Couple days ago, I read a script about Curtis Le May, famous Air force General who once said of the Russians "Let's bomb 'em back to the Stone Age" (and meant it), and the man upon whom the character of Buck Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove was based. The script was written by John Milius, who also wrote, among many many other things, Apocalypse Now. I was so impressed by the script that I called and left a message on his office machine. Last night he called me back at about 5:30 and I talked to him for about an hour. It was one of the coolest moments in my life. This guy knows, and has done, some serious shit. And the best part is, he loves to talk about it. He's befriended some of the most interesting, dangerous, and influential men history has ever produced, from Le May himself, to Oppenheimer, McNamara, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Steven Spielberg, and Tom Clancy. Frankly, if I hadn't been forced to hang up and go to a screening, we'd still be on the phone. It was fantastic!

Couple of my favorite moments:

- In the days leading up to Desert Storm, Milius called Colin Powell and asked if he could ride into Kuwait with the advancing 7th Army and film the battle the way Hollywood used to in the old days. Powell said "No John, you could get killed, how would we explain that?" I (Lars) said "They wouldn't have to explain it, you're John Milius, everyone would understand." And John, sounding surprised, replied "That's what I said!"
- Later, he tried to further convince Powell to let him go by getting some support from other industry folk. Steven Spielberg said he would go, but when John called Tom Clancy, Tom said "Hell no John, they've got gas bombs!" At this point, I (Lars) jumped in and said "Wait a minute, are you telling me Clancy's a pussy?" And John said "Oh, he's a big fuckin' pussy!"
- Finally, read this quote from John on the fall of the Berlin Wall "I was making "Flight of the Intruder" at the time the wall came down. We were on an aircraft carrier (USS Independence) 100 miles off the coast of Mexico. The skipper and I watched CNN on the Admiral's bridge. I said 'what now?' He replied that the only communist country left was Santa Monica, led by Tom Hayden, and that even though we were in range, it wasn't worth an Alpha Strike."
posted by LT2 12:10 PM ET | discuss | link

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Thursday, September 14, 2000

As I will be in Vietnam during that time period, I will be missing most of the home stretch of the presidential campaign. Who will volunteer to log on to the chat board each day and post updates so that I can keep up with my favorite contact sport while I am abroad?
posted by LT2 7:41 PM ET | discuss | link

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My colleague here in the office who is responsible for getting all scripts "covered" (coverage is like a book report for scripts and includes a page of comments at the end), just got coverage from one of his readers on a major studio romantic comedy with the following comment at the end:

"From beginning to end, this script remains uncontaminated by humor, or credible human behaviour."

Ouch!
posted by LT2 7:23 PM ET | discuss | link

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Here's one from the "You got what you deserved" file.
posted by LT2 4:03 PM ET | discuss | link

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I think that a lot of people (myself included) think of the cities of Southeast Asia as being places where tourists are most likely to become victims of street crime. Mike disagreed with me, saying that while most people might believe this is true, he doesn't think Asia is any different from Europe, and even America, in terms of those kinds of crime statistics. Well, here's an article that supports at least half of Mike's argument.
posted by LT2 3:54 PM ET | discuss | link

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A biiiiig, tremendous, absolutely huuuge 3LP Happy Birthday goes out to Da Schwartz... from the other 2 LP's. Happy birthday my friend, only one year left 'till your thirties. Live it up!!!
posted by LT2 11:27 AM ET | discuss | link

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I made a reservation this morning with Northwest for my flight to California. The six-letter "record locator code", which I have to give to my travel department, so they can book the ticket and get me our corporate discount, and which the reservation agent had to laugh while reading to me is as follows:

MYPORN

posted by MES 9:37 AM ET | discuss | link

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Wednesday, September 13, 2000

This is really interesting. Back in college, my buddies and I had a ritual where we would all get together at one person's house/apartment and play drinking games, or watch a favorite TV show, or movie before we went out to the bars. Perhaps we knew instinctively, what the folks over at the University of Illinois Urbana needed a whole study to figure out.
posted by LT2 11:08 AM ET | discuss | link

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Tuesday, September 12, 2000

Message from The Pen: When The Pen began his tirades on the 3LP site earlier this year, he wanted to prove to himself that he could do it in a weekly format without losing anything in terms of quality. Whether he was successful or not in that endeavor, he leaves up to you, but over the course of the past months, The Pen has learned something about the way things need to be. Bottom line is this, the Pen's anger is can be intense, it can be acute, and it can be a lot of fun... one thing it cannot be, is forced. And that's the way it started to feel after a while. In recent months, it's felt like The Pen was forcing himself to get angry. Well, no more! The Pen will always be right here at 3LP, where you can find him when you need him. But as for a schedule, there will be none, ever again!!! The Pen will be when The Pen is, and that's the bottom line, because The Pen said so!
posted by LT2 7:44 PM ET | discuss | link

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I watched the Academy Award winning documentary One Day in September last night. (Schwartz had planned to watch it as well). Wow! What a great documentary. It wasn't just rehashings of all the stuff we've seen a million times (like that Arab pussy in the ski mask and yellow sweater poking his head out the window every five minutes). They had a lot of new revelations, like the first interview with the sole surviving terrorist (man I hope some intern on the movie was able to get a piece of info on that asshole's whereabouts to the Mossad), and the brand new admission by the German government that they staged the subsequent hijacking of a Lufthansa flight so they would have an excuse to release the terrorists to Lybia and sweep their failure under the rug.

That is so unacceptable. At least the Mossad's assassination squads were able to track down two of the surviving terroists and a dozen of their boses and take them out. I hope they did it slowly.

And damn those Germans. They screwed the pooch on that one so badly. I'd always thought they did, but didn't realize the extent of their fuck-up. After the third or fourth mistake, Tony said "In their defense, no one had ever delt with a terrorist incident like this before." But then eight, nine, or ten major mistakes later, Tony was screaming at the Germans right along with me.

Everyone should check it out.
posted by LT2 12:07 PM ET | discuss | link

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Well, it's may not be as cool as a game of Tetris, but the UN building looked pretty cool last night:

posted by MES 10:45 AM ET | discuss | link

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Monday, September 11, 2000