Big Wednesday

Lamenting Lost Youth in the New Hollywood

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by Mark McKenna

Type: Studies
Subject: One Film > Big Wednesday
Keywords: John Milius, youth
Publishing date: 2024 (November 18, 2024)
Publisher: Routledge
Collection: Cinema and Youth Cultures
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 142 pages
5 ¾ x 9 inches (14.5 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-0-367-17892-5

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Book Presentation:
This book provides an examination of Big Wednesday as an unconventional film that employs a mythic sensibility in its representation of the loss of youth and young manhood.

Critically and commercially unsuccessful on its original release, the coming-of-age, surf drama Big Wednesday (1978), has undergone a significant reappraisal. It is now considered not only an important contribution to youth cinema, but also the most important film that John Milius ever made. Over six chapters, the book considers questions of authorship, commerce, genre, stardom, and myth, and explores how these ideas intersect with the film’s status as a significant youth movie and collectively how these ideas have contributed to its recent critical rehabilitation. In doing so, the book also provides a much-needed reassessment of an important and overlooked entry in the New Hollywood canon.

Exploring Big Wednesday’s subsequent resonance and relevance, this unique study will appeal to students and scholars in film studies, popular culture studies, youth studies, sociology, and media studies.

About the Author:
Mark McKenna is an Associate Professor in Film and Media Industries at Staffordshire University. His research interests are broadly focused on marketing and branding practices, media labour processes, and media policy and regulation strategy, and his work has explored these ideas in a range of contexts and from a number of different perspectives. He is the author of Nasty Business: The Marketing and Distribution of the Video Nasties and Snuff, and the co-editor of Horror Franchise Cinema (Routledge, 2021).

Press Reviews:
"McKenna’s deft exploration of various aspects of Big Wednesday reveals it to be far more than a cult surfing movie. This wide-ranging study not only provides an astute account of the film’s initial failure and eventual reappraisal but also focuses productively on how it works as an overtly sentimental male melodrama about the loss of youthful friendship."

- Martin Shingler, independent scholar, freelance writer, editor and researcher.

"This is a impressively wide-ranging, carefully researched and engagingly written study of an oft neglected movie classic. In addition to an illuminating analysis of The Big Wednesday and of the film’s making, marketing and reception, the book offers a compelling account of the importance and evolution of surf culture, and a wealth of new insights into the careers of its maverick writer-director, John Milius, and its three leading men. All this is presented with detailed references to key debates in Film Studies and to significant trends in Hollywood cinema since the 1960s."

- Peter Krämer, author of American Graffiti: George Lucas, the New Hollywood and the Baby Boom Generation (2023) and co-editor of The Hollywood Renaissance: Revisiting American Cinema’s Most Celebrated Era (2018).

"McKenna deftly analyzes John MiIius’ Big Wednesday, as an under-appreciated film classic that culminates the New Hollywood renaissance. This is a multi-faceted cultural study that invigorates questions ranging from "Is Milius’ ‘bad boy’ brand; ‘chic fascism’?" to "What is male melodrama?" that smartly links the 1978 movie to current anxieties."

- Frederick Wasser, Professor at Brooklyn College – CUNY.

See the publisher website: Routledge

See Big Wednesday (1978) on IMDB ...

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