Abstract
John Milius the screenwriter of Apocalypse Now (1979) and the director of Conan the Barbarian (1982) is one of the most influential film-makers in the history of U.S. cinema. In the late 1970s Milius wrote and directed his most personal project, Big Wednesday (1978), a surfing film loosely based on his own life that celebrates friendship and lost youth. This chapter will examine the different textual and extra-textual strategies deployed by Milius to inscribe an autobiographical self-projection in Big Wednesday. More broadly, the chapter will explore the convergence between film’s aesthetic potential to articulate the autobiographical ambitions of film directors and the concept of auteur as brand.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” In Image-Music-Text. Hill and Wang, 1977: pp. 142–148.
Bruss, Elisabeth. “Eye for I: Making and Unmaking Autobiography in Film.” In Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. James Olney. Princeton University Press, 1980: pp. 296–320.
Corrigan, Timothy. A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture After Vietnam. Rutgers University Press, 1991.
D’Agnolo Vallan, Giulia. John Milius. Torino Film Festival, 2002.
Derloshon, Jerry. “A Wipe Out No More.” Los Angeles Times, 18 June 1998.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Directed by Kenneth Bowser, BBC, 2003.
Egan, Susanna. “Encounters in Camera: Autobiography as Interaction.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 40, no. 3, 1994: pp. 593–618.
Engle, John. Surfing in the Movies: A Critical History. McFarland, 2015.
Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” Contributions in Philosophy, vol. 83, 2001: pp. 9–22.
Gregory, David. Capturing the Swell. Warner Brothers Home Video, 2003.
Gross, Paul. “25 Years of Big Wednesday.” The Surfer’s Journal E-Book: Big Wednesday Redux, vol. 1.6, 2012: pp. 36–47.
Kael, Pauline. I Lost It at the Movies. Marion Boyars, 1994.
Leitch, Thomas. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents. John Hopkins University Press, 2009.
Leotta, Alfio. “I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning: Violence and Nostalgia in the Cinema of John Milius.” Jump Cut, vol. 57, 2016. https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/-LeottaMillius/index.html.
Milius, John. Big Wednesday Audio Commentary. Warner Brothers Home Video, 2003.
Patterson, Thom. “Apocalypse Writer: Most Scripts Today ‘Are Garbage’.” CNN, 9 March 2009. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/09/john.milius.movies/index.html.
Peterson, Richard. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Pezman, Steve. “Introduction.” The Surfer’s Journal E-Book: Big Wednesday Redux, vol. 1.6, 2012: p. 5.
Stille, Andrew. “John Milius: American Outsider.” Diary of a Screenwriter, 27 May 2013. http://diaryofascreenwriter.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/john-milius-american-outsider.html.
Thompson, Richard. “Stoked.” Film Comment, vol. 12, no. 4, July 1976: pp. 10–21.
Truffaut, François. The Films in My Life. Da Capo, 1994.
Walker, Maxton. “My Favourite Film: Big Wednesday.” The Guardian, 13 December 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/dec/13/my-favourite-film-big-Wednesday.
Warga, Wayne. “Milius Waxes Up Big Wednesday.” Los Angeles Times, 21 August 1977: p. 7.
Wharton, David. “Surf and Turf: It Seemed the Bear Belonged to No One-and Everyone. Then Director John Milius Decided His Logo Was Worth Fighting For.” Los Angeles Times, 28 September 1995. http://articles.latimes.com/1995-09-28/news/ls-50870_1_director-john-milius.
Winnicott, Donald. Playing and Reality. Tavistock Publications, 1971.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Leotta, A. (2018). Waiting for the Great Swell of ‘74: John Milius and Autobiographical Self-Projection in Big Wednesday. In: Thornley, D. (eds) True Event Adaptation. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97322-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97322-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97321-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97322-7
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)