Big Wednesday
 1
9 7 8 (USA)
Quentin Tarantino once said that surfers don't
deserve Big Wednesday. Perhaps this was a hangover from his
days working in a California video shop where the local beach crowd
preferred Chevy Chase to Sonny Chiba and derided the geek behind the
counter with cries of "Cherry Boy!". Whatever the reason,
he's partly right: this rites-of-passage story is not just for
surfers.
Director John Milius had previously written such
right-wing cop efforts as Magnum Force and, un-credited, Robert
Shaw's USS Indianapolis monologue from Jaws. Milius
would go on to write and direct the knuckle-headed Conan The
Barbarian, but Big Wednesday is - despite the surfing theme
- far from a grab-bag of macho clichés.
 The
action starts in 1962, when life is a series of wave-riding, hot girls
and cold beers for three California buddies Matt (Jan-Michael
Vincent), Leroy (Gary Busey) and Jack (William Katt). A chaotic house
party caps a perfect summer, though a disastrous road trip to Mexico
hints that the bubble of innocent fun can be violently burst at any
time.
Inevitably the good times are threatened as
Vietnam kicks into gear - the scene where they try and avoid the draft
by pretending to be gay, insane, crippled or a raving Nazi is
fantastic - but Jack plays it straight and enlists, enjoying a final
expression session on his board before leaving to do his duty. Matt,
the local hero, struggles with fatherhood and sinks into alcoholism
while Leroy travels to Hawaii and makes a name for himself as a
serious surfer.
The passing of time sees one of their friends
killed in Vietnam and local board shop owner, beach guru Bear (Sam
Melville) ruined and drunk.
Finally, 12 years on from when they were the
wide-eyed rulers of the break, Leroy, Jack and Matt reunite to ride a
jaw-droppingly massive swell - the once-in-a-lifetime 'Big Wednesday'
of the title - proving that whatever they've done on shore, in the
water they remain the masters and, ultimately, friends.
 The
surfing is beautifully shot, without the disorienting jumpcuts that
Hollywood now uses to make things look even more exciting than
they already are!
Gary Busey would go onto a career of playing
steely-eyed psychos before a troubled personal life saw him join
Jan-Michael Vincent - better known as Airwolf''s Stringfellow
Hawk - as a regular fixture in the National Enquirer.
Katt, meanwhile, disappeared to make the sort of
late night films Channel 5 puts on when they've run out of soft porn
and baseball. But whatever depths their careers plumb, at least
they'll always have a genuine classic on their CV. |
