Education Quote by John Milius

Milius is drawing a hard line against the Hollywood habit of treating writing as a disposable step on the way to the "real" work of directing. Coming from a director who’s also a screenwriter, the jab lands with extra bite: he’s not romanticizing typing in a dim room, he’s defending craft in an industry that worships visuals and treats dialogue as scaffolding. When he says "they don't understand", he’s pointing at producers, executives, even directors who talk about story in terms of plot points and coverage, as if the words are just placeholders until the camera arrives.

The repetition - "writing is language. The use of language" - works like a drumbeat. It’s blunt, almost pedagogical, because he’s arguing that writing isn’t an abstract "idea" or a vibe; it’s technique. Then he widens the charge: language doesn’t merely convey information, it manufactures cinema. "Language to create image" is the key provocation. A screenplay isn’t a novel, but the right verbs, rhythms, and specifics can conjure a shot in the reader’s head, can cue performance, can create tension before a single frame is shot. Drama, in his framing, is built out of syntax and selection.

The subtext is a warning: when you ignore language, you don’t get more "visual" filmmaking - you get mush. Milius is insisting that cinematic power starts earlier than people admit, in the sentence-level decisions that shape what everyone else later calls tone.