a colorful character with a talent for lively interviews. His self-styled "Zen Anarchist"/"American samurai" persona made him stand out in Hollywood. For instance, he only rewrote Dirty Harry on the proviso he was given an expensive gun. He was also the inspiration for the character of Big John in the enormously successful American Graffiti (1973). Milius said of this film, "I guess he [Lucas] saw me in that light because I was a surfer going past my time." He also wrote the first draft of the Dirty Harry sequel, Magnum Force (1973). Milius later said "I don't like Magnum Force. Of all the films I had anything to do with, I like it least. They changed a lot of things in a cheap and distasteful manner." However, it was successful at the box office. Dillinger Milius wanted to move behind the camera. "Being a director is the only way anyone will listen to you in Hollywood", he said. "It's the next best thing to being a star." Gangster films were popular at the time and AIP offered him the chance to direct one if he would write it for a fraction of his regular fee. Milius agreed and wrote and directed Dillinger (1973). "I deliberately chose Dillinger because he was a pure criminal", said Milius. "Robbing banks to right social wrongs did not come into it." The movie was moderately successful and launched Milius's directing career. He worked on the script for a TV sequel, Melvin Purvis: G-Man (1974), a pilot for a proposed series about Melvin Purvis (there was a second TV movie, but no series), but did not like the director, Dan Curtis, or the experience of working for TV. Contemporary film critics grouped Milius in with the emerging "movie brats" generation of filmmakers that also including Lucas, Coppola, Terrence Malick, and Scorsese. In 1974, David Picker announced he would produce Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail directed by Milius and written by Winfred Blevins, about Theodore Roosevelt. The film was never made. Neither was The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy, a proposed biopic about the famous anti-Communist Senator, which Milius declared interest in making. The Wind and the Lion Milius next wrote and directed the popular adventure film The Wind and the Lion (1975), which starred Sean Connery and Candice Bergen. He later said he felt this was his first "real" movie. He intended to follow