Big Wednesday

Warning: Run-on sentences! 

Writer/director John Milius' BIG WEDNESDAY is yet another coming of age drama where actors play themselves at various ages, each segment a passage of time gradually or abruptly weathering down on formerly carefree souls until the stark realities of life form a hard crust upon them. It's a premise that even in 1978 seemed old hat. Here, a trio of Southern California surfers named Jack (William Katt), Matt (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Leroy, nicknamed "The Masochist" (Gary Busey), spend nearly half the movie cruising girls, partying, and getting into fistfights before Vietnam changes everything. But no matter what life has in store for them, from opening scene to fade out, they surf. I expected BIG WEDNESDAY to be about maturity, moving on, putting away childish things.

And yes, it is about all of that. But surfing is the constant - from the time these guys wake up drunk in Mexico as teens to when they deliver siloloquies in a cemetery after the War takes one of their buds until one marries the girl he knocked up and realizes there are bills to pay. The film is divided into chapters covering 1962 to 1974. Each section considers the conditions of the Pacific Ocean along with what year it is. Real-life surfers would do much the same if they were keeping a diary. I work with at least 2 of them and I can report that they check tide conditions every few hours in between appointments. The act of surfing is never one of those "childish things" moved away from. More even than a refuge. It's a way of life, a religion, emblematic of perhaps what makes life worth living. But such a beautiful thing may not always be attainable. A board builder named Bear (Sam Melville), states that "no one surfs forever." Bear's been around awhile, acquired a certain wisdom that he may not always follow himself. He tries and fails to make the transition to traditional adulthood by getting married and living somewhere else besides right on the beach. Ah, but he's happiest on the sand, carving fiberglass and uttering philosophy, even when the years get crueler. There's nowhere else to go.

Our heroes are also unwilling to leave the easy living behind, fighting the draft boards by faking physical and mental illness, even pretending to be homosexual (this is the 1960s). Jack, however, willingly enlists and heads to the Cong. Unlike some of his compadres, he returns to once again stride his stick and carve out faces on the morning glass. Vernacular such as this is authentic and used throughout BIG WEDNESDAY. Other than surf documentaries the only time I've heard such language was in Kem Nunn's surf noir Tapping the Source, which seems to have been at least partly inspired by this movie. I was also expecting Milius' script to delve into Jack's postwar psyche, to show how the horrors of battle had changed him. Instead, BIG WEDNESDAY forgets about Jack for long stretches, leaving him an enigma. There is one scene where he knocks on his old girlfriend's door to find her husband answering (a cliche of such stories), but otherwise he just, disappears. He disappears from his family and friends, but also from the movie. 

But people do that. Just vanish. If it wasn't for Facebook I would've thought many of my old friends had been teleported somewhere or simply disintegrated. I wanted to know more about Jack, the most mature and level-headed of the trio. But you never know. We do spend a bit of time with Matt, a local hot-shot who stops all action cold when he enters a room or saunters through a parking lot. He's a natural, intuitive surfer who manages to get rides on chest high waves even when he's hung over. Barely thinks about what he does. All the young groms want to be like him. This role is overwhelming and reatreating to the bottle occurs early for Matt. His journey to adulthood is the clearest, the most painful, but he does find his way. Perhaps watching the stunted growth of his peers is inspiration to evolve in a healthy direction?

BIG WEDNESDAY is a very watchable but uneven and undisciplined film. To Milius' credit, the tone shift midway through is not so jarring as the lightness of the earlier scenes had always been interrupted with doses of reality. The script maintains a thematic focus but loses the characters in the process. I wanted to know far more of Jack and Leroy's later life, but again perhaps this was the film's way of elucidating the point that some people just drop out, man. Can't quite roll with the changes.

Milius, a creative force who hung with Spielberg, Scorsese, De Palma, and others of that generation never achieved the fame of his peers (he later made RED DAWN). He does create thrilling surf sequences, some of the best in any Hollywood flick. You could watch this movie just for that and be satisfied. But Milius has much more on his mind, even if BIG WEDNESDAY doesn't quite know how to juggle it all. It would be easy to conclude that surfing is a metaphor for life itself in this film: sometimes you get a thrilling ride, sometimes a less exciting but consistent ride, and other times you wipe out and get clocked in the skull with your board. Maybe even drown or meet a shark. I'm shrugging. But, tide's dropping, gotta run.