As Luck Would Have It

As Luck Would Have It

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As Luck Would Have It
As Luck Would Have It
John Milius - Guerilla Filmmaker

John Milius - Guerilla Filmmaker

The great man on Red Dawn, the film that pitted Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen against the USSR.

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Richard Luck
Sep 20, 2023
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As Luck Would Have It
As Luck Would Have It
John Milius - Guerilla Filmmaker
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Long before he fell ill and back when that dire remake was but a desperately bad idea, I chatted to Hollywood’s self-styled 'Zen anarchist' about masterminding the Soviet invasion of the United States.

How did Red Dawn come into being?
To a certain degree, it came from every movie I'd made up until that point being pissed on by the critics. Red Dawn was my fifth film as director. I'd made [gangster biopic] Dillinger, which got some mixed reviews, I'd shot [period action drama] The Wind And The Lion which the critics said made Teddy Roosevelt look ridiculous, I'd made my surf movie Big Wednesday which was dismissed as being pretentious. And then I made Conan The Barbarian which got the worst reviews any filmmaker's ever received. So I just thought, "Fuck you! I'm gonna make the movie I want and you guys can go shit in your hands and clap."

And more immediately?
It came from me and Kevin Reynolds [who went on to direct Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and Waterwold] wanting to write about the biggest issue of the time, which was the threat posed to America by the Soviet Union. You couldn't open a paper back in the early '80s without someone asking what we would do if the Russians crossed the Bering Strait. I just thought we should take that thinking to its logical conclusion and write about a band of young Americans trying to defend their country from the Soviet menace.

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