Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 115

Movies while a giant splash makes waves out West By Norma Lee Browning ill Hollywood i 1 rot like that. They say I should see an analyst. They also say I've been very lucky in my career because I'm the highest paid young writer in Hollywood. Luck had nothing to do with it. It was skill.

I am better than the others. It's Just like an athletic contest, and I beat them word for word." The Mark Spitz of the typewriter set? "That punk?" he replies. "Hell, no. Make it Johnny Welsmuller. Only I never use a typewriter.

I had one once, a Smith Corona. I finally took it up on a hill and shot it with my Smith and Wesson." What does he write with? Would you believe a 19-cent Bic point pen on legal size yellow pads "I steal them from my Milius became so attached to the pen with which he wrote his "Roy Bean" script that when he finished, he sent the pen off to the factory to have it refurbished. Instead, the factory sent him three new ones. "They completely missed the point There was a lot of sentiment attached to that 19-cent investment," he said. There should have, been.

For "Roy Bean," he received $300,000, one of the highest prices ever paid for an original screenplay. How come? "I asked for it. I didn't write it to sell. I wrote it for myself to direct. But producer John Foreman wanted It, so I said, 'Okay, pay for it' I set the price so high I didn't think he'd go for it but ha did.

Then he screwed the damn thing up by making a burlesque of the character. That man, Judge Roy Bean, was a real American folk hero, like Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan or Dillinger. He was the "Law West of the He might have been a murderer, a robber, and a thief, but he was good at heart. So what do they do? They get cutesy-pie Paul Newman to play Judge Bean as a spoof and completely ruined my screenplay. I even challenged John Foreman to a duel-pistols to the death, but he was chicken.

"Newman is the last person in the world I would have chosen for the part. I wrote it for Warren Oates. I writ all my things for Warren Oates or young John Wayne types. HERE WE ARE, sitting In a booth at the Beverly Hills Brown Derby, and the big, bearded, Orson Wellesian character beside me was only half an hour late. If he were anyone else, I wouldn't have waited for him.

But I had Just seen "Jeremiah Johnson" and "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" in the same week and both screenplays were written by him. Mind-boggling. Who was this kid with the fascination for folk heroes of crime and violence? His name is John Milius, 28, one of Hollywood's new young supertalents. "My father always predicted I would wind up in San Quentin by the age of 21," he said. "I wouldn't want to disappoint him too much.

So here I am, Just having finished directing a movie abut John Dillin-ger, the greatest criminal that ever lived. Neat?" Neat. "It's my first time out as a director, and I think I did an excellent job because I had such a superb script." He also wrote it Even in kooky, cockeyed Hollywood, where far-out characters are a dime dozen, Milius, former surfer and beach bum, has made an out-sized splash. In a few short years he has earned a reputation as Hollywood's resident expert on legendary Americans, sometimes mistaking himself for one of them. A kind of grass-roots Homer, Milius Is possibly the last remaining practitioner of the heroic epic, American style.

He is also a gun expert and collector, a hunter, health freak, wine connoisseur, gourmet, and girl watcher. But above all, he is a self-admitted incomparable writer, sportsman, braggart, and teller of tall tales. It has been said and he readily admits that he envisions himself as the second coming of Hemingway- "That's because I go hunting every day. Writers are supposed to talk about writing or to read Proust I go quail hunting and I'm told it's damaging to the ecology and Or sometimes Clint Eastwood. He looks good holding a gun.

"But to me John Wayne is the ultimate American hero. Not because he's big and tough but because he's sentimental. My pictures are sentimental, idealistic. I deal with' values of friendship and courtliness and the family and chivalry and honor and courage not just guts, but bigger-than-life courage. Nobody today writes movies in the style that I do.

Nobody. I write characters that ere strong and direct, super-individuals. The people in my movies fear no one but God." Interviewing Milius is like taking a shower under Niagara Falls. Besides being a student of the American West, he once spent a year in Colorado as a "mountain trapping, and "learning about survival. "My folks sent me away because I was a Juvenile delinquent on the beach.

I was a surfer, I was wild, I was like Hell's Angels on motorcycles only I did my thing on surfboards. The folks wanted to get rid of me and they didn't care where I went; so I picked Steamboat Springs, where I-could be a mountain man. I'd been thru Steamboat Springs once when I was riding freight trains. Used to ride freight trains a lot. You can learn a lot riding freight trains.

I met a bum once who told me the funniest story I ever heard about a bear. I just now got around to using it in 'Roy The bear's beer-drinking scene to which he referred is one of the funniest ever filmed. But getting back to "Jeremiah," Milius confessed he had problems on it "I got fired from it. Well, not exactly. But they wanted to change this and that, and I said no and there was an eerie silence; so I Just left and came home, and they called in another writer Edward An-halt.

Not much dialog in it anyway. Mountain men are mostly nonverbal." Milius naturally is much happier with his "Dillinger" movie because he directed it, and any changes in his original screenplay were strictly his own. He also cast it, and he finally got the guy he wanted, Warren Oates, along with Oscar winners Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman. "People admired and respected Dillinger for being the greatest criminal," he says. "They admired him because he could get away with it.

Because he did it well and he did it with style. And also because he en-Joyed his work. "I've made a myth out of him but not a romantic myth like 'Bonnie and Clyde. Dillinger is a tough guy; he's Cagney. I'm not at all concerned with showing his early life or trying to explain how he got that way.

What I'm interested in is the legend. That's what this movie is, that's exactly what it is. It's not a character study or a Freudian analysis; It's an American folk tale." Next to himself, whom does Milius consider to be the greatest living film director? John Ford, director of many John Wayne movies, he says. And Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns. He also proudly admits to being in the same political mold as John Wayne.

"All truly great criminals were right-wingers Jesse James, Quantrell, Butch Cassldy, Dillinger All conservative In their political thinking." Milius has been called a reactionary, a walking anachronism, not part of his generation's culture at all. True? "Absolutely. I'm constantly referred to as a Fascist. This Is a gross misinterpretation. I am really a feudalist I want to be king," he admits modestly.

"I don't think that our modern forms of government have worked out at all well for anyone. The only conceivable salvation for the world Is absolute monarchy. I'm all for civilization returning to its feudal beginnings under the guidance of a benevolent ruler. "I suppose it's all because my father Jonn Milius didn't get married until he was 50 and sired me at 58. I was raised with baronial overtones and taught the dignity of the Empire at the age of "6.

My fattier was a very Victorian gentleman, sort of the idealized father. Sometimes I feel I was raised by John Wayne." There's a lot of rather bizarre humor In his work. Any reason for this? "It makes itself apparent. Life is always rather humorous and bizarre. I mean, the are good that every day you'll meet at least one raving lunatic.

I happen to find this aspect of life amusing. It's really not my fault" What has influenced his work most? "Surfing. I was raised on the beach at Malibu and surfed every day of the year for 19 years with the, finest surfers in the world. I was quite a good surfer myself, a master, in fact. All my skill at writing, my self-discipline, my drive, and my humor were learned on the beach.

Any intellectual influences such as books? Definitely. Next to his own literary works, his two favorites are "Moby Dick" and "True Grit." What does he do with all his money? "I buy expensive shotguns and go on hunts in Mexico. I live decadently. I'm really like Orson Welles. But I have to lose weight and get myself in top physical shape so I can push my crews to destruction." What are his plans for the future? "First I'm going to do an Arabic western around the Khyber Pass, bloody and violent but with style.

It'll be the first Arabic western. I like the Arab mentality I'm also writing a great historical novel about surfing in the 1960s at Malibu. It's an epic about kings who drink beer. It has a lot of sex and violence in it, too. I'd like to be a novelist, but my movies keep getting in the way.

Of course I'm going to be a great director. I've always wanted to be a com-bat general, and a movie director is the next best thing. I want to be the most decorated writer-director in the history of motion pictures. And then at the age of 40, am going to retire and do something important." Like what? "Like breeding and training a really efficient quail dog. I'll also go hunting a lot and eat a lot and writ novels! and chase women.

But not necessarily in that order." CMctM TrlbOM Fftw Strvlca 1 '-Six i i ty. i i Milius and the beer-drinking tcene-stealer of "Judge Roy Bean" CHICAGO TRIBUNE Arte Fun-January 23, 1973 Section 6 Page 7.