MILIUS: The Unsung Soldier of the Film Apocalypse - Documentary Review

Does the name JOHN MILIUS, the subject of the aptly titled 2013 documentary MILIUS, sound familiar to you?

To me and other cinephiles, yes.

To many a movie-goer, maybe? Vaguely?

To most, (particularly those born post-1984) Hell no!

Does his name echo-out in the echelons of post-modern American filmmaking like his contemporaries Spielberg, Lucas and Scorsese? Again, hell no!

Should his name ring out? HELL YES!

Why, you may ask?

This documentary, a bio-pic-doco about the life and career of gun-toting, cigar-smoking, filmmaker John Milius, basically maps out how this Screenwriter-come-Director’s fingerprints / pen-strokes / type-writer-ribbon-smudges, have basically influenced everything we now see and know of popular film culture!

Pen-strokes / key-strokes; many times Milius did not even write the classic scenes he was responsible for; like the time he turned in the feature-film script for Dillinger (1973), dictated into a telegram machine. Or, the time when he verbalized the most classic scene in Jaws over the phone to Spielberg! Yep, you know the scene - towards the climax of the film, when salty sea-dog ‘Captain Quint’ recalls, with spine-tingling detail, the tale of his WW2 ship, the SS Indianapolis, being struck by a submarine torpedo and how the Sailors were subsequently picked off by hungry sharks… That scene! The best scene in Jaws! HE wrote that scene! In a single phone call! Chatting over the land-line with Steven Spielberg, who was looking to layer-up his film and add more dimension to his characters, calling upon his old film school buddy John Milus! WOW!

In Milius’ adolescent years, we learn that he had psychologically prepared himself to enlist, fight and die in the Vietnam war. After volunteering and being rejected because of his asthma, in 1967, Milius stumbled his way into film school at the U.S.C (University of Southern California) School of Cinematic-Television, alongside the aforementioned George Lucas and, later, Steven Spielberg.

In 1967, the counter-culture hippy movement was at its peak. But Milius didn’t subscribe to this free-love hippy era, although he was slap-bang in the middle of it! Milius, mockingly and somewhat provocatively, preferred to portray himself as a kind of right-wing warmonger. No, not Peace Now! But Apocalypse Now as Milius would coin the phrase that would later become the film title. 

*Probably the most famous line of dialogue written by John Milius... And possibly the most famous line of dialogue in the history of film!

The persona of Milius immediately draws up comparisons with that of another gun-totting, girl-crazed iconic writer, that of Hunter S. Thompson, also the subject of numerous documentaries about his life, such as Gonzo (2008), narrated by Johnny Depp.

Although Milius didn’t seem to partake in as many drugs as dope-fiend Hunter S. and whilst Thompson drew his inspiration from synthetic sources, Milius’ talent as a writer really sprung forth from literally nowhere, except for maybe being a well-read, passionate student of history. This documentary and the life and work of John Milius actually left me wondering that, for some, and I’m talking about next level genius writers, that maybe writing for people like Milius is not so much an art, a practise, a discipline or dedication… but rather, almost a divine gift!

That may sound like an extreme over-exaggeration. But when you look at the screenplays Milius strung together, it is literally like a roadmap to what was 'cool' in film throughout the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s… right up until present day.

Let’s briefly examine the time-line of his career…

The Dirty Harry films, kicked off by Milius as early as 1971, set the template for the cop thrillers / Jason Stathan-type roles that are still being churned-out by major studios today. Milius wrote the lines, ‘Go ahead punk… make my day.’ Not to mention the famous Clint Eastwood monologue about Harry’s beloved .44 Magnum, ‘the most powerful handgun in the world’, clearly indicative of Milius’ obsession with guns.

Milius’ Dillinger film was clearly a precursor to the smash hit Bonnie and Clyde starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

He managed to adapt the classic Joseph Conrad novel Hearts of Darkness into the Francis Ford Coppola directed, iconoclastic Vietnam War film, Apocalyspe Now, when, prior to that, much more feted filmmakers, like Orson Welles, had attempted to adapt the same source material and failed.

Again, he wrote the best scene in Jaws… over the phone!

He actually gave Arnold Schwarzenegger his big film break with the lead role in Conan the Barbarian (1982), re-writing and directing a young Oliver Stone’s third feature film script. Yep, that’s right, he kick-started the careers of Arnie and Oliver, one would go onto become the right-wing Republican ‘Governator’ of California, the other a left-wing, agent-provocateur and auteur fimmaker in his own right.

*A young John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the set of Conan the Barbarian.

Whilst seminal and influential are also two other words that immediately spring to mind when describing Milius, sadly, so are maligned and ostracized.

Yep, it wouldn’t be a documentary story worth telling if it were all glory without any conflict or tragedy… and Milius had his fair share.

After working closely with Martin Sheen on Apocalyspe Now, John Milius then gave Charlie Sheen his big break in the ‘84 block buster Red Dawn (later blatantly mimicked to great financial success by Australian writer John Marsden in the Tomorrow When The War Began series.)

Whilst Red Dawn was a smash at the box office for Milius, the film’s controversial plot about the invasion of the USA by Soviet troops, touched such a raw nerve that it was labelled ‘reckless’ and ‘dangerous’ by critics, drawing an official response from the Soviet Union who labelled it as 'American Hollywood propaganda', actually leading to an escalation of the Cold War conflict.

As a result, from the Red Dawn fiasco, Milius was practically ostracized from Hollywood. Despite his credits and box-office success, he suddenly became studio political poison!

In the 1980’s, many of the major Hollywood studios had been bought-up by multi-national corporations who were now majority shareholders. Established filmmakers like John Milius didn’t take too kindly to being told how to tell their stories by accountants and corporate bean-counters. Pulling a pistol on a big-shot Executive Producer in a meeting may have been funny in the 60’s and 70’s… but in corporate, politically-correct, 1980’s Hollywood, this sort of behaviour didn’t fly any more and many felt threatened by Milius and his potentially risqué screenplays and films.

The persona Milius had worked so hard to create - the gun-toting, cowboy screenwriter, had suddenly become a hindrance to the filmmaker.

Combine this with being swindled by a shifty accountant and Milius suddenly found himself on the verge of bankruptcy, whilst his contemporaries Spielberg and Lucas were defining modern era blockbuster franchises with their Stars Wars and Indiana Jones movies.

Milius was forced to scrape by for the next two decades however he could, writing epsiodes of TV for shows like Miami Vice, influencing soon to be big-time filmmaker Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral, Ali and the Dillinger reboot Public Enemies) who was also a co-writer on Miami Vice at that time.

My other favourite anecdote from the Milius documentary (along with the Jaws story from Spielberg) comes from the showrunner for Deadwood, David Milch. Milius, a big fan of the western TV series, contacted HBO to enquire about a gig writing episodes. The showrunner responded, “You’re fucking John Milius! You wrote Apocalypse Now! I cannot come into work every day and see you in my team of writers and tell you what to write!” Milius pleaded his case, saying that he was broke and had promised his son that he would pay for his college fees to study law. David Milch and HBO generously paid Milius’ son's tuition fees.

It was a bold gesture by Milch and HBO. But Milius would pay them back ten-fold in 2005 when he delivered HBO the 22-episode historical epic, Rome, which would become yet another cult classic for the network.

Just as Conan the Barbarian spawned a new wave of sword-and-sandal sagas in cinema, so did Rome on TV, paving the way for another HBO series that some of you may have heard of... er, um, I dunno, a little show titled, Game Of Thrones!

I must admit, before viewing the bio-pic-doco, Milius, my knowledge of his work did not extend much further than Apocalypse Now, Conan and the surf film Big Wednesday. Therefore, I am thankful for the creators of this doco for filling in the blanks on what has been a stellar career which deserves way more acknowledgement. 

*At least the Cohen brothers acknowledge John Milius' influence, Milius the inspiration behind the character of 'Walter Sobchak', played by John Goodman in The Big Lebowski.

So I say, aye-aye (*military salute) to the gun-toting, screenwriting, ‘General’ John Milius. A seminal screenwriter who, in the battle of the blank page, strafed and peppered modern filmmaking with his screenwriting bullets of machismo and bravado (cheesy military comparisons aside), a filmmaker whom inspired generations of imitators, with half of them probably not even realising that they have been influenced by the work of John Milius.

* Milius was another Netflix documentary discovery, currently available for streaming via the US platform. 

* Pictures ripped from Google Images and reproduced without permission. 

LOST SOUL: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau - Review

Trolling through Netflix (US version) very late one night recently, I stumbled upon a documentary about filmmaking, titled, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau. And, WOW, what a rare find this gem of a doco has been! 

As a ‘failed’ feature filmmaker myself, having had a project collapse and die an inglorious death, I can somewhat relate to the crazy, chaotic and hilariously tragic tale of filmmaker Richard Stanley’s attempts to Direct the 1996 film, The Island of Dr. Moreau.

 
This documentary is a film about a film.

What were once primarily produced as ‘Bonus Features’ on DVD’s, ‘Making-of’ docos have moved beyond ‘Featurettes’ and have become feature-length documentaries, a sub-genre unto themselves.

With Lost Soul…  think making-of meets disaster-movie! And when I say disaster movie, I don’t mean erupting volcanos or towering infernos… I mean the production of the film itself was, quite literally, a disaster.

It’s a clever business model really. Employ a hungry uni student with a HD video cam on your film crew, pay them in catering, ‘experience’ and an IMDB credit, then if the proverbial hits the fan and the film collapses... Viola! You already have a ‘get out of jail free’ card to play by turning your ‘Featurette’ into a feature-length ‘making of’ documentary!

The documentary that kicked off this unique sub-genre was, of course, Hearts of Darkness, about the craziness and chaos behind the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s iconoclastic war film, Apocalypse Now.

Other (dis)honourable contributions to the films about films / making-of / disaster film doco genre include American Movie (1999), Overnight (2003) and Terry Gilliam’s Lost In La Mancha (2002) about the Monty Python Director's attempts to direct his problem-plagued-production, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, originally slated to star Johnny Depp. 

Most recently, we have also seen Jorodowsky’s Dune, about 70’s cult Director Jorodowsky’s plans to adapt the sci-fi novel Dune (which itself ended up a train wreck with original Director David Lynch removing his name from the credits) and Superman Lives, about Kevin Smith’s attempts to make a Superman film with Nicholas Cage in the lead role, two docos about films that never even got off the ground.

So whether it’s Martin Sheen having a heart attack whilst performing tai-chi naked in Hearts of Darkness ... or Val Kilmer refusing to come out of his trailer until Brando had come out of his in Lost Soul / Dr. Moreau …These making-of / disaster docos give us the back-story behind the infamous productions that spiralled out of control and became notorious disasters and train-wrecks unto themselves. (*Apocalypse Now being the obvious exception in that, whilst it was a disaster to produce, the film still went on to become a commercial and critical success and one of the greatest films of a generation!)

And what is another link between The Island of Dr. Moreau, Apocalypse Now and Hearts of Darkness??? Marlon Brando, of course! At his notorious, bloated, superstar, ego-maniac, petulant best! But Coppola, a big man and a superstar in his own right, could wrangle Brando, whereas this poor guy Richard Stanley was just a kid thrown into the deep end! And boy was he way, way, way out of his depth!

For those that haven’t seen it, The Island of Dr. Moreau is universally ranked as one of the worst films of all time, right up alongside ‘Razzie’s’ like The Room and Gigi.

 

*An illustration of Kilmer, Brando and Director Stanley.

The story comes from the novel of the same name, by esteemed sci-fi author H.G Wells, most famous for writing War of the Worlds and many other celebrated sci-fi novels.

As the documentary lays bare, The Island of Dr. Moreau had all the ingredients to be a hit; story by a legend of the sci-fi universe, one of the world’s biggest stars in Brando attached to play the title character and homo-erotic Top Gun heartthrob Val Kilmer playing opposite Brando. And then there was the Director, Richard Stanley, a young filmmaker whose star was certainly on the rise!

At that time, the South African Richard Stanley was only in his late twenties and coming off the back of two successful, but very small, indi cult films, Hardwired and Devil Dust.

The studio New Line Cinema enthusiastically green-lit production on Stanley’s third film ...Dr. Moreau, which was originally conceived as a modestly budgeted horror film for around $6-8million. However, as the project gained traction and buzz and when stars Brando and Kilmer came aboard in central roles, that modest $6-8 million budget quickly escalated to a $60-80 million dollar picture. Naturally, the studio became nervous, very nervous, and the undermining of the young Director began. 

* The young Richard Stanley prepping for Dr. Moreau.

From the interviews in Lost Soul… Stanley, a practitioner of Witchcraft, comes across as somewhat of an eccentric character, to say the least. According to Stanley, when he was meeting with Brando to pitch him the lead role, a Coven of witches and warlocks were casting spells and making blood sacrifices, to help ensure that Brando indeed took the lead role of Dr. Moreau.

However, whilst Director Stanley had the backing of witches and warlocks, he was losing the confidence of the studio to deliver his film. Frightened by some of the risqué scenes and story-boarding depicting Stanley’s out there vision for the film (including hardcore interspecies sex scenes), during pre-production, the Producer’s made the prophetic decision to write in a contingency within the budget to hire another Director, should Stanley lose control of his production, or should the studio lose control of Richard Stanley. It was almost as if the studio had manifested the impending disaster by doubting the young Stanley and undermining him to begin with.

The documentary, a mix of archival footage and interviews with cast and crew, also has a uniquely Australian feel to it, since the actual film …Dr. Moreau, was shot on location, on an island, near Cairns, just off the coast of Queensland. Many of the key crew and all of the extras were sourced locally, much to the chagrin of New Line Cinema, back in Hollywood.

And like many naive foreigners, the Producers of the film somehow assumed that the weather and shooting conditions in far north Queensland were all sunny skies and tropical paradises, typical post-card Australian stuff. Somehow, nobody accounted for the intense heat and humidity, followed by the monsoonal wet season, typical of the Far North Queensland region. Upon completion of set building, the production was hit by torrential rains and most of their sets were washed out into the Pacific Ocean.

The film was about to be hit by another disaster beyond their control; around the time Brando was due to arrive in Australia, his daughter, Cheyenne Brando, committed suicide. This delayed the shoot even further, with Brando remaining in the US to grieve and be with his family.

With barely any of their sets and the lead actor not even on the same continent, the young Stanley tried to push ahead and shoot what footage he could. But there was one more disaster awaiting Stanley... and that was cyclone Kilmer. Coming off Batman Forever, Kilmer was at his peak as a Hollywood film star and was none too keen on taking direction from the younger Stanley. The cast and crew interviews recall how Kilmer was re-writing scenes, disregarding dialogue in favour of improvisation and flat-out refusing to take direction. The documentary also suggests Kilmer only took the role for the chance to play opposite Brando. But Brando was nowhere to be seen.

By the time Brando did arrive in Cairns, Australia, Director Richard Stanley had been fired and replaced with veteran Director John Frankenheimer. This reportedly angered Brando, whom had developed a fondness for Stanley and shared his vision for the film.

New Director Frankenheimer had been sent to Australia with one brief; to salvage the Production and basically deliver something, anything, that resembled a film.

But not even the experienced Frankenheimer could wrangle mega-stars Brando and Kilmer.

Brando refused to do any dialogue scenes with Kilmer. Most of the quirkiness in the final cut of the film were creative decisions insisted by Brando; the white pancake make-up, the ice bucket on the head and the decision to take one of the freak extras, the worlds smallest man, Nelson De La Rosa, standing at a diminutive 2’4, and create the ‘mini-me’ character, which would later be parodied by Dr. Evil in Mike Myers' Austin Powers. 

* Marlon Brando as Dr. Moreau with his 'mini-me'.

Being a ‘creature-feature horror’, the film also engaged the services of the famous Stan Winston Studio make-up and effects artists. Extras interviewed in the doco recall how everyday they would spend hours in make up and be required on set, in stifling heat, to not even be used shooting any scenes that day, which would go on for months on end.

Meanwhile, original Director Richard Stanley had become an official 'missing person'! Devastated at being fired from his pet project, Stanley was paid out in full for his work and meant to be put on a plane back to L.A. However, Stanley never made it back to L.A. and was a reported missing, somewhere in Australia. In interviews, he reveals that he had settled with some hippies at a commune nearby the production, smoking copious amounts of weed as he came to terms with his firing.  

*Richard Stanley circa 2014.

(*MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!)

In what is the highlight of the documentary, Stanley reveals how he snuck back on location, disguised by a prosthetic mask and the sacked Director actually appears in scenes in the film as a ‘Dog Man’, half dog / half man, under the direction of his replacement, Frankenheimer.

As the weeks rolled into more than six months, the tension between Director Frankenheimer and his stars Brando and Kilmer continued and the budget continued to spiral out of control. Eventually, a wrap was called and they were able to fashion a film out of what would come to be known as a legendary, train wreck of a film shoot.  

The Island of Dr. Moreau was universally panned by critics but according to imdb.com the film somehow managed to turn of profit for New Line Cinema, thanks to a cult following in Japan.

As for the Lost Soul himself, Richard Stanley, he would never make another feature-film again. Sad for Stanley, tragic that such a promising talent was lost to the industry because of studio politics and circumstances beyond his control... but a BIG bonus for us, for if it wasn’t for the collective chaos and insanity behind Dr. Moreau, then we wouldn’t have this delightful little romp of a ‘making of / disaster’ documentary.

I sympathize with Richard Stanley; God knows that in my attempts to produce a feature film here in Australia, the trials, tribulations, shady characters and the retarded industry itself, presented as much, if not more drama, than the actual screenplay I was trying to produce… Maybe I would have been better off making a ‘making of’ doco, rather than an actual film?

*Images reproduced without permission.