How a Gun-Toting Militant Became One of Hollywood's Most Celebrated Writers (2024)

Big John Milius is a Hollywood writer with a wild range of interests. Guns? Yes. Martial arts? Absolutely. Surfing, painting, history, poetry — but Milius loves nothing more than writing and movies. Early in his career, he embedded himself in that Alpha Male culture, which established the thread between all of Milius' written and directorial efforts thereafter — let's call it "manliness," for lack of a better word.

The gun-toting militant-minded wildman is responsible for some of the most famous lines in all of Hollywood: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," "Ask yourself one question, 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?" and even some of the famous USS Indianapolis monologue from Jaws.

The inspiration for John Goodman's role as misled militant Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski? Yup, that was Milius. But that's only a short chapter in the filmmaker's enormous Hollywood legend. John Milius would end up changing the face of cinema with his unbridled creativity and poignant writing, but he's also a controversial figure in some ways. Here is his incredible story.

An Adventurous and Inspiring Start

Born in 1944, Milius had a Midwestern upbringing in St. Louis, Missouri, which paved the way for a personality much more attuned to his non-coastal provenance than his intellectual family background. Did we mention all the guns?

Sure, he was born the son of a shoe manufacturer who provided the director with an affluent upbringing, but the younger Milius was something of a juvenile delinquent, and found an early interest in all things dangerous — firearms principle among them. When his family sold their interest in the Milius Shoe Company and moved to the tony hills of Bel-Air, California, Milius found a new huge interest to dive into.

Upon moving to California as a child, Milius discovered another pursuit that pulled him even farther away from his European roots. Surfing was more typical for the sandy-blonde teenagers that frolicked on Southern California's coast in the 1960s, and Milius used his imposing physical presence to bully his way into surfing's amateur ranks when the pursuit became a fad on the West Coast (and yes, that's Gary Busey on the far right in that surfing picture).

Fascinated with reading and writing, Milius worked odd jobs while writing scripts. His writing style was influenced by the novels On the Road and Moby Dick, with Milius stating in an interview with Creative Screenwriting:

Milius Parlayed His Surfing Background into Early Breakthroughs

Milius continued to write scripts, finding some success selling them and building a name for himself. Given his skill for embellishment and tall tales, it's unclear how to regard his claim that he attempted to join the Marine Corps and volunteer for service in Vietnam. Did Milius truly lose out on his opportunity to serve in the Armed Forces thanks to asthma, or was he using the anecdote to bolster his legitimacy as a writer of war films about 'Nam?

In any case, many of Milius' California surfing buddies were military officers frequenting the point breaks around Camp Pendleton, and the insanely incongruous mash-up of California surf culture and the Vietnam War later became one of the hallmarks of Milius' film career.

Related: 10 Movies That Perfectly Encompass Surf Culture Aesthetic

After attending the USC School of Cinema, Milius had found work writing films about action subjects like Evel Knievel, but his third film as a director, Big Wednesday, would be his creative breakout. The surfing film cast Gary Busey (back when Busey was a breakout talent, before his more recent, demented social media presence) in a role opposite Jan-Michael Vincent and William Katt — that touched on draft-dodging, big wave surfing, and the limits of friendship.

In essence, the Hollywood legend is a paradox — writer of Apocalypse Now, director of one of the first great surfing films, close friend and collaborator of Steven Spielberg, and card-carrying member of the NRA. Milius is one-of-one, and lent a big hand to some of New Hollywood's greatest action films.

Script Doctor for Film School Friends and Mines Frazetta

Beyond his own transformational directorial efforts with films like Conan: The Barbarian, some of Milius' greatest work came by punching up his film school buddies' scripts — often going uncredited for his enormous influence on the films that re-wrote Hollywood (Jaws primary among them).

Milius took an early interest in comic books and the fantastical artwork of Frank Frazetta, an influence that would later inspire Conan: The Barbarian. Fantasy artwork was a proto-nerd interest he shared with the "Movie Brats," to borrow a term coined by film critic Pauline Kael that canonized Milius and peers Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma.

The cross-pollination of these Hollywood creatives led Milius to use his creative talent to improve the scripts for many of his generation's greatest directors — most notably his friend, Spielberg.

Milius' Relationship With Spielberg Continually Revived His Career

How the staunch conservative, gun-toting Milius became so close with the liberal idealist Spielberg is anyone's guess, though both filmmakers share a hereditary thread as prodigal film nerds who grew up in somewhat hostile surroundings in the 1950s American West.

Both also grew up on war films, a shared obsession that eventually led Spielberg to hire Milius to punch up the script for Saving Private Ryan when the latter's career was faltering, and he was approaching financial ruin.

Related: Saving Private Ryan 25 Years Later: Why It's the Best War Film Ever Made

One of Milius' best contributions to the film is the idea to start and end the movie in the graveyard scene, showing the passage of time brilliantly. He's responsible for the achingly beautiful lines, "Tell me I have led a good life. Tell me I'm a good man."

Spielberg and Milius maintain a friendship to this day, drawing closer when Milius suffered a stroke in 2010 that robbed him of the ability to speak and write.

From Writing Apocalypse Now to Becoming Blacklisted

One way that John Milius' career mirrored that of his contemporary Brian De Palma was their fraught relationship with commercialization and the studio system — even as New Hollywood's pioneers were asserting new power over studios from the writer's room and director's chair.

In 1967, George Lucas and Spielberg encouraged Milius to write a Vietnam film. Long a Joseph Conrad fan, Milius adapted Conrad's Heart of Darkness novella for the original draft of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

How Milius' Adaptation of Joseph Conrad Became His Most Important Film

That brief work was extrapolated by Milius into ten drafts and over a thousand pages typed throughout the next decade, after Coppola encouraged Milius to "Write every scene you ever wanted to go into that movie."

The result, though long-awaited, was an Oscar-winning film that somehow made Milius' oxymoronic vision of surfing on the Mekong Delta in the middle of battle into a cinematic revolution.

Milius' Legend as Firebrand Becomes Galvanized by Conan

Recalling John Milius' on-set demeanor for a recent episode of the podcast Smartless, Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't hesitate to label Milius as "insane," after Milius had shepherded Schwarzenegger from early failures in Hollywood, to becoming the action star that illuminated Milius' Frazetta-inspired image for Conan: The Barbarian.

The film read like the highly-graphic comic shorts in Heavy Metal magazine, but Milius' recognition of Arnold's physical genius and his forcing the young actor through grueling stunt work helped to create a visual feast that presaged contemporary fantasy projects like Game of Thrones.

Talking Dino De Laurentiis into Making Arnold Schwarzenegger a Star

Long before Schwarzenegger became a household name playing the Terminator, Detective John Kimble, Uncle Bob, and Conan, he was an unknown commodity — a retiring bodybuilder-turned-actor whom producer Dino De Laurentiis didn't trust to lead in his films.

De Laurentiis was wary of Arnold's thick "Nazi" accent, a harsh opinion that the Austrian-born actor poked fun at in his Netflix docu-series Arnold. Milius was unrelenting with De Laurentiis — insisting that "Ah-nold" was the only mortal being who could play the fantastical figure of Conan — torn from the pages of those epic fantasy comics.

Related: Arnold Schwarzenegger Detained in Munich Airport, Which Led to a Comedic Moment Worthy of Twins

Milius threatened to quit the film if Arnold wasn't cast in the title role. De Laurentiis relented, and caught Schwarzenegger off-guard when he finally visited the set, telling the insanely-yoked actor — "Yes, yes... you are Conan." Confused, Arnold turned to Milius, who proclaimed, "See! He loves you!" It turned out movie audiences did, as well.

Script Doctoring May Be Milius' Greatest Legacy

However great Milius' directorial achievements were, the most ingenious moments of his career may have been his small contributions, in a mostly editorial role, to the scripts of Steven Spielberg's and Don Siegel's films. Speaking about his work punching up the script for Siegel's film Dirty Harry, Milius downplayed his clearly enormous influence, saying his contribution was:

The Curious Case of Milius' U.S.S. Indianapolis Monologue for Jaws

Long before his script work on Saving Private Ryan, Milius augented the legendary U.S.S. Indianapolis speech, impeccably delivered by the legendary Robert Shaw in Jaws — which is regarded as one of the greatest monologues in motion picture history. However, the debate over just who wrote the monologue has been contested on more than one occasion.

The writer of the original Jaws script, Howard Sackler, claims to have conceived of an Indianapolis "moment," but Spielberg acknowledged asking John Milius, who contributed dialogue polishes, to take a shot at the speech as it needed to be bolstered to increase the film's stakes. These flourishes and filagrees were the essence of Milius' genius distilled — his skill came more in augmenting the ideas of his brilliant friends.

For his own directorial visions, Milius seemed to never compromise — leading to studio conflict and a late-career downturn that his friends have characterized as a blacklisting.

Whatever the outcome of his career, health, and his many financial issues through the years, no one can question Milius' importance to 20th Century filmmaking and the New Hollywood-fueled anointment of the "action film" as the summer blockbuster genre-of-choice.

For his efforts, Milius may be regarded as the most influential action writer of all time, guiding an entire generation — including luminaries like Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, who count themselves as some of Milius' biggest fans.

For more on John Milius' incredible career and unique talent, check out this video by YouTube channel CinemaTyler on the story behind Milius writing Apocalypse Now: