Большая среда (Bol'shaya sreda)

1978 film directed by John Milius

Big Wednesday is a 1978 American coming of age buddy sports comedy drama film directed by John Milius. Written by Milius and Dennis Aaberg, it is loosely based on their own experiences at Malibu, California. The picture stars Jan Michael Vincent, William Katt, and Gary Busey as California surfers facing life and the Vietnam War against the backdrop of their love of surfing. Raised in Southern California, Milius made Big Wednesday as an homage to the time he spent in Malibu during his youth. Milius and his friends George Lucas and Steven Spielberg famously agreed to exchange a percentage point of Big Wednesday, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind prior to the release of the three films throughout 1977 1978. Spielberg in particular was certain that Big Wednesday was going to be a box office hit, opining it was like "American Graffiti meets Jaws", two of the decade's most successful films.

The film tells the story of three young friends whose passion in life is surfing. The friends include Matt Johnson, a self destructive type who has a devil may care attitude; Jack Barlow, the calm and responsible one of the bunch; and Leroy "The Masochist" Smith, whose nickname tells a lot about his personality. Their surfing lives are traced from the summer of 1962 to their attempts at dodging the Vietnam War draft in 1965 (including faking insanity, homosexuality, and all manner of medical ailments), and to the end of their innocence in 1968 when one of their friends is killed in Vietnam. The three make the difficult transition to adulthood with parties, surf trips, marriage, and the war. The friends reunite years later, after Barlow has served in Vietnam, for the "Great Swell of '74". With this reunion, the transition in their lives becomes the end point of what the 1960s meant to so many as they see that the times have changed, and what was a time of innocence is gone forever.

Milius wrote the script with his friend and fellow surfer, journalist Denny Aaberg. It was inspired by a short story Aaberg had published in a 1974 Surfer Magazine entitled "No Pants Mance", and published by Australian surfing magazine Tracks in April 1973 and the lives of a group of friends who used to surf with Aaberg and Milius including Lance Carson. In writing the script Milius and Aaberg interviewed a lot of their friends from the 1960s. "It was a special time," said Aaberg of the 1960s. "Surfing was a brand new sport with its own aristocracy. "</blockquote>

"Because I surfed, I'm the only director in the world who could have made his picture," said Milius. "And I can tell you, it's so hard, no one will ever make it again."

The leads were played by Jan Michael Vincent, Gary Busey and William Katt. "It was the most personal film I'd done," said Katt. "I'd lived that life since I was ten." Milius at one stage intended to play the role of the Bear himself. "But I couldn't," he said. "The part is simply too big for me to do." Barbara Hale, mother of William Katt, plays a small role in the film. A 1940s film star but best known as Della Street from the long running Perry Mason television series, this was Hale's last appearance in a feature film.

The surfing scenes used in the finale to Big Wednesday were not filmed in California, where the film is set, but at Sunset Beach in Pupukea, Hawaii. Other filming locations included El Paso, Texas; Hollister Ranch near Santa Barbara; Surfrider Beach (in Malibu); Ventura, California; and La Libertad, El Salvador. "What I've got to watch out for is getting lost in the surf again," said Milius during filming. "It's so alluring, so easy to get lost in. I worry I might lose sight of the characters. Unlike any other film that has been made about surfing, in this one the characters and not the waves are the most important."

Milius invented the Bear brand of surfboard as a fictional brand to be used in the movie, and even had surfboards made and arranged for a Californian designer to create a logo. The logo, a red diamond with a bear in it, features prominently throughout the movie, on shop windows, T shirts, car windows and on surfboards. The first boards were shaped in 1977, by famous board shaper Bill Hamilton. The international distribution of the movie promoted the Bear label worldwide, with people wanting boards with the bear logo. The brand morphed into an actual successful company after the release of the movie, producing hundreds of boards, and is still active today, with various people producing Bear branded boards in different countries.

The film premiered in wide release in the United States on May 26, 1978. The picture was screened at various film festivals, including: the Davao City Film Festival, Philippines; the Turin Film Festival, Italy; and others. A 20th Anniversary screening (which included cast and crewmembers) took place at the Newport Film Festival in 1998.

Janet Maslin, film critic for The New York Times, did not like the performances of the actors and wrote, "The surprise is not that Mr. Milius has made such a resoundingly awful film, but rather that he's made a bland one the movie often seems even more uneventful than material like this need make it, and Mr. Milius's attention to his actors focuses more closely on their pectorals than on their performances. He encourages such stiffness in his players that Barbara Hale, for instance, is quite unconvincing as Mr. Katt's mother. This is a faux pas of no mean eminence; after all, Miss Hale actually is Mr. Katt's mother." The staff at Variety wrote, "A rubber stamp wouldn't do for John Milius. So he took a sledgehammer and pounded Important all over Big Wednesday. This film about three Malibu surfers in the 1960s has been branded major statement and it's got Big Ideas about adolescence, friendship and the 1960s." The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a 67% approval rating, based on 12 reviews, with a weighted average of 6.50/10. Milius later said the film was "sort of a numb spot in my life. It was a very personal film and it really tore me up when it was attacked in such a way that no one saw it."

Dialogue of the film was used in Anderson Paak's "The Season / Carry Me" and "Your Prime" on the album Malibu. *
The plot of season 2 episode 13 of Pokémon "The Pi Kahuna" is a reference to this film.