Big Wednesday is a 1978 American epic 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 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 three make the difficult transition to adulthood with parties, surf trips, marriage, and the war.

[3] It was inspired by a short story Aaberg had published in a 1974 Surfer Magazine entitled "No Pants Mance",[4] and published by Australian surfing magazine Tracks in April 1973[5] and the lives of a group of friends who used to surf with Aaberg and Milius including Lance Carson.

[10] In August Milius announced Big Wednesday would be postponed because the script was not ready and he would instead make Extreme Prejudice.

"John has fallen in love and is getting married and that's opened up this other side of him," said star William Katt in October 1977.

"[12] Milius later recalled: When I did Big Wednesday my first impressions were that I was going to do this coming-of-age story with Arthurian overtones about surfers that nobody took seriously, their troubled lives made larger than life by their experience with the sea.

There was a lot of pressure to make it more like Animal House, but the movie has a huge following now because it did have loftier ambitions.

[13]The leads were played by Jan Michael Vincent, Gary Busey and William Katt.

"[7] Barbara Hale, mother of William Katt, plays a small role in the film.

[1] Big Wednesday was a box office flop upon its release, and was quickly pulled from theatres after taking in only $4.5 million.

[1] William Katt explained in a 1979 interview with Roger Ebert a year after the film's release that he believed the movie's failure was due to the marketing focusing only on the fight scenes and surfing angle.

[21] 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.

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.

"[15] Quentin Tarantino later wrote that while he preferred "Milius's directorial debut Dillinger, it's hard to argue against the idea that his surfer epic Big Wednesday isn't his classic...

And the climactic showdown between the heroic trio and the monster waves is so good it makes up for the rest (the trio's Wild Bunch-inspired walk to destiny is by far Milius's finest cinematic moment)... More than any other movie Milius directed, Big Wednesday contains the joy of filmmaking (he waited his whole career to make this movie).