20 Questions: John Milius

Writer and director John Milius gave us the "This is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world" speech in "Dirty Harry," as well as Robert Red-ford's vast silences in "Jeremiah Johnson." His directorial oeuvre includes "Conan the Barbarian," "The Wind and the Lion," "Red Dawn," "Big Wednesday" and the recent "Flight of the Intruder." Contributing Editor David Rensin recalls their meeting: "Milius loves the smell of cigars in the morning, especially those smuggled in from Cuba. Photographs peek through the haze in his Paramount Pictures office: Milius with the late John Huston, on a surfboard riding a giant wave, hunting. He speaks of honor and the codes by which men live. He is fond of quoting samurai. He knows what is wrong with this country and how to fix it. He is a puppy dog at heart."

1.

[Q] Playboy: In your most recent film, Flight of the Intruder, some American pilots take the Vietnam war into their own hands and launch an air strike on Hanoi. When have you done something unthinkable, against all the rules, and survived?

[A] Milius: My whole career has been that way. I liken myself to a successful outlaw. The takes are not real big, but they keep me eating. I flatter myself, but I think I can be like Jesse James if I last long enough and rob a few more trains. If I'm at it long enough, they'll give me an amnesty and I'll be able to spend my final days in some carnival, talking to the kids. I've never been accepted. Not only that but there are a lot of people who are like the Pinkerton's and would like to run me out. Like almost every critic who ever lived.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you and Pauline Kael have a feud?

[A] Milius: Yeah, I always thought she was in love with me, if only because she had it in for me for so long. She spent a lot more energy and time than I was worth. She thought I was an animal. She thought I was dangerous, which was kind of a compliment. She thought that I was very skilled and that it was all being put to the wrong use. I think that she, like everybody else, always thought I was a Nazi. There wasn't a film of mine that she didn't attack. Especially the ones I wrote. She said Jeremiah Johnson was written by vultures. I like to think that it was written by eagles [laughs]. And then she promulgated the myth that I had a contract to shoot all the animals in Jeremiah Johnson, which, of course, is untrue--I obviously wouldn't want to shoot a bunch of tied-up animals, or any animals other than the ones I hunt. I'm very touchy about the mistreatment of animals. However, I wish I had a contract to shoot the actors. [Smiles] Actually, I was happy with the result. It's a really good movie. Pollack's a good director. Redford still thinks it's his best film. It probably is. It was before he became a saint. Now he's Saint Bob of Utah. He was more exciting before. Most people are a lot more exciting before they become saints.

3.

[Q] Playboy: HOW are you at developing friendships with actors?

[A] Milius: I don't spend a lot of time with actors off the set. I consider it kind of an unmanly profession. George Bernard Shaw said, "An actress is something more than a woman. An actor is something less than a man." I'm not sure that an occupation where one spends his life waiting by the phone and dressing up is an occupation that [deserves respect]. There are some actors whom I like a great deal: Nick Nolte, Willem Dafoe, Sean Connery. They give a certain kind of dignity to the profession because of their extraordinary skill and the professionalism with which they approach it. It makes them rise above the unmasculinity of the trade.

4.

[Q] Playboy: You endorse living by codes. The Wind and the Lion explores the notion of the savage's chivalry being more high-minded than Teddy Roosevelt's. Can you give some codes by which men should live?

[A] Milius: A code gives you strength. It gives you a way to live. You should simply pick a code that you can live with. The samurai lives by a code that may entail his own destruction, but he's strong. One samurai was really extreme. He said that you should never have a discussion with more than two or three people at a time. People should talk only face to face. You should wear only clothes of ordinary material. Silk tends to weaken your spirit. If you want to indulge in pursuits, they should be of a martial nature. Anyone who commits the sin of dance should probably commit seppuku. You read the stuff and you kind of get to like the guy. [Smiles] I don't recommend that people who dance should commit seppuku, but then again, I understand his feelings.

What's so disgusting about today's society, particularly in America, is that we have no codes. We're totally Machiavellian, and in the end, we'll produce nothing. We'll produce just mediocrity. In the Eighties, the Wall Street investment bankers who were ruthless, the people who were getting ahead at any cost, only sped themselves toward mediocrity and weakness.

That's why Saddam Hussein laughs at us. That's why he didn't leave Kuwait immediately, because we're weak. We're a country that turns on itself. The press tears apart everybody, people don't stand up for what they are, and we walked out of Vietnam. The whole thing went wrong from there. I mean, we shouldn't have been there in the first place.

5.

[Q] Playboy: Fans of your films will wonder why you, of all people, think we shouldn't have been in Vietnam.

[A] Milius: I blame it all on John Kennedy, who knew that we should get out, agreed that we should get out and had the means to get out. But he didn't get out, because he wanted to be re-elected. And, of course, he got himself killed. If we were putting in a government there, we should have put in a government that asked us to leave. It would have saved fifty-five thousand American lives and national disgrace. It really destroyed the country. Two things happened: One, it was a lie between the President and the grunt. And when there's a lie between the President and the grunt, people distrust, their Government and the very fabric of the people's Government. And. two, you can't walk away from a light. If you get in a fight, for whatever reason, you fight to the end.

6.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of fighting, under what circumstances should a man remain with a woman who all his male friends think is a bitch?

[A] Milius: If he loves her, he must be true to his nature. In any case, men should treat women as well as they can, though women don't often treat men as well as they can. The chivalric beliefs are probably correct. Gene Autry paid that a cowboy must always be good to women. There's something to that.

7.

[Q] Playboy: Why don't women treat men as well as they should, and what can be done about it?

[A] Milius: Women are trying to take on men's identities and they're kind of confused about their own. When women controlled the family, they had a stronger identity. They wielded a great deal of power, and they seemed comfortable with that. However, [if they want it,] women should have an equal place in the work force. They should be paid the same as men. But if they're going to do the same job a man does, they [can't help] but use their feminine wiles. They can by nature often be very duplicitous. Men don't admire that. Men want straight-on, face-to-face dealings. Most women who have careers are not very happy. That indicates to me that they don't really have a very clear-cut idea of what they should do. That is not to say that women should stay out of the professional workplace. They should get in as much as they want to. I believe in a meritocracy: whoever does the job best.

8.

[Q] Playboy: Have you yet come face to face with the men's consciousness-raising movement that suggests males have lost their mythic way?

[A] Milius: [Laughs] No. There's probably a great deal of truth to that, but that's because they've lost any strength that you get from having your own code, following your own trail. To be worth a shit in the world, you've got to blaze your own trail. Nothing else is any good. Whatever you're going to do you're going to do alone. This whole delusion people have that they're going to do it "together," that there's going to be some wonderful mating between men and women and that they'll go forth together, the two of them, against the world--it's not true. If you can give something to somebody else, you give it out of your own strength. You give it up when you have enough that you can afford to give it. With women, it's the same way: They have to find their identity alone. People who don't have their identity in their thirties are just laughable and not even worth consideration. You should have your identity by the time you're sixteen. [Pauses] I did.

9.

[Q] Playboy: Describe your rite of passage.

[A] Milius: The incident that changed me sounds stupid and trite. I was living in Colorado and I was trying to be a mountain man and a trapper. I was fifteen, sixteen years old. I was reading a lot of Kerouac. Somehow, Kerouac and Melville stirred me up, much more than Hemingway. Plus, there was a certain attraction in the beat way of life, a certain kind of wanderlust. So I realized that there were two paths that were diverging. You could be your own person and be a bit of a rebel and reject materialism. A lot of that went along with studying Zen. And then there was the path of [what today is called] the Yuppie, becoming real good at business and opportunity, getting straight A's, getting into the right college, making the right career moves. Everybody's faced with that at some point. I sat in a bush way up on a mountain in sort of broken snow. I could see only mountains. I tried to take myself back to the pristine wilderness. I tried to place myself in a frame of mind that there were wild animals and wild Indians out there; nothing was going to help me. Then it was very clear which path to take, and I've never really deviated from it. I took the path that rejected materialism. Having made that decision, there really was never a question of going back. I clearly felt it was the superior decision. To this day, I find myself most excited when I'm presented with a difficult problem, not when I've achieved something and somebody says, "Here's a big pay check" or "Here's an honor for one of your films." There's a line in Conan where these sort of hippies say to him, "Come with us, you'll find peace," and he says, "Time enough for peace in the grave." The reward is in the action.

10.

[Q] Playboy: You come from a generation of film makers that includes Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese and De Palma. In the early days, there must have been a time when you looked around the room, so to speak, and assessed the talent. Who was earmarked for success then? Who is still in the room?

[A] Milius: We were just trying to get along. We were all pretty good friends then, and we're all very distant now. Success and money have changed it. People are very concerned with who's hot and who's not, that kind of thing. I've drifted away from most of the others. They've drifted away from one another, too. The only surprise is that we were all much more successful than we could ever have conceived of. I could never have imagined the success that I had. I would have been happy making a living writing episodic television or something. I never dreamed of doing these things. And then the wealth that's been accumulated by some of these directors is off any scale of human thought. I haven't accumulated that kind of wealth. I've been married two times, so that kind of kept me honest. It's like Zen charity: I've made these women rich. But I myself, I'm a simple man. "1 am poor because I am a river to my people." That's Anthony Quinn in Lawrence of Arabia.

11.

[Q] Playboy: Has the current generation of film makers ruined movies?

[A] Milius: Yes, because they narrowed the cinema. They made movies into amusement-park rides. One of the studio executives said recently that the only criterion for making a movie was that it could be advertised effectively on television. That guy is being very honest. That has resulted from this massive expansion of the market place, which these guys did. They proved there was a lot more money out there, but the money was for a different kind of thing than the movies that were made by our heroes. I can't imagine a Kurosawa film such as Ikiru being advertised on television. You couldn't make The Godfather anymore, unless the two other Godfathers existed. I don't think you could make Apocalypse Now; I don't think it would ever be made.

12.

[Q] Playboy: Who were your heroes?

[A] Milius: The guys we rated as having great talent were the real guys, like John Ford and John Huston. Howard Hawks and Kurosawa, Fellini, Godard. They were the guys who had really done it. We were very derivative. The second movie I directed was The Wind and the Lion, and people have said, "Gee, that movie looks as good as Lawrence of Arabia." Well, it sure wouldn't have looked as good as Lawrence of Arabia if I hadn't had (continued on page 188) John Milius (continued from page 160) Lawrence of Arabia to look at. For instance, the Turkish-prison nightmare scene was wonderfully wrought and very interesting, because Lawrence found out that he was human. He discovered his frailties. Those are the best characters. A character who's a saint is boring. A saint can be any number of things. A lot of Clint Eastwood's movies are solved because Clint is the saint. When he shoots, the bad guys fall down; when they shoot, they miss. Same with Rambo. These guys don't figure out how to solve their problem through their own character or smarts, they just do it because they are the heroes. Dirty Harry is always supposed to be God's lonely man. And his solution isn't always the best solution. He often goes too far. That was the original idea of the character, that he's not that much different from the criminals--he's just on our side.

13.

[Q] Playboy: As writer of Dirty Harry and Magnum Farce, you're responsible for some of the most memorable macho movie lines of all time. Do you know it when you write something that will become part of pop culture? Or are you just lucky?

[A] Milius: "Are you lucky, punk?" Yeah. That's all vintage Milius, I suppose. [Pauses] I got a little tingle. I guess I just thought it was me at the time. It was a good line and Dirty Harry was highly regarded--mostly by nuts--when it came out. It didn't have the kind of legendary gloss that it does now. The speech "This is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world," the cops love that. Another line I'm very famous for is "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." When I wrote that, I thought it would be the first thing cut out of the movie. And when I saw the movie, I thought, Oh, God, this stuff is over the top. He's gone too far--even though Duvall delivered it just wonderfully. No other actor could have gotten away with saying that.

14.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't it true that as an inducement to write Dirty Harry, you asked for a particular shotgun in addition to your fee?

[A] Milius: Yes. A Purdy shotgun. For all my deals, at the time, I got the money, which wasn't a hell of a lot, and a gun, because I did not consider paper honorable. I had to have an object to remember the movie by. The gun cost two thousand dollars, and I wanted it and my money, which at the time wasn't much--thirty-five thousand dollars. I had to do the script in three and a half weeks. I said, "Well, I know where this gun is, and I can't start until I have it." They said, "Why don't you go get the gun?" I said, "OK, I can go get it." They said, "Well, then you could start today?" and I said, "No, I'd have to look at the gun for a whole day. I'd get it today and I'd probably have to look at it tomorrow and I could start the day after." They said, "We'll get the gun." So they sent a limousine to get the gun. I started that night.

15.

[Q] Playboy: How many fully loaded guns are in your house? Which of your guns could you never do without?

[A] Milius: Well, I've always had a working collection. I go out and shoot all the time. I love to shoot clay targets. Basically, I hunt ashtrays. There's probably one fully loaded: a .45 I take with me to the bathroom. Somebody once said to me, "A true paranoiac doesn't have guns all over the house that are loaded, he has only one--and he goes to the bathroom with it." [Pauses] I have one I'd never part with, an old Winchester, Model Twenty-One. I won an awful lot of money with it in a lot of shoots. That gun is known as "Black Death." Black Death has had more than four hundred thousand rounds through it and never failed.

16.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most memorable compliment anyone has ever paid you?

[A] Milius: John Huston said of me, "He's not of this time." True. I just don't fit in. There's nothing hip about me. There's nothing cool. I'm a relic. I don't get a lot of the things that go on now. Like Tim Burton. I don't get Tim Burton. He goes right over my head. I don't get a lot of rock-and-roll music; the Doors were probably my last big love in rock and roll. [Smiles] You are what you are. The older you get, the more you realize that. I realized that I'm kind of a redneck slob. I've always been a redneck slob. My girlfriend says she'd love it if I were a "chiseled composer," if I would do the life of Brahms. Well, it's just not going to happen. The older I get, I become more and more content with myself. Then I'll become a curmudgeon. I've also been called "the George Patton of film directors." That's the high end of it. The other end is "the Hermann Goering of film directors." I like to think of myself somewhere in the middle, probably like Nathan Bedford Forrest.

17.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any surgical procedures that real men should refuse to undergo with anesthesia? Under what circumstances should a man cry?

[A] Milius: Anything cosmetic. If men want muscle implants or hair implants, they should be forced to do without anesthesia. Men should cry whenever they feel like it. But they should never complain. I once cried bitterly at the loss of my dog. For days on end. I'm sure I've also cried many times, heartbroken over some girl. But complaining is something else.

18.

[Q] Playboy: You're on record as hating the idea of celebrity. Who are the most egregious abusers? If you had one gun and one bullet, who would get the bullet and who would get the butt of the gun?

[A] Milius: Who would I shoot? E.T. I'm really sorry that E.T. ever entered my consciousness. I feel it soiled my aura. I know it was developed by one of my oldest friends, but I hate E.T. I just hate the unctuousness of it, so wonderful and sweet, and unreal. I think E.T. would have been a great movie, one of my favorites of all time, if it had been about a dog from outer space. I can really get behind feeling that way about a dog. [Smiles] I've told this to Steven, but he just dismisses it. He thinks I'm nuts anyway. I always said E.T. should grow up and come back shooting death rays. "You made a lot of money off this. Well, now you're gonna pay."

19.

[Q] Playboy: You made Farewell to the King with Nick Nolte in Borneo. How much fun can you have there, in the bug-infested jungles, on a Saturday night?

[A] Milius: A lot. One time, I got drunk with Nick, a guy who makes getting drunk attractive. Nick really has a good time. He's a good drunk. He gets funnier. You just sit there and say, "God, if I could be like that when I was drunk, I'd get drunk all the time." But it doesn't have that effect on me. I just get dizzy. I've been drunk about three times in the past fifteen years. The nice part lasts about fifteen minutes, and then I get the whirlies. Then it's throwing up for a couple of days. In Borneo, my girlfriend got me to get up and sing Blue Suede Shoes in a bar. Since I've never sung anything in my life, I'd say that's quite something. I probably wouldn't have done it anywhere else but Borneo.

20.

[Q] Playboy: What's this country's toughest job?

[A] Milius: Grunt soldier. The guy who has to give up his life. Infantrymen. They ought to be very highly paid. Marine in an assault platoon. The guy has to run up the beach and take out a machine gun. Tough job. Guy has to do it often for a President who's fucking around, for a war that may not be just. He does it for pride of unit; he does it for pride of the corps. Those are good people.

the film maker who created some of hollywood's manliest moments briefs us on protocol, munitions and when it's ok for a guy to cry