Get Your Reps In: John Milius Revisits His Malibu Youth in “Big Wednesday”

Big Wednesday (1978)

Among the many outlandish quotes Apocalypse Now screenwriter and Red Dawn director John Milius gave throughout his one-of-a-kind, iconoclastic career, “My religion is surfing” lands on the sweeter side.

So does Big Wednesday, Milius’ homage to his Malibu youth. This memory piece spanning 1962 to 1974 drops in on the lives of three SoCal surfer pals played by Jan-Michael Vincent, Gary Busey and William Katt as they age from carefree hot-doggers to potential Vietnam War draftees to old-timers (in surfer years, anyway) still waiting on a legendary wave.

Big Wednesday is not a particularly spiritual film—it’s more watchful and wistful about how America alternately softens and hardens its young—but it does feel spiritually made. Cinematographer Bruce Surtees (High Plains Drifter, Escape From Alcatraz) gives the water of the film a mythical treatment, contrasting the loss and compromise the characters face on shore.

When the boys are surfing “the morning glass,” the blues couldn’t be bluer, and the camera fixates on the surfers’ light, almost dancing feet. When the titular “big Wednesday” comes and the swells arrive, they’re shot like leviathans rising from the waterline. Academy, Aug. 18-24.

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5th Avenue: Fantastic Planet (1973), Aug. 18-20. Academy: Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), Aug. 18-24. Cinemagic: Carrie (1976), Aug. 19 and 24. The Shining (1980), Aug. 19, 21 and 23. Creepshow (1982), Aug. 18 and 20. Misery (1990), Aug. 20 and 22. Cinema 21: Oldboy (2003, 4K re-release), Aug. 16-19. Rebecca (1940), Aug. 19. Hollywood: The Last Starfighter (1984), Aug. 18. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Aug. 19 and 20. Memories (1995), Aug. 20. Orlando (1992), Aug. 21. Lady Gunfighter (1972), Aug. 22.