“Big Wednesday” (1978)
For the most part, surfing has never quite worked in the movies: “Point Break” aside (and let’s face it, that’s an action movie first-and-foremost), it’s proven to be a difficult sport to capture cinematically. Whether Curtis Hanson can make it work later this year with “Of Men And Mavericks” remains to be seen, but if he can come anywhere near “Big Wednesday,” the current high-watermark of the genre, he’ll have done a good job. Milius was a keen Malibu surfer himself, and his script about a trio of surfing enthusiasts — rebellious Matt (Jan-Michael Vincent), responsible Jack (William Katt) and the Gary Busey-like Leroy “The Masochist” (Gary Busey: who else?) — who try to skip Vietnam and become adults, is arguably Milius’ most personal effort, his own version of “American Graffiti.” The film was poorly received at the time, and a commercial flop (which must have come as a sting to Milius’ pals George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, who were so sure it’d be a smash that they’d exchanged percentage points on “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” for one each on “Big Wednesday”), and there’s no denying that the film has many, many flaws: principally a patchy cast (in which Katt comes off best) and a soapy script full of dull Zen proclamations. But it has gained in power over time, with an elegaic pain for lost youth that is deeply felt: it’s sincere and honest, gaining a kind of poetry in retrospect. And the surfing sequences are undoubtedly stunning; one-time Clint Eastwood favorite Bruce Surtees lenses them thrillingly, and there’s no hint of CGI & effects. What you’re seeing is what happened. An enjoyable drama for most, a bible for anyone with an interest in surfing.
“Conan The Barbarian” (1982)
“What is best in life?” is asked of Arnold Schwarzenegger at the half-hour mark of “Conan The Barbarian.” He has not yet spoken in the film, instead murdering infidels, leaving bloody stumps where there used to be scoundrels, and conquering with a heavy hand. He glares into the camera, sneers, and delivers a credo that this film heartily believes in: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!” Schwarzenegger had arrived, and while since then the action star had been in a number of memorable genre projects, ‘Conan’ remains one of the few that fully take advantage of the muscleman’s outsized presence and overwhelming power. Had John Milius not recognized how this lumbering Austrian so commanded the screen, cinema history would surely have changed, but it’s notable that ‘Conan’ isn’t merely a star vehicle for the former bodybuilder. Indeed, Milius infused ‘Conan’ with a sense of scope and the spirit of pulp that creates a world where morality is secondary to conquering, to drinking the blood of those under one’s fist. Proportionally, “Conan The Barbarian” was probably a less-costly endeavor than the modern-day remake, and yet everything about this film is huge, from its sets to its epic breadth, to Arnold and the character’s notable hunger for victory. In Milius’ hands, Conan is a hero to respect, to admire, to worship, and to fear. Krom wept.
