Big Wednesday

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).

“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.

• Introduction 1. Storytelling in New Hollywood 2. Friendship, Innocence, and Mythologized Youth 3. Resistance and Incorporation in Californian Surf Culture 4. Authorship and the Star Director 5. Genre and the Male Melodrama 6. Youthful Archetypes and the Transition to Cult Stardom Epilogue