market that you know whats popular today Write what you want to see Because if you dont youre not going to have any true passion in it and its not going to be done with any true artistry