It's a troubling predilection for an asthmatic who, so he claims, dearly wanted to serve his country in the Vietnam War, only to become a top-tier action screenwriter and an unabashed gun nut (his rewrite of "Dirty Harry," wherein he insisted on Eastwood's character brandishing a Smith & Wesson Model 29 chambered for the .44 Magnum cartridge, earned him a rare firearm as a bonus payment). Like Milius, Howard never saw combat, but he did come to know the lethality of a firearm when he fatally shot himself in the head at the age of 30. Milius was a member of the 1970s Film Brat collective that included Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese, and, having made three noteworthy features in "Dillinger," "The Wind and the Lion," and "Big Wednesday," seemed on the cusp of a breakout.
Author: staff@slashfilm.com (Jeremy Smith)
Published at: 2026-01-06 23:20:00
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