Big Wednesday (1978) on Netflix
Matt Johnson, Jack Barlow and Leroy Smith surf the California coast in the 1960s. As the decade turns, the Vietnam War draft reaches the three friends.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.1/108,179 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes67%
Trailer
Plot summary
In the early 1960s, Matt Johnson, Jack Barlow and Leroy Smith spend their summers surfing the California coast. Matt is reckless and self-destructive, Jack is the steady, responsible one, and Leroy goes by the nickname the Masochist. Between parties and surf trips the three grow up, and marriage changes the shape of their days. The world beyond the beach becomes more complicated, and the Vietnam War draft arrives. The friends look for ways to be ruled unfit for service, feigning illnesses and other conditions. Through it all they keep the notion of Big Wednesday, a fabled day when the greatest wave of all is supposed to arrive, and they wonder whether they will still be around to ride it.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Big Wednesday (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- John Milius and his friends George Lucas and Steven Spielberg agreed to swap a percentage point of Big Wednesday, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind before the three films came out in 1977-1978. Spielberg was certain Big Wednesday would be a hit, calling it "American Graffiti meets Jaws".
- Anthea Sylbert, an executive at Warners at the time, later called the film "a classic example of an egomaniacal insane man going over budget and not listening to anyone", saying they were all just waiting for the Big Wave.
- The film was a box office flop, pulled from theaters quickly after taking only $4.5 million. William Katt told Roger Ebert a year later that he believed the failure came from marketing that focused solely on the fight scenes and the surfing angle.
- Milius invented the Bear brand of surfboard purely as a fictional label for the movie, had boards made and arranged for a Californian designer to create its red diamond bear logo. The first boards were shaped in 1977 by famous shaper Bill Hamilton, and the film's international release sold the invented brand worldwide.
- Barbara Hale, a 1940s film star best known as Della Street in the long-running Perry Mason series, plays a small role opposite her real son, William Katt. It was Hale's last appearance in a feature film.
- Milius at one stage intended to play the role of the Bear himself, but decided against it. "But I couldn't," he said. "The part is simply too big for me to do."
- Although the story is set in California, the surfing scenes used for the film's finale were not shot there at all, but at Sunset Beach in Pupukea, Hawaii.
- The film's afterlife reaches into pop culture: dialogue turns up in Anderson .Paak's "The Season / Carry Me" and "Your Prime" on the album Malibu, the Pokemon episode "The Pi Kahuna" references it, and Rocket Power named an episode "Big Thursday".
