Filmmaker Biodoc MILIUS Now Streaming On Netflix Instant

MILIUS (Dirs. Joey Figueroa & Zak Knutson, 2013)

When I was a kid in the ‘70s I first became aware of writer/director John Milius when I read that he was the inspiration for the character of John Milner, the drag racing greaser played by Paul Le Mat, in George Lucas’ 1973 classic AMERICAN GRAFFITI. The fact that that piece of trivia isn’t even mentioned in Joey Figueroa and Zak Knutson’s 2013 biodoc MILIUS, currently streaming on Netflix Instant, just attests to what a richly layered life the mythical maverick filmmaker has led.

From coming up with Dirty Harry’s best known dialogue (the “‘Do do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” speech) to crafting the Oscar nominated screenplay for APOCALYPSE NOW to upsetting liberal Hollywood with his cold war opus RED DAWN - just to name a few highlights - the ultra manly Milius's contributions to modern cinema form a colossal career, in which as THE GODFATHER producer Al Ruddy tells us in the intro, the man “had more movies made than any other writer in the history of Hollywood.”

It all began in the ‘60s shortly after Milius was crushed by being rejected by the Marine Corps because of his asthma (“I missed, you know, going to my war”), he wandered into a theater showing a week of the films of Akira Kurosawa. The Japanese filmmaker’s work made Milius realize that being a director was the “next best thing” to a military career.

Then he was off to USC (University of Southern California) where his classmates included George Lucas, Caleb Deschanel (father of Zoey Deschanel), Donald F. Glut, and Randall Kleiser (GREASE) - most of whom appear to provide interview soundbites throughout the film.

Milius was the first of these film-minded folk to achieve success when he was hired by AIP (American International Pictures), a studio that specialized in cheapie “teensploitation” productions. His first screenplay credit was on a rip-off of THE DIRTY DOZEN called THE DEVIL'S 8 (“they didn’t have enough money for a full dozen”).

Following that, Milius worked on the scripts of EVIL KNIEVEL (1971), DIRTY HARRY (1971), JEREMIAH JOHNSON (1972), THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN (1972), and his feature length directorial debut DILLINGER (1973).

Milius’ second movie, the 1975 adventure epic THE WIND AND THE LION, starring Sean Connery and Candice Bergen, garnered a few Academy Award nominations, but his third film, the 1978 coming-of-age surfing picture, BIG WEDNESDAY, flopped big-time (of course, it became a cult classic later).

Much more notable during that time were his iconic contributions to Steven Spielberg’s 1975 shark attack classic JAWS (Robert Shaw’s USS Indianapolis monologue), and Coppola’s massive 1979 mash-up of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and the Vietnam war, APOCALYPSE NOW. Can you get any more quotable than “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning,” or “Charlie don’t Surf”? I don’t think so. 

“Everything memorable in APOCALYPSE NOW was invented by John Milius,” Coppola stresses.

Milius’ fourth film as director, the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger fantasy epic CONAN THE BARBARIAN (co-written by Oliver Stone) was a hit, but it was with his next film that things got pretty hairy. 1984’s RED DAWN, about a Russian invasion on American soil, polarized critics and got Milius ostracized from Hollywood for its pro-war stance. “Right-wing jingoism,” more than one critic called it.

There’s no getting around that the big beefy bearded gun nut - there are more photos here of Milius with machine guns, rifles, whatever firearm than you can count - rubbed a lot of people wrong. His following projects, FAREWELL TO THE KING, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER, and the TV movie ROUGH RIDERS, were barely blips on the pop culture radar.

Figueroa and Knutson’s film gets a bit muddled around this point of the narrative, but regroups with the revelation that Milius suffered a stroke that left him unable to talk or write. A condition that Spielberg says was “the worst thing to happen to any of my friends.”

This obviously explains why there’s so much footage of Milius doing interviews from the ‘80s and ‘90s – a 1984 sit down is the most prominently featured. MILIUS left me feeling like every larger than life tough guy character of the modern film era was based on his powerful persona. Especially when his son Ethan and daughter Amanda talk about how much John Goodman’s Walter Sobchak in THE BIG LEBOWSKI reminded them of their father.

Hell, the man’s influence even stretched as far as inspiring the military code name of the U.S. Army’s capture of Sadam Hussein in 2003: “Operation Red Dawn.”

MILIUS is for the most part a fascinating and thoughtful look at the life of a macho force that can still be felt in the fantasy realm from Game of Thrones to THOR, and the amped-up egos of the overblown action movie genre. As his encouraging rehabilitation continues, I sure hope the man can finish his long gestating GENGHIS KHAN project. That would give his legend the satisfying epilogue that this biodoc only hints at.

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New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 3/18/14

A few big new titles hit home video this week starting with: David O. Russell's AMERICAN HUSTLE, which although it won no Oscars, it certainly won most critics' hearts (it's at 93% on the Rotten Tomatometer). Russell's glitzy take on the '70s ABSCAM scandal starring Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, and Jennifer Lawrence is now available in 2-disc Blu ray and 1 disc DVD editions that contain as Special Features almost a half an hour of Deleted and Extended Scenes, and a 16 minute “Making of” mini-doc. Read my review: “David O. Russell's AMERICAN HUSTLE Pulls A Scorsese On ABSCAM” (12/20/13).

I still haven't seen FROZEN, but as it also drops today on Blu ray (2-discs) and DVD (single disc) I should really catch up with it. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adele Dezeem (sorry, Idina Menzel) star in Disney's ginormous animated smash that comes with a bunch of bonus material: a 7 minute featurette “D'Frosted: Disney's Journey from Hans Christian Andersen to FROZEN,” “The Making Of FROZEN” (3 min.), Deleted Scenes (7 min.), Music Videos (16 min.), and the Oscar nominated short GET A HORSE! (6 min.) starring Mickey Mouse.

A Disney project that I did see also releases this week: John Lee Hancock's SAVING MR. BANKS, out in both single disc Blu ray and DVD editions. Despite Tom Hanks charming performance as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson prickly portrayal of “Mary Poppins” author P.L. Travers, the film didn't work for me aas you can read in my review from last December. Special Features include a couple of featurettes (“From POPPINS to the Present,” and “Let's Go Fly A Kite”), and 7 minutes of Deleted Scenes.

Also out this week: a movie that barely anyone saw (not even sure if it came to my area), Justin Chadwick's biopic MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, starring Idris Elba; Peter Howitt's thriller REASONABLE DOUBT, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Dominic Cooper; Adrián García Bogliano's Spanish horror flick HERE COMES THE DEVIL, and Ping Wang's historical action epic KINGDOM OF CONQUERORS (DVD only).

On the older film front, the Criterion Collection is presenting two essential and extremely entertaining titles: Errol Morris' 1991 documentary about Stephen Hawking A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, and Akira Kurosawa's 1958 epic adventure THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (huge influence on STAR WARS), for the first time on Blu ray.

TV series sets out this week: Beetlejuice (animated series): Seasons Two & Three , Devious Maids: Season 1, and Flashpoint: Final Season.

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Catching Up With The Classics: Akira Kurosawa’s HIGH AND LOW (1963)

Since I took July off from babbling ‘bout film to work on a book project (and go on vacation with my wife in Virginia), I thought instead of writing about some big new movie at the multiplex, I’d jump back into the blogosphere with a post about a classic I just caught up with. A black and white Foreign one at that.

I’ve seen a bunch of the films of the late great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) over the years, but somehow never got around to seeing his 1963 thriller of sorts HIGH AND LOW until now. 

A co-worker spoke of re-watching it recently and I made the mental note to put it in my Netflix queue. So glad that I did because it had me from the get go with Toshirô Mifune’s intense performance as an executive for a shoe manufacturing company trying to fight off his colleagues attempts to cut costs and quality in a starkly shot opening scene.

With 16 films under the director, Mifune was to Kurosawa what Humphrey Bogart was to John Huston, or Robert DeNiro to Martin Scorsese, but the duo are more known for their Samurai movies than their modern day dramas like this one that they made together between 1948-1965.

The Hitchcockian HIGH AND LOW (aka “Heaven and Hell”) can be broken down into 3 acts. The first is set mostly in the interior of Mifune’s luxurious mansion overlooking the city of Yokohama and concerns the tycoon dealing with the kidnapping of his chauffeur’s son. The kidnappers meant to abduct Mifune’s son, but the kids who were playing “Cowboys and Indians,” or more accurately “Sheriffs and Outlaws,” had switched outfits.

In long unbroken widescreen shots a stressed-out Mifune wrestles with whether or not to pay the huge ransom (30 million yen). Paying it would ruin him as he just mortgaged his house in order to gain more control of his company, but not paying could destroy his reputation and his business could suffer greatly.

The Chauffer (Yutaka Sada), and Mifune’s wife (Kyōko Kagawa) beg Mifune to pay the ransom, while a dapper police detective (Tatsuya Nakadai) suavely oversees the situation. Mifune gives in and arranges to make the exchange for the child. Turns out the kidnapper has cleverly planned to have Mifune throw the money in 2 suitcases out of the window of a moving train, with the boy being released near the next stop. “Damn clever” Nakadai says.

The train sequence, which heightens the tension of the movie greatly, begins the second act. The film’s police procedural p.o.v. intensifies with the investigation into the kidnapping leaving no stone unturned. The cop that the Dude in THE BIG LEBOWSKI asks about leads may have joked sarcastically about detectives working in shifts at the crime lab, but here the police are definitely putting in overtime studying films, photos, and even the kid’s crayon drawings to close this kidnapping case.

The third act consists of the kidnapper (Tsutomu Yamazaki) being identified by the police and getting caught in their trap involving a heroin deal. I recently read a rant by a filmmaker about how framing something or somebody dead center is boring, but Kurosawa’s cameras, manned by cinematographers Asakazu Nakai and Takao Saito, keep Yamazaki in the middle of many shots as he makes his way through the dark streets, and it’s never not visually interesting.

In one shot a mirrored wall in a crowded club is shown, seemingly at an angle, but as the camera pans across the room we see that the wall itself was slanted, and Yamazaki in a strikingly bright white collared shirt and shades again enters in the center. 1995's SIN CITY (Dirs. Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino) featured a nod to this imagery via Elijah Wood's psychopathic character, Kevin.

During this sequence, the policemen following him are demoted to supporting players in the shadows, with the antagonist eerily commanding all of our attention.

These scenes also show how Westernized Japan had become in the early ‘60s. The sight of drunk patrons dancing to surf guitar music blaring from a jukeboxes in noisy bistros isn’t that far removed from background fodder in a MGM Elvis movie from the same era.

HIGH AND LOW is a multi-layered story told straight with little in the way of artistic flourishes and it’s all the better for it. The non-flashy clarity of the screenplay by Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima, and Eijirô Hisaita (based on the 1959 novel “King’s Ransom” by Ed McBain) makes for a very satisfying watch.

As densely detailed as it is, HIGH AND LOW ultimately boils down to a concept as simple as its title. “The kidnapper is right,” says one of the investigators looking at Mifune’s mansion from the poverty stricken streets below.

“The house gets to you…as if it’s looking down on you.” This view is confirmed by Yamazaki meeting face to face with Mifune in the final scene.

“Why should you and I hate each other?” Mifune asks. “My room was so cold in winter, and so hot in summer I couldn’t sleep. Your house looked like heaven to me, high up there,” Yamazaki explains. “That’s how I began to hate you. That gave me a purpose in life. It’s interesting to make fortunate men unfortunate.”

Unsurprisingly, there has been talk of remaking this film. Scorsese, Mike Nichols, and Chris Rock (!) have expressed interest in taking it on, but if you haven’t seen it, don’t wait for that to happen. Folks with aversions to old black and white subtitled films should get over it and queue this one up (or purchase the fancy Criterion Collection edition). It’s another in a long line of classic Kurosawa keepers.

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