of abrupt description—"a train is coming, thundering steel, where are you going? Wichita." That great kind of feeling that he had, that's what I was trying to do there. I remember there was a great poem about American braggarts. You know, American liars—"I am the ring-tailed cousin to the such and such that ate so and so and I can do this and I can do that better than Mike Fink the river man ..." I just realized that this was the voice that the script had to have. It was as clear as a bell. I knew that writing was particular to me. Milius sold the script to Warner Bros. in 1970 for $5,000, going up to $50,000 if it was ever made. Warner Bros. had other writers work on the original script based on The Crow Killer. Milius was also called back to work on it, and his fee grew each time. (He eventually made $90,000 on the film.) Eventually, Robert Redford agreed to play the lead and Sydney Pollack signed to direct. Dirty Harry and Judge Roy Bean Milius wrote an uncredited draft of Dirty Harry (1971). He says his contribution to the film was "A lot of guns. And the attitude of Dirty Harry, being a cop who was ruthless. I think it's fairly obvious if you look at the rest of my work what parts are mine. The cop being the same as the killer except he has a badge. And being lonely." Dirty Harry was an enormous box office hit. George Hamilton hired Milius to rewrite Evel Knievel (1971), a biopic of the stunt rider, at a fee of $1,000 a day. Milius re-did the entire script over seven days. He wrote an original script, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, about the famous judge. He offered it for $150,000 if he could direct, but could find no takers. He sold it to First Artists for $300,000, then extremely high for a script. Directed by John Huston and starring Paul Newman, it was a moderate hit, although Milius disliked the final result. "I fought every day", he said. "And I was blooded well. I was treated horribly." More popular was Jeremiah Johnson. Milius did some work with David Giler on the script which became The Black Bird. By now Milius was one of the most sought after screenwriters in Hollywood, seen as