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).
"[7] Milius says he attempted to join the Marine Corps and volunteer for Vietnam War service in the late 1960s, but was rejected due to a "chronic" and "sometimes disabling" case of mild asthma.
During a rainy day on a summer vacation in Hawaii in 1962, he stumbled upon a movie theatre showing a week of Akira Kurosawa films and fell in love with cinema.
[19] 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.
He wrote a script entitled The Texans for Al Ruddy at Paramount, a contemporary version of Red River (1948)[21] (never made, although Sam Peckinpah was going to direct it in 1979[22])— Milius later said it "wasn't very good".
[7] Contemporary film critics grouped Milius in with the emerging "movie brats" generation of filmmakers that also including Lucas, Coppola, Terrence Malick, and Scorsese.
[34] 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.
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.
[2] Apocalypse Now was an adaptation of Heart of Darkness set in the Vietnam War[47] which George Lucas intended to direct as a follow-up to his first feature THX 1138 (1971).
"He sees himself as a great humanitarian, an enlightened soul who will tell you such wonderful things as he does at the end of Godfather 2 -- that crime doesn't pay ... Talent-wise, he's no John Ford; character-wise, he's no Steve Spielberg.
In 1986, it was reported that he was writing the script for Fatal Beauty which he hoped to direct with Cher;[62] the film was made by Tom Holland and starred Whoopi Goldberg.
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.
[67] 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.
"[70] 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.
[71] 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.
[72][73] 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.
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.
"Through his enormous body of work, John has shown a deep understanding of the human condition and the ways that conflict can be resolved", said ICT executive director Richard Lindheim.
"[82] He also developed Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) (2003), a biker film starring Triple H[83] and wrote a pilot for a TV show for UPN, Delta, about a military special ops team that takes on terrorists.
[89] In 2010 Milius was working on a new project, a film biography of Genghis Khan,[5] and a proposed TV series called Pharaoh, set during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut,[90] when he had a stroke.
[94]He wrote a number of iconic film lines such as "Charlie don't surf" and "I love the smell of napalm in the morning", from Apocalypse Now, and the famous Harry Callahan one-liners delivered by Clint Eastwood, including "Go ahead, make my day" and "Ask yourself one question, 'Do I feel lucky?'
"[94] 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 the Battle of San Juan Hill.
Likewise, the character Walter Sobchak in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski (portrayed by John Goodman) was partly inspired by Milius, a friend of The Coen Brothers.
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".
[96][97] Writer Nat Segaloff called Milius: The best writer of the so-called USC Mafia, a tight-knit group that resuscitated—some 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 ...
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.
"[106] For years, Milius was a member of the board of directors of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA),[79] where he was a leader (with Charlton Heston) in resisting a takeover attempt by advocates of the so-called Militia Movement.
"[108] In 2009, Milius signed a petition in support of Roman Polanski, who had been detained while traveling to a film festival in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges, which the petition argued would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely", and that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects.