About 100 people gathered last month to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the making of the classic surf film “Big Wednesday” at Laguna Beach’s new Surf Heritage and Culture Center (SHACC), which opened along Broadway Street in September.
The center was previously housed in San Clemente, prior to SHACC buying its new home late last year for $18 million.
Attendees at the Oct. 17 event included star William Katt (other actors in the film included Gary Busey and the late Jan-Michael Vincent) and legendary surfers like Ian Cairns, who was a stunt double in the movie and co-founded the first professional surfing league.
Greg MacGillivray, the Laguna Beach filmmaker who has
Greg MacGillivray, the Laguna Beach filmmaker who has made some of IMAX’s biggest-ever films such as “Everest” and “To Fly!,” said the surf movie helped bring him back into the film industry, after his partner and best friend Jim Freeman died in a 1976 helicopter crash.
“For three months I truly did not think I was going to be able to continue with filmmaking,” Greg recalled in a note about the event.
Then filmmaker John Milius, who co-wrote “Apocalypse Now,” called to ask him to make the surfing scenes. He “offered a way to rebuild my sense of purpose and direction in filmmaking,” MacGillivray said.
The film is a character study about
The film is a character study about the lives of three California surfers from the early 1960s to the 1970s as the Vietnam War interrupts their carefree lives.
Coastal flooding in parts of Newport Beach in recent weeks may have caught some locals by surprise, but it wasn’t news to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
A decade ago, FEMA pushed to include thousands of more homes in the city in the area’s flood zones, which would have required those homes to have flood insurance.
Newport Beach lobbied against the changes,
Newport Beach lobbied against the changes, and in 2018 it persuaded FEMA to “exclude about 2,700 properties in the coastal part of the city from updated flood maps,” noted an LA Times story at the time.
“That means owners in parts of the Balboa Peninsula, Balboa Island and West Newport won’t need pricey flood insurance, saving up to about $3,700 each, or $10 million combined, each year in premiums, the city estimated,” the LA Times noted.
Palmer Luckey doesn’t plan to swap his trademark Hawaiian shirt and flip flops for a cowboy hat and boots, despite the potential hit to his pocketbook with California’s billionaire tax on the ballot this week.
The Anduril Industries founder said the proposed tax
The Anduril Industries founder said the proposed tax is already causing “a lot of people to run who I don’t want to be running.”
“It’s going to cause companies that I work with to leave the state, which is a problem for me,” he said during an event
“As of right now, though, I’m not running. I am staying,” Luckey said. “I think California is something special. I want to fight for California.”
