Ford Coppola. Coppola rewrote the script, which Milius disliked. "He wanted to ruin it, liberalize it, and turn it into Hair", said Milius in 1976. "He sees himself as a great humanitarian, an enlightened soul who will tell you such wonderful things as he does at the end of Godfather 2 -- that crime doesn't pay ... Talent-wise, he's no John Ford; character-wise, he's no Steve Spielberg. Francis can't stand to have any other creative influence around ... Francis Coppola has this compelling desire to save humanity when the man is a raving fascist, the Bay Area Mussolini." The film was released in 1979 to great acclaim. Milius's old agent, Mike Medavoy, helped establish Orion Pictures in 1978 and one of their first movies was going to be East of Suez, written and directed by Milius. It was not made. Spielberg said in 1978 that Milius was key to the group of young filmmakers known as the New Hollywood, which included himself, Lucas, and Coppola: John is our Scoutmaster. He's the one who will tell you to go on a trip and only take enough food, enough water for one day, and make you stay out longer than that. He's the one who says, "Be a man. I don't want to see any tears." He's a terrific raconteur, a wonderful story teller. John has more life than all the rest of us put together. (Quentin Tarantino said he could imagine the film Deliverance being about "Hollywood filmmakers: you can imagine Spielberg, Lucas, and Scorsese as the husbands. And you can really imagine John Milius as Lewis.") 1980s Milius enjoyed his greatest commercial success as a director with Conan the Barbarian (1982), which made a star of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Two years later, this was followed by the popular action film, Red Dawn (1984) which was the first film to be rated PG-13. He helped produce Uncommon Valor (1983) and acted as "spiritual adviser" for Lone Wolf McQuade (1983). He wrote and directed an episode for The New Twilight Zone (1985) and a story of his, "Viking Bikers from Hell", was used in an episode of Miami Vice (season 3, episode 22). In 1986, it was reported that he was writing the script for Fatal Beauty which he hoped to direct with Cher; the film was made by Tom Holland and starred Whoopi Goldberg. There was some talk that he would direct