John Milius is one of those frustrating people for movie geeks. He's an uncompromising, possibly visionary artist, who as a writer has crafted some of the most iconic moments in the past 50 years of American Film (Dirty Harry's "Do You Feel Lucky Speech" Quint's recount of the sinking of the Indianopolis in Jaws). He's also written several notable films on his own including Apocalypse Now, Jeremiah Johnson, and The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean.
He is slightly handicapped though by being crazy as a loon. He regularly threats to shoot people with his many...many guns, and refers to himself casually as a Fascist. He's the Right's answer to Oliver Stone, only more so. Today he is best known for being the basis for Walter in The Big Lebowski, and let me tell you it's not much of an exaggeration.
So it is perhaps odd that after having not been involved in anything resembling mainstream American film for well over a decade, that Milius has been called back into action. According to Variety he has signed on to write and possibly direct, a film on the Korean War.
The film is called The Chosen Few , and it sounds like the sort of thing that Milius has been having wet dreams about. It follows the battle of the Chosin reservoir in which 15,000 Marines, and 2,500 Army regulars face a surprise attack from over 100,000 Chinese Soldiers.
This could very well be an awesome film, but I'm not going to plan on ever seeing it until the credits role. Milius is too unstable, who knows if it'll happen.
