Expectations were high for John Milius’s Big Wednesday when it debuted in 1978. Based on Milius and co-writer Dennis Aaberg’s own experiences growing up as California surfers, it tracks three dudes from callow youth to maturity, dropping in periodically as they also surf the waves of life.
So high, in fact, that Milius kindly swapped profit points with his old friends, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Which is how he ended up owning a tiny piece of Close Encounters and Star Wars and they ended up with a little bit of Big Wednesday. Which worked out better for Milius than for Lucas and Spielberg. He became rich on his end of the deal and his friends got rich in spite of the fact that Big Wednesday landed like a dead fish.
It is an intensely 1970s movie locked in to the notion that to be American, young and blond at that time was about the best hand anyone could have been dealt in life. Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt, Gary Busey play the surfer trio, first encountered in 1962 chugging beer, playing around with girls and gunning souped-up jalopies about the beachfront town where they live. For party animal Matt (Vincent), daredevil Leroy (Busey) and romantic Jack (Katt), life is all pranks, parties and panties. But as 1962 becomes 1965, becomes 1968 and 1974, in spite of the fellowship of the board the three caballeros drift apart. Kids are born, booze is wrestled with, the army comes calling and the carefree life of the endless beach party becomes the darker reality of Vietnam and hippie culture.
Milius wants us to taste the atmosphere and that’s where the film excels. He described it as a “surfing How Green Was My Valley… the end of an era”. Which isn’t quite what he gives us. Or if it’s the end of an era he comes at it four ways, culminating in Big Wednesday, when the huge waves roll in and the three old hands get out onto the waves to show the new kids how it used to be done.
It is intensely rueful, very episodic, preferring to get its subtext out in the open rather than leave it buried. Bruce Surtees does the cinematography, and though the bright stuff is very bright, he takes every opportunity to shoot dark – so often the warm and dusky vibes – while Bruce Poledouris’s soundtrack surges gushingly, youthfully, only to fall back into the maudlin.
Rites of passage. Time’s heavy hand. Youth maturing. A society edging from light into shadow. Fun fun fun, as the Beach Boys put it, is in short supply. In the opening section the boys neck beer without a care in the world, while the girls discuss padded bras. But once this opener is done, it’s setback, regret and nostalgia almost all the way, right up to the glorious finale, which – while the waves race and the guys swivel about on their boards – is also all about The End of All This.
The nostalgia overwhelms the fun. Which isn’t what rose-tinted spectacles are meant to deliver, surely, and is certainly not what the film appears to be offering on its initial prospectus. Maybe that’s why the film bombed – people left screenings feeling depressed, even though Milius and co attempt to go out on a high.
Vincent, Katt and Busey live the roles. They look like aristocrats of the surfing scene. Vincent and Katt were longtime surfers while Gary Busey learned it for the role, well enough to get up and on the board but not so well that he can handle the big stuff – that’s a stunt double.
For all the big, life-changing moments and big waves, ultimately it’s all a bit formless and lacking in dramatic shape. One for those who like their beach parties to be fairly dour affairs. At least Milius came out of it laughing.
Big Wednesday – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
