Big Wednesday (1978)

          Although John Milius is closely associated with cinematic ultraviolence, as a screenwriter (Apocalypse Now) and as a director (Conan the Barbarian), one of his most assured endeavors in both capacities is the lyrical surfing drama Big Wednesday, which he cowrote with lifelong surfer Dennis Aaberg. Wonderfully pretentious from beginning to end, the picture uses the interwoven adventures of three surf-crazy friends as a metaphor for self-realization, with human drama unfurling across years defined by seismic social change. Big Wednesday is a grandiose symphony of destiny, masculinity, and transcendance, with poetic speechifying and taut musculature the dominant instruments. In other words, it’s pure Milius, only without the beheadings.

          Set primarily in Malibu, the picture begins in 1962, when three macho pals live carefree lives of chasing girls and riding curls. They are levelheaded Jack (William Katt), unhinged Leroy (Gary Busey), and reckless Matt (Jan-Michael Vincent). Surfing is the center of their lives, and Milius uses the endless blue of the Pacific to express how these young men see their lives stretching to infinity. Yet Milius also employs the danger of testing oneself against the ocean’s power to underscore life’s ephemeral quality—Jack strives to use time well, Leroy defines himself by cheating death, and Matt courts his own demise, as if the sureness of mortality robs existence of its sweetness. Despite the heaviosity running through the picture, moments of levity emerge, sometimes in the form of hormone-driven tomfoolery and sometimes in the form of speeches that are quintessentially Milius. “I like fights,” says Leroy, nicknamed “The Masochist” by his pals. “I’ve dove through windows, I’ve eaten light bulbs, I like sharks, any kind of blood. If you gave me a gun, I’d shoot you in the face just to see what it looked like when the bullet hit.” That’s Milius, ever the voice of maniacs with twinkles in their eyes. (As a side note, Leroy mostly disappears from the movie soon after this speech—it’s as if Milius had nothing left to say about the character.)

          Early scenes of brawling and carousing work better than a long stretch during which the boys use creative lies to dodge the draft, but the movie eventually finds its groove—perhaps too much so—during an epic climax confronting the friends with the biggest waves of their lives, to the accompaniment of histrionic scoring by Basil Poledouris. From start to finish, the picture benefits from the great Bruce Surtees’s ominous photography (with significant assistance from the second unit), and the film’s principal actors contribute impassioned work despite the limitations of their skillsets. It’s poignant to see Busey and Vincent in their gleaming youth, given the damage ensuing years inflicted on both actors, and Katt complements them with the earnest Redford Lite vibe that, one year later, got him cast as a younger version of Redford’s signature character in Butch and Sundance: The Early Days.

          Ultimately, Milius’s choice to frame the movie as a Big Statement ensures the ocean is the most clearly defined individual in the film, but at least the ocean gives a hell of a performance—some of the surfing footage (captured in California and Hawaii) has terrifying power.

Big Wednesday: GROOVY