Why-oh-why Gary Busey??

The role called for a doofus.

No, I can't see that you condescending *beep*

Busey hardly looks like a normal young man.

I wish they had a "Like" button on this- I like most of these comments. Thank god (Lopez) there are some people out their with some insight. :) Aloha- T

That's right! As you will agree, Busey is one of our best actors. Re: Buddy Holly Story. Awesome!

Gary Busey's character of Leroy the Masochist represents a part of the hero-trio that stands for the truly untamed aspect of a great surfer. Like a race car driver, the best actually have an unhealthy non-fear of death. Leroy surfs the big waves BECAUSE he is crazy, Matt Johnson, because he has the natural talent, and Jack Barlow because he has made the commitment to follow though on what he started. Their friendship binds them. He's the "Eddie would go" element. He'll never leave the beach, he'll never back down, and sadly, he'll never fully understand it all, either. His deck is missing a few cards.

Matt has aspects of both his friends' character but they come at a cost to his innocence. This is what makes him the true protagonist. His crazy comes from a bottle, and his commitment comes hard won out of the respect he's learned from Jack and Bear, of course. He has to put it all together in order to be the best, and he has to HOLD it all together to keep the brotherhood alive, which is difficult to live up to for someone who is sensitive enough to see the whole picture unfolding.

Leroy on the other hand HAD to be played by someone like Busey - and there's no one "like" Busey, lol. He survives on guts and not giving a damn if he lives or dies. He's the power without the grace, the forever-innocent because his mind is incapable of maturing beyond his hard-on for charging waves (and ovens, and TJ working girls, etc) .

His character is also somewhat like the 1950s era big wave chasers from the islands in that they were watermen and jocks first to a certain extent, embracing the macho aspect of surfing somewhat like Milius, the director himself wanted to identify with. Surfboards used to be very heavy and it took a physique like that to ride one in strong surf. Men like Gregg Noll were given nicknames like Da Bull for charging into situations where wiser men thought it was certain death, but also merely for their sheer size. Although Big Wednesday is set across the 1960s, Busey's character is a bit of a throwback to the 50s era surfers as a means of including the legends from before. Showing Gerry Lopez is the flip side to the coin.

Crusher, and The Enforcer are juxtaposed with Flea and Waxer as the means to show all kinds were in the water, but that none of that mattered when if came time to ride the wave. The lifeguard/ Army Ranger meets the drug pusher in the lineup and you just know they are going to leave one another alone on land. Childhood friends whose lives have taken radically different directions reuniting on the water- a beautiful moment in the film.

Leroy is an extreme so that Matt will have to forge his place in the middle. Barlow had a stable home life, and it seems clear that Matt didn't. That's why he's the closest to Bear, the substitute father. His character understand and feels loss the deepest, having experienced it his whole life.

The legend of Greg Noll includes riding a wave no one thought could be ridden, and then walking away forever as though it were Mt Everest and there was little point in being the second person to climb it. Gary Busey plays this character to the hilt, but the heroic passing of the torch - the big gun shaped by Bear. passed on to the gremmie - is rightly given to the Matt Johnson character.

Director Milius admired the films of John Ford, which often starred John Wayne but also used Henry Fonda to great effect. The dynamic that is brought here reminds me of what it would have been like to pair the two in one film. William Katt, JMV and Busey are almost like Jimmy Stewart (who fought and flew in WW2) Henry Fonda (the conscience and humanity of Tom Joad) and John Wayne, when you think of his righteous driven characters. Milius isn't the only one who wanted to draw these archetypes of US Male together - Larry McMurtry wrote LONESOME DOVE originally as a screenplay for that aging trio of Fordian heroes to play.