#Cosmic diner movie#

In August Milius announced Big Wednesday would be postponed because the script was not ready and he would instead make Extreme Prejudice. They obtained finance from Warner Bros in June 1976. They formed their own company, The A Team. Milius and producer Feitshans had met at American International Pictures, where they worked on Dillinger (1973). 'And I can tell you, it's so hard, no one will ever make it again.' Financing 'Because I surfed, I'm the only director in the world who could have made his picture,' said Milius. A lot of them died in Vietnam and OD'd on dope. The attrition rate among surfers is very high. At least half the people who participated are dead now. It's the most personal film I'll probably ever make, and I figured I ought to do it now, before I get too far away from it. It's about love of a place, love of a time, love of your human contacts, and the loss of those things.

#Cosmic diner movie#

This movie is about friendship: surfing is just the background. I don't think that kids today have the same kind of values that these people had then I don't see movies being made about that kind of thing. It's about their friendship, and the value of friendship. It's based on the lives of three friends ten years ago. It's a surfing HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY: the loss of an aristocracy, the end of an era, the passing of a more innocent time to a more corrupt and complex one-all growing up is the passing of innocence. Milius described the film in a 1976 interview: It was a central experience in our lives. We all knew it was special, we knew it wouldn't last. It's about growing up and relationships and the surf is the exotic background. It took an awful long time to write the script. 'A lot of the characters are me and in another sense none of them are me.

'A lot of things happened to me,' said Milius. That's important to me because I'm a real surfer. 'Surfing was a brand new sport with its own aristocracy.' Īaberg says 'it took about a year to write' the script. 'It was a special time,' said Aaberg of the 1960s. In writing the script Milius and Aaberg interviewed a lot of their friends from the 1960s. 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. Milius wrote the script with his friend and fellow surfer, journalist Denny Aaberg. In addition, two-time Pipeline Masters champion Gerry Lopez, who served as one of the six surfing masters in the production of the film, also appears in a cameo as himself during the final surfing section of the film. 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. The friends reunite years later, after Barlow has served in Vietnam, for the 'Great Swell of '74'. The three make the difficult transition to adulthood with parties, surf trips, marriage, and the war. 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 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. The film tells the story of three young friends whose passion in life is surfing. 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. 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. Raised in Southern California, Milius made Big Wednesday as an homage to the time he spent in Malibu during his youth. 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. Written by Milius and Dennis Aaberg, it is loosely based on their own experiences at Malibu, California. Big Wednesday is a 1978 American coming of age film directed by John Milius.