WHAT WENT WRONG - Point Break

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

This week Chris and Lizzie go 100% pure adrenaline on Kathryn Bigelow’s “Point Break”, a film that birthed one of our most unexpected action stars, one of Hollywood’s most powerful (and short lived) power couples, and cemented Patrick Swayze as a daredevil for the ages. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies. I'm one of your co-host, Lizzie Bassett, here as always with your other co-host, Chris Winterbauer. And Chris, you've got a real, a genuine treat for us today. And actually, I think, fantastic movie. So I'll kick it over to you. Yeah. Lizzie, tonight, we are covering a film that my wife, upon watching it for the first time, called Maybe the Most Ridiculous Movie She's Ever Seever.

I love it. So that wasn't a bad thing necessarily. And that, of course, is Catherine Bigelow's Point Break, a movie that answers the question, surfers or bank robbers with a simple, hell yes. Now, Lizzie, had you seen Point Break before, and if yes, what are your thoughts upon rewatching it, or if no, what are your thoughts upon being baptized by skydiving fire in this? amazing cinematic masterpiece. My answer is a little bit of both.

So I had seen this, but it's one of the ones that always would play on like TNT or TBS or something. So I'd only ever seen it in bits and pieces. I don't know that I'd like sat down and watched the whole thing. But I was aware of the basic plot. I had seen like many of the famous scenes, but not for a really long time. So this was my first time really sitting down watching it all the way through and watching it as an adult.

And I got to tell you, this is my first. favorite movie now. This movie's amazing. It has everything I want. Everyone's so hot with the exception of Anthony Kedis. And I don't feel bad about saying that. It's the hottest movie I've ever seen. I don't care. Patrick Swayze, ballet dancing in the air as he's skydiving. Yeah. It's incredible. That's absolutely incredible. I agree, Lizzie. I saw this movie when I was pretty young, I think, around nine or 10 years old, I want to say. And a lot of the subtext was lost on me. A lot of the text was lost on me, let's be honest.

I was going to say, how much subtext is there? Yeah, not a ton. I like the action scenes. They're great. And was a little bored in the more philosophical portions of the film. You know what? I think those works so well, though. Oh, I agree now.

Just for nine-year-old Chris, those were a problem. So I really enjoyed rewatching Point Break. I think it's such a fun movie. I think so many films today, Fast and the Furious, being the obvious franchise, owe so much to this kind of maximalist approach to filmmaking. But it really struck me upon rewatching it and what I'm excited to talk about today is just how visceral the movie feels because everything is being done by someone in all of these scenes. Yeah, you can tell. The chase scenes, the surf scenes, and of course, the skydiving scenes, which we'll get to, are vertigo-inducing. They're really amazing.

I do want to point out, they're also, they're in the air for like 25 minutes, which is not... Too long. Yeah, we'll get to... You would be a pig. Yeah. We'll talk about some of the less realistic elements of the production as we go through this story. Now, point break is the story of a rookie writer. catching the wave of a lifetime,

the birth of one of Hollywood's most unexpected action stars, and the formation and dissolution of what I would call one of Hollywood's most powerful power couples for a brief moment. I noticed his name in the credits. Oh, yeah.

Plus, how Patrick Swayze went from the production's biggest asset to perhaps its most unexpected liability. No. Not in a bad way, in a fun way. Okay, good. I love him. I was like, please don't say anything bad about Patrick. Patrick Swayze.

No, I'll get it out of the way here. Seems like a lovely, very fun, onset presence. Thank God. Headache for the studio in one way that is still very fun that we'll get to. This is the story of Point Break. All right, the details before we began. Point Break is a 1991 action-bromance surf heist movie, directed by Catherine Bigelow, written,

by Peter Eiliff, with a story by Rick King. It was also written by James Cameron and Catherine Bigelow. They're uncredited on the film. Executive produced by James Cameron, released by 20th Century Fox, now 20th Century Studios under Disney, starring Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayzey, Hot.

Lori Petty. Also, so hot. Gary Busey. We'll give it to a hot. Yeah. John C. McGee McGee. Finally. Sure, why not? I think he's pretty hot.

As always, the IMDB logline, which does a disservice to how ridiculous this film is, an FBI agent goes undercover to catch a gang of surfers who may be bank robbers. Technically all correct. Technically all correct. But the movie's also three other things on top of that. So a logline doesn't do it justice. All right. Let's dive in to point break. And I think like so many great movies, it starts with an idea that comes to somebody sitting on a beach. Rick King, who was a director, mostly B-movies in the late 70s, early 1980s, had recently read an article about Los Angeles having become the bank robbery capital of the world. He'd also just finished a surf lesson.

Bank robberies in L.A. picked up in the 1960s, peaked in the 80s and 90s, with 2,641. in L.A. in 1992. That's insane. I don't love that. It's insane. No, the numbers dropped to like under 200 today, I believe. Okay, great. It's believed it's because the city presented easy access to freeways.

Mm-hmm. Makes sense. Well, debatable. But yes. At the time, not anymore. A growing population, an increasing number of banks, and a wide availability of weapons on the streets, especially after the L.A. riots.

Former FBI agent Bill Reeder supervised bank robbery investigations in L.A. for 20 years before retiring in 1999, and he loved it. He's like the pop-us character of the movie in real life. He created fax cover sheets and designed coffee mugs with a cartoon bandit on them and the words bank robbery capital of the world that he would just hand out to people. Even though his job was to stop them, he was excited by this stat. Yeah, he's doing a terrible job technically, but own it. That's great. He later said, quote, I got as big an adrenaline pump out of investigating these guys as they do planning and pulling off robberies. It was the most action-packed squad we had. Now, Reader wasn't alone. Hollywood, too, was obsessed with L.A. bank robbing culture. The genre would, of course, peak in 1995 with heat, which we'll cover at some point.

But King had a unique spin on the genre that nobody had thought to do. do yet. And that is, let's throw surfing into the mix, which I just, I don't know how you come up with it, but he did. It doesn't make any sense. I also, I mean, it's great. It's great. I also love that their whole plan is just put him in with just any surfers. There's no actual, like, looking for evidence. He's like, eventually you'll run into them. It's got to be a small community. in this area with literally thousands of surfers. And he goes right to him. He does.

The initial pitch, according to King, was, quote, an FBI agent that's a good athlete that goes undercover among these surfers. The guy undercover ends up liking the guys he's trying to bust more than those he's working for. I always thought of it as Tom Cruise joins the FBI. To be fair, Tom Cruise had just done all the right moves, which was a high school football movie. Gotcha. So it does make it. make more sense. And then he did Top Gun, of course. Now, Rick King, as I mentioned, had a couple of feature

film credits to his name. And based on the timeline, I've been able to piece together. It seems like this was roughly 1985. And he was working with a company called Tapestry Films. And they were like a new indie slash B-movie slash direct-to-video company. They did a movie together called The Killing Time, Young Keep for Sutherland. I believe Roger Corman actually was part of the distribution. plan and was a producer on the film. So again, low budget stuff. Initially, the plan seems to have been to find a writer to flesh out King's idea into a film he could direct with the backing of tapestry and its producers Peter Abrams and Robert Levy. Now, I'm just assuming this, but it seems reasonable that this version of the film would have been minuscule in both scope and budget. Again,

this is just conjecture, but I also think it's reasonable to assume that the reason the idea appealed to them is because the idea of a surfing heist movie has a real B-movie vibe to it. So they decide they're going to hire a writer. It doesn't seem like they could afford a big-name studio writer, but lucky for King, he'd recently become bosom buddies with a scrappy young scribe by way of their shared agent. And that man is W. Peter Eiliff, and we'll just call him Peter Eilif from hereon. And in the early 1980s, he was working on the ABC series. That's incredible. Never heard of it. From what I gathered, it was an early reality TV show in the style of, That's Amazing, or Ripley's Believe it or Not.

Huh. Basically, people would come on and perform stunts and reenact paranormal events. Fun fact, apparently Tiger Woods was on the show at the age of five to show off his already prodigious putting skills. But Eilip didn't care about the show at all. All he cared about was was he worked as a runner, which meant he got sent to other studios to deliver documents and pick things up, which meant he got access to everybody's copy machines and fax machines. So he would go to studios, make copies of his own screenplays, distribute them, and then go back to the show that he was working on. So he did that for a while, got fired. I'm assuming probably because he wasn't very good at his job. And that gave him time and unemployment to start dedicating himself

to writing full-time. He meets Rick King. They bond over apparently good weed and tequila, and eventually King shares his idea, high school surfers who rob banks. Oh, high school? High school. Hmm, okay.

So it was also 21 Jump Street originally as well. Not as hot. It was like, it was three movies in one. King and Tapestry films offer I-LIF a whopping $5,000 to write the script. which he did say was a fortune for a waiter at the time. That number has oscillated between 5 and 6,000, depending on the interview that I-Lef's giving. Let's say 5.

He got to work between restaurant shifts. He pulled from key elements of his personal life to inform the story. A few quick points worth noting. Ilif's dad died when he was 8. His mother was always preoccupied because she was grieving. And he said that male friendships were always very important to him. And that's where the Bodie, Utah romance at the center of the film comes from. him. He decided to pursue writing instead of going to law or business school, thanks in part to the fact that there was only his mom, you know, offering him direction, and she trusted him to go his own way. This became the underlying philosophy for Bodie, that go your own way philosophy. Ilyf also struggled with alcoholism for a long time. He was, he's been sober since 2004. And he had a tendency to, quote, always want more. He described himself as a, quote, terrible surfer, but felt he could relate to the dopamine

seeking adrenaline junkie lifestyle. And of course, Johnny Utah was inspired by which real-life quarterback would you guess, Lizzie? I literally only know one quarterback name from before, like, now, and it's Joe Namath, which can't be right. You got the first name right. It's Joe Montana. Oh, oh. So Johnny, Utah, Joe Montana. Yeah, I should have gotten that one. That's where that comes from, that subtle nod. And of course, Bodie was inspired by Island. his coworker at Angie's, the restaurant he worked at, whose name was Bodie, Bodie McCoy. Listen, write what you know, Chris. He does. And Islef, he has a great interview on a podcast called Script Apart.

Guys, listen to it if you want to hear more directly from I-Lef on the making of the movie. It's a really good interview. So, Bodie was an older waiter. He had a good sense of humor and also liked to wax philosophic. He apparently is responsible for some of the phrases and concepts in the script, including 100% pure adrenaline. That's something the real boat he used to say. And true to character, he is now a life coach and author who, according to ILIF, has nine kids. And his Amazon bio reads, I grew up surfing the waves of Southern California's coastline and enthusiastically engaged in

the 60s lifestyle. Certain that psychedelics were the path to enlightenment, I began to ride the drug-induced waves of consciousness. Eventually, the drugs caused a wipeout, which began my true spiritual quest, learning to ride life's waves. Good for you, Bodie. Good for you, Bodie, and he is Bodie. Yeah. Just minus the bank robbing. Tyler was apparently inspired by Ilif's wife.

She was written to spark a development of emotional maturity in the character, as Ilif said, his wife had, which I thought was actually very sweet. And the title of the movie, which was apparently his fifth screenplay that he'd written, any guesses, Lizzie, it was not Point Break. It's the most obvious title you could ever think of. surfs up, wipe out, hang ten, I don't know. Those are all better. Johnny Utah.

No. Yes. It's called Johnny Utah. So the team takes the script around town and it gets bought, unexpectedly, it seems, in 1986 by a real studio, Columbia Pictures. Of course, we've covered Columbia Pictures a couple of times. Most recently with Boys in the Hood and also with Howard the Duck, It's unclear Frank Price, who greenlit both Howard the Duck and Boys in the Hood,

listened to our episodes, was the studio head at the time because there were a bunch of studio head changes and I couldn't get the exact date. Suffice it to say, a big director gets interested in the project and attaches. And he's director, we've covered a couple times on this podcast, Lizzie, and he's British. His last name is the first name. Oh, Ridley Scott. Mr. Ridley Scott was going to direct. Point break, Johnny Utah at the time. Now, Rick King, who was the guy that came up with the idea

for himself to direct, was like, what the hell? I'm supposed to direct this movie. But Eilift said later, quote, what choice did he have when Scott wanted it? And everybody said, Rick, it's fine. Sit down. Don't worry about it. So Columbia brought in a couple of more experienced writers. Walter Parks and Larry Lasker. They'd co-written war games, which we just discussed, Lizzie. According to Eilif, though, quote, their draft didn't really work, and then they brought me on to work with those guys, and those guys were really nice to me.

And then a producer, Linda Opsd, came in, and I have no love for this woman. I have no love for Linda Opsed, and she quickly vanished, and that draft vanished, end quote. Okay. Apologies, Ms. Ops, for the strays. That's are from Peter Eilf.

Pre-production rolled on. Apparently sets were being constructed. Real money was being spent on making this movie, And they'd even found their Johnny Utah in a young Charlie Sheen. Ah. Kind of. See, kind of, but here's the problem with Charlie Sheen. I don't buy him, like the second he's offered the chance to rob a bank, I feel like he's in it and he's gone.

There's no tension. Yeah, okay, it's like, come on, let's roll. This was, though, a little bit more of the fresh-faced Charlie Sheen. He was fresh off platoon and Wall Street. He had eight men out and young guns in the hopper. about to come out. He was an obvious fit for Utah in a lot of ways. I mean, if you think about his trajectory in Platoon, it's very similar to Johnny Utah's trajectory in this movie. Comes in as, like, kind of the fresh-faced grunt, and he ends the movie as the grizzled jaded vet, basically.

It's unclear what the first domino was, but this project starts falling apart. Charlie Sheen kind of, it seems, quickly bowed out of the movie. He cited a shoulder injury sustained during eight men out. I did look into the timeline of his addiction struggles, and he did check into rehab at the end of 1990. He also said about his role in Wall Street, those movies were so hard to make, you age a certain amount in a stone movie. And he may have just simply looked at the script and said,

I can't jump out of planes and serve, like, I'm exhausted. So the producers then turned to Sean Penn as their lead, but after a year, according to ILF, of working with Ridley Scott in the movie, quote, the studio, Columbia, changed hands, and Ridley went off and did a film called Black Rain, end quote. Black Rain stars Michael Douglas. We'll cover it at a later date.

I believe the studio transition that I-Liffe is referring to is when TriStar purchased Columbia in 1987, and of course, Sony purchased Columbia in 1989. So it was like a really tumultuous time for the studio. Regardless, Eilf made it clear that they had made significant progress towards actually shooting the movie. After five months of building our sets,

they tore them down, and it was a very difficult day to say the least. Oh, man. Yeah. Rick King was also disappointed, though he did not blame the studio and instead later pointed the blame at Scott's changing interests. He said, quote, he spent as much in pre-production as I spent on a film and then decided not to do it. How haven't we kind of seen that once before with Ridley Scott? We did. He had been on Dune for a while and then his brother passed away. Right. And he realized Dune was going to be a gargantuan undertaking that was going to take years.

and so he left and he joined Blade Runner effectively. It seems like reading between the lines here, what may have happened is that the movie found itself without a home because the new management wasn't interested at Columbia. And as a result, they would have had to take it around town and pitch it. And Scott might not have been interested in going through that process and instead joined a more ready-to-go movie with Black Rain. I'm just guessing, but based on the conflicting quotes,

it seems like it could happen. So without a director, Matthew Broderick was either attached or briefly considered by the studio while they sought out a new director. I like Matthew Broderick a lot. I loved him in glory and Ferris Bueller. I don't think

it feels like the right fit. Yeah, I don't see that. Ilef and King, though, actually went off and made another movie together. It seems like, the little scene, Prayer of the Roller Boys. And if you think this movie's a weird mashup of genres, This is basically point break, but with rollerblading,

and a dystopian future starring Corey Haim. Okay. Yeah, I'll read you the IMDB Log Lane. In a dystopian near future America, a young man infiltrates a powerful drug-dealing rollerblading youth gang that runs his town in order to end their reign for good. It's available for free on YouTube. I didn't watch it, but you're welcome to.

It does have a fun cult following. It looks pretty absurdist. Just the idea of making anything badass on rollerblades. Rollerball. Roller ball was fun. Yeah. James Con. All right.

It's the late 1980s, and there is a director out there who needs a hit, and that's Catherine Bigelow. The California-born director had taken a winding road to film, studying at the San Francisco Art Institute and Columbia University, where she got her master's in film theory and criticism, not production. She'd lived in New York as an impoverished artist with painter, Julian Schnabel. Oh, wow. And apparently she worked with Philip Glass. Yes, that Philip Glass on renovating and flipping rundown apartments. And can I just say, I want to watch a reality TV show

called Big Time Flips with Bigelow and Glass. That sounds like a real good time. Absolutely. So she was interested in violence on screen from the very beginning of her career in film. Her first short film, The Setup, is apparently 20 minutes of two men beating each other up with voiceover. There's more to it than that, but that's the gist of it. She made her feature directorial debut, co-directing 1981's The Loveless, which is a biker gang films starring Willem Defoe in his first lead role.

And it's good. I saw it in film school, I think. And then, of course, my favorite of her films, 1987's Near Dark, is a movie that many people today know her for. It's her classic take on a vampire family road trip movie. It is bonkers. However, it was a bit of a flop at the time. It grossed only $3 million or so against a $5 million budget,

but it did lead to an extremely important relationship in Bigelow's life, both personally and professionally. And Lizzie, can you tell our audience who that might be with? It's got to be Jimmy C's concrete boots. James Cameron. Jimbo C himself. Now, Lizzie, I always assumed Bigelow and Cameron knew each other prior to Near Dark, given the fact that Bigelow cast three Cameron regulars from aliens,

which came out in 1986, in Near Dark. Dark, Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, and my OG favorite, Jeanette Goldstein, in her film. However, it was that casting process that seems to have brought them together. Basically, it sounds like Bigelow auditioned Paxton for Near Dark. He sent the script to Lance Hendrickson. It's unclear if Goldstein got it from them or if she came in separately. Regardless, Bigelow realizes, I want to cast all three of these people, so she reached out to Cameron for his blessing to cast them in the film.

Not only did he give her his support, it sounds like they started to form a creative of collaboration because he actually has a cameo in near dark, and you can see aliens on the marquee of one of the movie theaters in the background in the film. Oh, wow. Which is really cool. So it's unclear when their relationship became romantic. At this point, Cameron's married to his Terminator producer, Gayle Ann Hurd. But it seems safe to say that it more or less follows the trajectory of their involvement with Point Break together. As Linda Hamilton, Cameron's fourth wife, I want to say, star of Terminator and Terminator 2, later said, quote, work and women go hand in hand for Jimbo, and I should know, end quote.

Suffice as to say, sometime in late 1987, early 1988, Bigelow gets her hands on Johnny Utah, the name at the time. I'm amazed she opened it with that title, but she and Cameron are at least corresponding on some level because she shares it with him and asks if he'll rewrite it with her. even though he's gearing up on Terminator 2, he agrees. Now, Bigelow had had a co-writer on Near Dark, Eric Red, and Blue Steel, the Jamie Lee Curtis movie she did in 1990, so she was used to working with another writer. Here's where things get a little murky, but I'll do my best to guide us through, Lizzie. Bigelow attaches as the director of the film, Cameron comes on for the rewrite.

They're basically rewriting together. The directive from Bigelow is, I want to go darker and more psychological and focus on the relationship between, between Bodie and Utah. Yeah. Sounds great. Cameron cranks it out. This guy is a machine. We'll get to it and we cover Terminator 2 or Aliens.

He writes these movies so fast. It is mind-boggling. Even Peter Eiliff, who as we saw earlier, could be not complimentary if he didn't feel like it, was really complimentary of the work. He later said, quote, you know, hats off to James Cameron who did a turbocharged,

polish rewrite on the script. I get sole credit because Writers Guild rules with original screenwriters are very strict. They really protect original writers. But Jimbo, the man came in and you know, God bless Jim. Give him full credit for a lot of the scenes, end quote. So Lizzie, do you have any guesses what scenes James Cameron might have been or tweaks he might have been responsible for? He's got to be behind the skydiving. Which one?

Oh, the one where he jumps out of an airplane with no parachute. That is a James Cameron's signature moment. Certainly. Jumping out of a plane without a parachute, Eilip said, no way, it's not realistic. And James Cameron said, who gives such shit? Yep. And he wrote the scene.

And apparently, skydiving experts have said, actually, you can catch up to somebody who's dived about 15 seconds ahead of you if you position your body the right way. And that's not inaccurate. The fact that you would be snapped off of him the minute the parachute goes off is definitely inaccurate.

Also, you can't talk when you skydive. The actors said, like... But they had such good conversations, Chris. They did. They had good conversations. Also, the lawnmower scene were in the botched raid. And then the masks, this is actually my favorite one. Originally, the bank robbing masks were dead presidents. And James Cameron said, no, do ex-presidents.

Because people will know who you're talking about. Yeah, that's smart. And it gave it like a political valence that makes the movie a little. smarter. Like, I love that, you know, he's tricky dick and, you know, it wasn't me and, you know, remember to vote. I am not a crook, yes. Yeah. And then... LB.J. Reagan. And then Reagan doing the flamethrower when Reagan had been nailed for a lot of oil stuff and rolling back the EPA. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's some really fun subtext there that the movie wouldn't have had if it was Lincoln, etc. So it sounded like Iliff, Cameron, and Bigelow got along really well overall.

But there was one hitch in the wagon, and that was Bigelow's insistence from the very beginning on using a very particular and at the time, unusual actor for the role of Johnny Utah, and that is Keanu Reeves. Yes. She knew what she wanted and she was right. Oh, from the jump. So known most recently and famously at this point for his turn as Ted in Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, which he's excellent in. Yes. It was released in February of 1989. No one could see it.

As Eilift later said, quote, Kianu was Catherine Bigelow's personal battle. A lot of other names were preferred by the studio, end quote. So much so, Lizzie, that Columbia Pictures passed on making the movie they owned with Kianu. Wow. I'm assuming, but could not confirm, that the project then entered turnaround, meaning Bigelow and Cameron had the opportunity to pitch it to other students.

to see if they could find a new home. Now, even James Cameron had serious doubts about Reeves. As he led her said, quote, she went to the mat for Keanu Reeves. We had this meeting where the Fox executives were going, Keanu Reeves in an action film? Based on what? Bill and Ted?

They were being so insulting, but she insisted he could be an action star. This was long before Speed or The Matrix. I didn't see it either, frankly. I supported her in the meeting, but when we walked out, I was going, based on what? But she worked on his wardrobe.

She showed him how to walk. She made him work out. She was his Olympic coach. He should send her a bottle of champagne every year to thank her. I'll say. End quote. Wow. Yeah.

I think maybe the first thing he popped up in, or barely early thing he popped up in was parenthood. Yes. And he's great in that. Yeah, but it's very much the same. It's another version of Ted. He's dopey. Spacey.

Spacey. He looks stringy. Like, he's cute, but he's definitely not somebody that you would peg as an action star. So that's kind of amazing that she just knew it. She did. And to his credit, Cameron backed her up 100%. So despite his misgivings, he signed onto the project as its executive producer at this point. Listen, say what you will about James Cameron.

I actually think he seems to be a pretty big champion of the women that he works with. For all the shit we give James Cameron. Absolutely. We'll get there. It was through Cameron that the project ended up in the hands of Lawrence Gordon, who would later produce Waterworld, listen to our episode, and his brand new company Largo Entertainment set up at 20th Century Fox with backing from Japanese electronics giant JVC.

It seems like Hollywood was going for Japanese electronics money at this point in time. Gordon and Fox pushed for more established names, I read but could not confirm both Johnny Depp and Val Kilmer, but Bigelow and Cameron stood firm so much so that at some point in this process, it's unclear if it was casting or something else. I read that Cameron and Gordon, who were friends, got into a shouting match over a decision that Bigelow was pushing for, and Cameron just told him to basically fuck off much in the way he has in the other films that we've covered.

They also tied the knot during this period. Of course they did. Yeah. I read August 17th, but couldn't verify. Bigelow and Cameron were officially wed. This was very shortly after he and Gaylaan Hurd were divorced. Yeah. That's a repeat pattern.

I believe Gayleyn Hurd was still involved in Terminator 2, which he was. Yeah, and that he was gearing up to make. It was getting messy and we'll get messier. The pair clearly bonded over their love of film and directing, and obviously the pressure cooker that is making a film together. However, Cameron's attention would soon be pulled elsewhere. In March of 1990, he was locked in to... to a 1991 release date for the yet to be written Terminator 2,

episode forthcoming on Jimbo C's speedy digits, because he can write real quick. Yeah, and I love Terminator 2. So in June of 1990, Bigelow Cameron and Reeves are reportedly attached to the project, which is now called Riders on the Storm. They killed Johnny Utah, stole it from the doors, and they were reportedly hoping to get Patrick Swayze

to co-star as Bo-Dy. Now, in many ways, Swayze was an obvious pick. He is blonde, beautiful, athletic. He knew how to fight, see Roadhouse. Yes. And would hopefully be able to pick up surfing, and we know he knows how to control his body. See Dirty Dancing.

He's a phenomenal dancer. He also had a sensitivity, I would argue, that the character called for. But he was also in the midst of a career rut. 1987's Dirty Dancing had been a bona fide smash, but the subsequent three years had been quiet, even Roadhouse, released in 1989, it's a cult classic now, it was released to tepid reviews at the time. Now, Swayze connected deeply with Bodie, later saying of his decision to do the film, I definitely have the adrenaline junkie and me.

That's a big part of the reason why I wanted to do the role, is to get rid of that part or exercise it from my life. Bodie was really exciting to me because he's in many ways a lot of who I am. End quote. As the producers would soon learn, having someone who's so identified with the role would be a double edged sword. Yeah, I bet. More on that in a moment. So Gary Busey signed on for the role of Pappas. He'd done his own surfing film with 1978's Big Wednesday and played a former member of the U.S. Special Forces in 1987's lethal weapon. However, this was his first major role after a horrible motorcycle accident in 1988, during which he died briefly. Yeah, he sustained, I think, long-term brain

damage that kind of continued throughout his life. Yeah, a neurologist confirmed. it later that a lot of the behavioral changes and lack of inhibition inability to filter were tied to this accident during which he was not wearing a helmet. Yeah. He's great in this movie, by the way. He is great. Listen, I love Gary Busey. I know, you know, in many ways, he's a mess, but I love him.

He's great in this. He's been fun in so many things. He has a great sense of humor in it, a great sense of physicality. He plays really well across Keanu because, like, I think he does a lot of the heavy lifting in those scenes, you know, because Keanu is very much the straight man and Busey gives it a life. I also should note, Keanu Reeves also was in a terrible motorcycle accident roughly around this time. That's right. Yeah, so he had his spleen removed after it, and you can actually see the scar on his stomach, the vertical scar on his stomach.

I was wondering if that was real. Yeah, that's real. That's from that motorcycle accident. Oh, my God. So the other big casting battle for Bigelow, if you had to guess which character seems the most unconventionally cast, actually. Oh, it's got to be Tyler. Tyler, Lori Petty. Yeah. So not only was she relatively inexperienced, the mid-20s actress had mostly done TV guest spots at this point, she was not the, quote, quintessential beach blonde or surf chick that Eiliff had written,

which is what Bigelow loved about her. Yes, she's so cute also, just like she's beautiful. Very beautiful, but, like, so charming, so funny. So, I, she's really wonderful. I think she's the best. She gives the best performance of everyone in the film. I actually think she's the most natural. I'm going to give it to Swayze still, but she is wonderful. I found her very convincing. She apparently just gave the best audition. And it seems like the other producers were kind of ready to write her off. Like, oh, she doesn't fit the part. And Bigelow said, no, no, no, no,

this is great. She's against type and she gave the best audition. Well, I also have to say, like, there's something very appealing about her being the lead in this as a woman, too. Like, this could so easily have been, you know, the hottest blonde. And there's nothing technically wrong with that, but there's something so much more appealing about seeing a woman who looks a little bit more real. It's almost like the Bella Swan Twilight thing of like feeling like I could step into this part and therefore into this world because she appears more quote unquote normal, even though she's not, obviously, she's very beautiful. She's very funny and everything. But there's something to be said for having someone more accessible in this part. I also think it's a brilliant casting choice because it creates a visual contrast between the pole of Tyler and the pole of Bodie. Bodie already is the beautiful beach blonde. You don't need another beautiful beach blonde. She represents, she's the midpoint.

She has the piercing blue eyes of Aswesi, but she has the darker complexion of Akiana Reeves. And I don't know. I just think it's really smart casting. And I think she works really well in this movie. All right, Lizzie. So cast in place, Bigelow says you guys have to go into training because you're going to have to do a lot of physicality and a lot of stunts. And these trainers had their work cut out for them.

Kianu Reeves could not throw football. None of them could surf or had ever skydived. Isn't Kianu from Hawaii? Yeah. And you had never surf before. Actually, I believe Swayze is the only one that had been on a board even. Not that he was accomplished. Iowa-born Lori Petty had never even been in the ocean.

Wow. Now, of the four bank robbers, James LaGroes and Swayze were the two Thespians. And then real-life surfers, Bo Jesse Christopher and John Philbin. I will say, Philbin, he is an actor, but he was leveraging his surfing ability to get roles in surfing movies. They rounded out the ex-presidents. Throughout the film, because they're in masks, they're actually stunt performing. athletes and doubles doing a lot of those scenes, including a lot of that big chase scene between Utah and Bodie is a stunt double because Swayze was promoting ghost in Europe at the time,

which was really interesting. Now, from what we gathered, Swayze Reeves and Petty trained primarily with professional surfer and founder of spider surfboards Dennis Jarvis at Hermosa Beach. I also read they trained on Hawaii, but that was from a listicle, so I'm going to go with Hermosa Beach. Yeah, Hawaii sounds expensive. Swayze later says they also trained with Matt Archibald. Matt Archbold, if you see shots that look like Swayze doing really impressive things. The first time you see him.

Yeah, I think that's Matt Archbold because he looks like a pretty good ringer for Swayze at the time. He had long blonde hair. And Derek Dorner, who's one of the three surfers used in the incredible 2002 Bond film Die Another Day. Love the surfing in that movie. It's absolutely ridiculous in the best way. The point is they were being trained by the best, and it was hard. As Swayze later said, quote, surfing was like pulling teeth. It's a sport that'll take your whole life to master, but I loved it.

End quote. According to Petty, they also did daily three-hour lifting sessions at Gold's Gym. And stunt coordinator Glenn R. Wilder was instructed by Bigelow to train them all to be able to participate in their own fight scenes. Wilder later said of the process, quote, I taught them how to do fights from the ground up, how to move, why you're doing it, What's happening? Where's the camera? But I said if you don't come in practice, I can't use you. Everyone got the picture except for one rock star. Any guesses, Lizzie?

It's got to be the Red Hot Chili Pepper himself. Red Hot Chili Pepper's frontman, Anthony Kedis, who plays one of the neo-Nazi surfers that Jump Utah at the Outdoor Shower, missed so many rehearsals that Wilder choreographed the fight so he'd get knocked out in one punch. And that's why he gets knocked out in one punch in the film. I loved it. It's great. He then gets shot in the foot and dies the horse dead in that later scene.

Everyone knew serving was going to be difficult. Everyone knew fighting was going to be difficult. No one knew how hard it would be to teach Keanu Reeves how to throw a football. Johnny Utah, legendary college quarterback, was played by the Lefty Reeves, whose athletic background is limited to ice hockey. Although I read he was actually an excellent ice hockey player. and his career had been cut short by an injury similar to the character. But that involves your hands below your waist, not above your shoulders.

So Bigelow and the production brought in UCLA football coach, Rick Newheisel, to teach Keanu the quarterback position. Again, not messing around. New Heazel comes in and quickly realizes he has his work cut out for him, as he later said in an ESPN interview, quote, Keanu Reeves had never thrown a football in his life. He never really grasped the art of the spiral, but he was all in. I had to tell Catherine Bigelow, who. was the director of the movie, I had to tell her we needed some major editing, given his struggles

with the forward pass. She then asked me to direct the football scene, and that was a blast. I had Patrick Swayze begging for an interception, Gary Busey wanting to be in the scene. Gary, you can't. You can't. It was crazy. In the end, we satisfied Swayze with the tackle in the surf, end quote. So apparently the reason you never see Keanu release the football is because it's so obviously wrong coming out of his hand that New Hewitzel can. Vince Bigelow to cut right before the release. So that's why every shot you see is like this awkward takeback and then you just like cut on the movement. And then New Heisel was apparently shocked that

Keanu Reeves went on to star in the replacements in 2000 and it played a quarterback again. Just goes to show you, you can't keep Keanu down. Now, at the beginning of this episode, we briefly discussed an FBI agent, Bill Reeder, who was part of the squad investigating bank robberies in Los Angeles at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. Now, he was actually brought into the production to advise Reeves on the role of an FBI investigator. According to his book, Where the Money is, Reader was assigned to Reeves to give him some pointers on how to portray an FBI agent chasing bank robbers. He described Reeves as, quote, a pleasant but somewhat spacey young man, end quote.

Yeah, what do you think you're getting? All right. So let's talk about how Bigelow. shoots this movie because this is an amazingly well-directed movie. She directs the hell out of this movie, not just the action scenes. One of my favorite scenes is the walk-and-talk with Keanu and John C. McGinley in the FBI offices that's effectively the opening scene of the movie. And it's just all one-shot as she's moving through these offices. So her desire to break the mold started with casting, but it continued well into camera movement as well. So while James Cameron was always looking for ways

used story to push the technology of the medium forward, Bigelow was always looking for ways to differentiate her films from the well-worn genres that she was playing in. So, like, Near Dark is a vampire movie. How can I do that differently? Blue Steel is a cop movie. How can I do that differently? And now I'm doing a surfing, bank robbing movie.

Everyone's seen a surf movie. Everyone's seen a bank robbing movie. How can I do that differently? And her answer was to put the viewer in harm's way right next to the actor. So as she later told moving pictures, quote, my intent was to put the audience in as close to, you know, an experiential situation as possible.

In other words, I wanted it to all be shot with as much movement as possible so that you're actually feeling the velocity that those people are feeling. So we had to technically figure out how to do it, how to put the cameraman in the same situation that the actors are in, end quote. And Catherine Bigelow, to her credit, was right there with them. Again, as she later said, quote, anything involving Patrick jumping out of a plane.

I was there with a parachute on, strapped in. For the water work, I was in the water on a boat as close as I could be without getting in the shot or making it logistically problematic for anybody or sitting on a surfboard, yelling action and cut, then falling off the board. I actually had many units on that film working simultaneously, end quote. So she was skydiving? I don't know if she was in the air. She was absolutely in the plane when they were doing all of those things.

I couldn't find confirmation that she jumped. With a budget of roughly $25 million, which was substantially more than Bigelow had had on like Near Dark, which was $5 million, production began. But when you consider the scope of this movie, that's actually not a ton of money. So she storyboarded everything meticulously,

and she was choreographing all of the action herself. Everybody involved said it was like Bigelow running through the bank going, you're here, you're here, you're here, turning to the cameraman, you follow him here, you whip here, You go this direction. She had three camera units. They had the main unit, a water unit, and a sky unit. They, of course, had car chases, foot chases, fight scenes, gun fights,

and of course, the beach side football scene. Now, according to interviews later given in the film itself, she committed herself, as I said, to a constantly moving camera. And she did that by doing what she called handheld masters. So typically you shoot like a wide shot, master shot of your scene. It shows the blocking of the scene. It captures all of the action. It's from a neutral perspective.

And in the edit, you can always cut back to it if you need to connect some other pieces of coverage, etc. Bigelow basically forewent that and instead just sent the camera in close from the beginning, giving the audience a subjective point of view in the room. But as a result, if there was a mistake and continuity, et cetera, there was no getting out of it with a bigger master. Yeah, you can't cover it. So this obviously applied to the action scenes, but it also applies. applied to the dialogue scenes. The film introduces Johnny Utah at the FBI offices with a masterful walk-and-talk between

him and John C. McGinley. And that is a 95-second, one-shot, steady-cam shot that takes us from reception through the FBI hallways around the pen, whip panning from different characters speaking at, like, very specific cues. As McGinley later said, quote, it was phenomenally challenging and at the time really cutting-edge Steadicam work, and it worked. It took the entire day to get that shot, from the actor not quite nailing it, to the camera not quite nailing it, to background people hitting the camera, to a light flaring, stuff kept going wrong. We must have shot that thing 40 or 50 times, end quote.

Oh, my God. So Viglo right up there with the best of them in terms of demanding perfection and nailing the shot. Also, special shout out to Stadicam operator Jay Michael Murrow, who of course is now an extremely accomplished cinematographer. He most recently shot Kevin Costner's Horizon an American saga, which I know it's getting mixed reviews, but everybody says it looks great visually. Bigelow shoots no masters. As a result, she and her stunt team are always physically moving. She's running with the camera. She's in the car with the camera. She later said, quote, it's like a military maneuver. I was on a video remote talking to a cameraman as he was running. As fast as my actors, you know, through all these situations. Again, we choreographed it very carefully and then went through it very slowly and then

get faster and faster and faster and finally you just get more confidence, end quote. And I'd like to play a brief quote from Lori Petty on working with Bigelow because I came across a lot of articles expressing a variation of the sentiment that Catherine Bigelow's being a woman is one of the primary ways in which this movie is different from other action films. Basically, the female gaze versus the male gaze. And that may be true. I'd argue it's subjective, but again, I'm not a film critic. However, it seems like from a production perspective, Bigelow was first, foremost and last, an action director, gender aside. And don't take my word for it. Let's hear it from Lori Petty on her experience working with Catherine Bigelow. People think that it's softer because of Catherine,

because she's a female, and that that's not the truth at all. She was so in love with action. When there was a scene with me and Keanu who were just supposed to be kissing on the beach, she's like, oh, God, whatever, just get over it, get on with it. You know, she's a wonderful director, but it was funny. She loves action a lot more than just being, you know, still. Anyway. That's amazing.

Yeah, she wanted to make an action movie. She was making an action movie. She wasn't a woman making an action movie. She was a director directing an action movie. Yeah, and boy, did she. Yeah. Now, before we get to the bigger stunts of the film, it's important that we note the release of a little film

that changed the career of one of Point Break stars and the entire onset vibe. Ghost became 1990's most unexpected smash hit just as Point Break geared into production, directed by Jeff Zucker of Airplane Fame and starring Patrick Swayze, alongside the still up-and-coming to Me More, and of course Whoopi Goldberg,

Ghost was a sensation. shot for $22 or so million, the movie made over $500 million at the box office worldwide, becoming the highest grossing film of 1990, and I believe the third highest grossing film of all time at that point in time. Suddenly Patrick Swayze was one of the most desired actors and men on the planet. Peter Eiliff later said, quote, it was like the Beatles were on set. There were literally ropes that were put up to keep screaming girls away. Derek Dorner, pro-surfer, trainer for them, also said, quote, there were girls chasing him everywhere.

I've never seen anything quite like it, end quote. And he's second build on the movie. Now, to be clear, it doesn't seem to have caused any tension between him and Keanu Reeves or anyone else on the production, but that puts a lot of scrutiny on the film. It's great for Point Break and 20th Century Fox. However, it also meant they were about to throw their new secret weapon into enormous waves and out of an airplane. Yes.

So contrary to some listicles online, Patrick Swazey had never skydived prior to Point Break. That is crazy because he looks like he's done it a million times. Well, he did it a few, so his brother was an accomplished skydiver, so he'd had some exposure to the sport. Now, Bigelow couldn't use face replacement. The technology wasn't quite there yet, though obviously we've spoken about how Jurassic Park would use it in 1993. listen to our episode. So she came up with a three-pronged approach to shoot the skydiving scenes.

First, they'd shoot the dives practically with professional skydivers as stunt doubles. This is the skydiving camera team. Shout out to Tom Sanders. And that whole team, Tom also worked on Golden Eye and Tauron Never Dies. That whole crew, I think, did such incredible work on this movie. According to Bigelow, Lizzie, you mentioned flight time,

how these scenes go on and on. Mm-hmm. Okay, quote, every shot is a different jump because you can only get maybe one shot per jump. Right. Because you have like 20 seconds before you have to save yourself, end quote. So, conservatively, we're talking about dozens of jumps to shoot these scenes. Oh, wow. This, of course, includes a stunt double jumping with a very small tiny parachute underneath an overshirt to sell the idea.

That's what I figured. Yeah, that Johnny Utah is jumping with no parachute. If you pause it and look really close, you can see kind of like the hump. But I think that scene looks incredible. Second, they built a skydiving rig with telescoping arms that could be operated at ground level. So basically, these are crane arms that suspend the actors 20 feet above the ground. Now, you can't hang the actor because then you'd see the crane above them. So the actor is actually in a harness with a little ball bearing on the ground.

the center of it that's attached to like a stick that goes into the top of the crane. So the actor is actually balancing on top of a single tension point on top of a crane. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. So they're about 20 feet up. No thank you. The cranes would then be wobbled by the effects coordinators that would sit at the axis point of the crane. And they would then put the camera on another crane. So it gave all three the sense of weightlessness relative to one another. And they put an enormous fan below all of it to blast the air in their faces. And that's how they shot the close-ups of the actors, which I think look really good. And the dialogue scenes, which even Swayze himself said, you cannot talk while you're skydiving. That is actually the most unrealistic part of everything that

they did skydiving. He said 120 mile an hour winds, you can't even move your mouth. Like, that's it. There's no way you're talking. The third and perhaps most important component of this approach was to have Swayze do at least one dive for real. Now, Lizzie, did you see there's one shot that's very obviously Swayze. Oh, yeah. There's, I mean, it looks like it's all one take, but it's the shot where he's doing the sort of like balletic sort of rolls in the air. You can see his face. That's actually not the shot I'm talking about, and I wasn't able to confirm that that wasn't a stunt double. The shot that is absolutely him is in the last third of the film, When he jumps off the plane after saying Adios Amigo to Johnny Utah, he falls back out of the plane in one uninterrupted shot and the camera leans out to track him falling.

And that's like the big one where the audience says, oh, wow, we're seeing him fall, you know what I mean, out of the plane. Yeah. So in Swayze's mind, this is a no-brainer. Like, he's in. As he later said in an interview on Japanese television, quote, I was planning on doing it anyway because my little brother's been skydiving for a long time. so this gave me a chance to do it on film and have Larry Gordon pay for it, end quote. But the studio did not want him to jump. I tried to figure out where Bigelow fell on this.

There's no direct quote. My guess is that she was on Swayze's side. If he wants to do it, let's do it. But it's unclear. So Swayze, taking his role seriously, started jumping during the production so he could learn on the weekends with some of the skydiving team. Quote, once I saw skydiving as ballet in the air. or as gymnastics, it all came pretty easy to me, end quote. Camerman Tom Sanders agreed.

He said that Swayze's dancing and athletic background made the jumps he did awesome. Yeah. So according to Peter Abrams, quote, Swayze started jumping on his own. And he used to come in and say, oh, look, Peter, look what I did this weekend. And I would say, no, you can't do that, you know, insurance, end quote. According to a 2017 conversation with Keanu Reeves at TIF, the Toronto International Film Festival, Swayze actually received a cease and desist letter from the studio delivered to him because he'd made between 30 and 55 jumps while making the movie on his own time.

Oh my God. Peter Abrams and the producers came to him with a compromise. Again, here's Abrams on the issue, quote, anyway, ultimately we agreed that if he would stop jumping while we were filming, he could actually jump out of a plan. after everything is done, which is what he did. And it's one of the great shots in the movie because he falls out of the plane and you're waiting for the cut and it never happens. End quote. Now, as you said, Lizzie, I do think there are a lot of shots that are actually Swayzee. That has to be him.

I think so. But that one I know is confirmed by everybody involved. Now, Swayze was never injured while skydiving. However, there were two close calls involving the stunt and camera teams during the shoot. According to an interview with Dave Donnelly, the son of skydiver Kevin Donnelly, both of them worked on the film. Kevin as a diver, Dave as a parachute packer. He was 16 years old. No, I would like someone over the age of 18 packing my parachutes.

I know. No shade to you, sir, but no. And he never skydived before. No, no, no, no, no. All right. The real danger came from the interaction between the kids. camera helicopter and the skydiving plane. So you have two objects in motion in flight that are having to get close to one another to get these shots and coordinate for timing. So during a practice pass for one of the

jump scenes, the camera helicopter clipped the tail of the airplane and sheared off part of its own rotor. The jumpers actually saw helicopter parts fall past them through the sky. The plane was still carrying a number of stunt doubles, Assistant Director Kara McCloskey, hair and makeup artist Bunny Parker, and of course, 16-year-old parachute packer, Dave Donnelly. The pilot ordered everyone to jump using their emergency parachutes. This was Dave Donnelly's first jump ever.

No. It seems likely, it was also Bunny and Kara's first jumps as well. I'm guessing, I don't know. Bunny broke her tailbone when she hit the ground, and the pilot performed an emergency landing at a near airport. Meanwhile, the helicopter had a bent rotor, and according to cameraman Frank Holgate, who was in the helicopter shooting the scene, it felt like it was going to disintegrate. The pilot was able to shut off the engine and land safely. No one was seriously injured, but it was a very close call. Oh, my God.

I would have just been like, I'm so sorry I'm going down with the plane. There's no way I'm jumping out of it. I don't think I could do it. I don't know where I fall on that one. A plane crash really scares me too. I just don't know if I could make myself do it. Like I, unless somebody just shoved me out,

I don't think it would happen. But I think somebody would have just shoved you out. That's probably true. Yeah. All right, close call number two, which did involve Mr. Swayze, and does suggest that he is in more of the jump shots than has been officially confirmed.

One evening, he catches a ride with skydiver Kevin Donnelly in his Cessna T210, so Donnelly's piloting it, after shooting some additional jump scenes. It's the evening, and apparently Swayze had requested to shoot these additional jump scenes. So that's why I'm thinking there's more of Swayze in the film. Yeah. Anyway, Swayze apparently, mid-flight,

is sitting on the floor and he reaches up and grabs the in-flight door handle to help himself get up. No. But the door wasn't locked. It opened in mid-air and Donnelly had to reach over, grab him by the shirt, and yank him back into the plane. And they apparently laughed it off and I'm guessing they didn't tell anybody involved in the production. Oh my God. And I don't know if Swayze was wearing a parachute. Probably not.

just in the plane going back. That's what I'm thinking. Now, Lizzie, ironically, the most dangerous thing the actors were doing on this movie was not skydiving. It was surfing. As Patrick Swayze later said while promoting the film, shooting the surfing scenes for the movie were, quote,

one of the hardest things I've ever done. He put it more bluntly in the 2006 making of film, point break, it's make or break. You can watch it on YouTube. It's very fun. Not the most original title, but go for it. It's very funny because I had to battle insurance companies to get to do the skydiving in the movie, and I never came close to dying once,

but they never said one word about me getting my brains pounded out by the biggest surf on the planet, and I almost died six to ten times. I don't think he's someone prone to hyperbole either. No, it doesn't seem like it if he's chill about the airplane door, almost sucking him out of the thing. Yeah. I thought I was out of here. I had this bone on my sternum that I injured being on bigger waves than I had any business being on,

so we had to groove out my surfboard, build up my wetsuits to try to get me up off that bone, but of course it's not possible. Every time you turtle through a wave, it just slams into you. End quote. It's rumored online that Swayze broke multiple ribs while filming, but I could find nothing confirming that fact. I think it's just speculation and exaggeration of the bruised or broken sternum. However, perhaps the most dangerous stunts.

of the film was saved for last. Now, Lizzie, the movie famously ends with Swayze's Bodie, eluding a rest by convincing Reeves's Utah to let him attempt to ride the twice-in-a-century wave down in Australia, riding into the ocean, presumably dying as the wave crushes him moments later. They couldn't fake the wave with VFX or a wave machine, so they had to shoot something for real. So for this, they did go to Oahu to film at Waimea, and they happened to be, there as once every two or three year-sized enormous waves are breaking. Literally, this hadn't happened in like the last two years is what I read. Now, the following is contested. So I'm going to

read you the quotes from various parties. You guys can come to your own conclusion. Producers quoted in Make or Break that Making a Documentary say that they hired and paid professional surfer Derek Dorner to fall off his board in the wave shot for the final scene of the film. Now, Dorner was one of the people who trained Swayze for the film. Dorner says that it was Swayze who gave him the call and specifically said, quote, I need you to die for me, end quote. Meaning wipe out, not actually die. Peter Eilf also said in a later interview that Dorner was paid $50,000 for this particular stunt.

To give you a sense of the scale of this wave, Dorner told Wavlength magazine in 2020 that he earned the Guinness World Record for the biggest wave body surfed when he completed that extremely dangerous stunt. Wow. I don't know the exact size of the waves, but somewhere in the range of 50 to 70 feet based on what I was able to pull online. However, in that same interview,

Dorner went on to say that, quote, there was no storyboard, no plan, no contract. The worst part was that I had no representation, which was a big mistake. That was like a $50,000 stunt, and I got nothing for doing it. Oh. End quote.

So Dorner says he was not paid for the final stunt of the film. Again, producers dispute that. However, watching it, it does look like there wasn't quite the level of planning that Bigelow had in the rest of the film. I think that shot isn't quite at the same caliber as the cinematography and, you know, shot planning of the rest of her film. Yeah, I was kind of wondering about that because it's almost like he thinks. actually falls off so fast that it's kind of like, wait, what, like, what just happened? Does he get away? Is he, is he dead?

So I think part of the issue is that the ending was reshot effectively. The final fight between Utah and Bodie was not in the original script. So Iliff had written it as kind of a samurai conclusion. Utah allows Bodie to surf the wave akin to Japanese assisted suicide after defeat in battle. If you guys have watched Shogun or a blue-eyed samurai, can see a lot of that. But Larry Gordon of Largo, seeing an edit of the film, insisted on adding a fight to the ending. And Ilyf and the team were happy to do it because they didn't feel like it changed the tone of the film. So months later, they shot that fight scene in Oregon, which you can tell immediately that it's Oregon.

If you've ever been to Oregon, that's, I believe, Okola State Beach Park. I've been there. I was like, that's not Australia. I know, Oregon. That's Oregon. That's Oregon. That's actually why Swayze's hair was shorter for City of Joy,

released in 1992. And that's why Reeves' hair was longer for Bill and Ted's bogus journey, 1991. I think this changes actually work well for the story. Yeah, they work fine. I will say, I kind of prefer the original ending where, like, he just finds him and then lets him, like, we don't need, I feel like a fight scene at that point necessarily.

You don't really need it. Yeah. It doesn't hurt the movie, but I don't know. I kind of like this idea of the peaceful warrior ending of the film. All right. A few scenes that were cut in post. There was an opening that included a scene of Utah going way too far in the FBI simulation. I think it's partially there because he keeps blowing the head off of like female like dummies that are going by.

Like he's just shooting everybody in that scene. The idea was that he had this push it to the edge trait that Bodie has as well. There's also a scene where when Bodey picks up Utah to do the big skydive on the way over, he shows him a gun and says, if I were to rob a bank, I would use this. And then he fires the gun at a cactus. That's actually in the trailer of the film and was never in the final cut. Post-production, it seems like, went pretty smoothly. And the film was released on July 12, 1991, two pretty mixed reviews at the time.

the movies retroactively gained a cult following and a new appreciation. It's kind of spawned its own genre, as we've discussed, of extreme sports action movies, Triple X, Fast and Furious, etc. Point is, Roger Ebert was a fan, writing that, quote, Bigelow is an interesting director for this material. She is interested in the ways her characters live dangerously for philosophical reasons. They aren't men of action, but men of thought who choose action as a way of expressing their beliefs, end quote. So Eva really clued in on her wavelength.

Most of the reviews did point to her talents as a director, despite the less than convincing plotting of the film. So that I think makes sense. The movie was released on the same day as Boys in the Hood. Check out our episode on Boys. And it seems like they definitely ate into each other's box office potentials. It had a somewhat middling $8 million opening weekend, although it did have good legs. It closed out its domestic run at $43 million. and worldwide run at $85 million. It remains, I believe, her second most successful film

at the box office behind only zero dark 30, which grossed $132.8 million. Point Break actually outgrossed both K-19, The Widowmaker, and the Hurt Locker. Wow. Of course, Lizzie, like nearly every film released in the summer or later of 1991, the air was sucked out of the office,

by none other than our old favorite Jimbo Cameron and his Terminator 2, which had opened just over a week before Point Break. T2 did over $500 million worldwide. Yeah, it's awesome. It's great. It's so good. The legacy of Point Break was far reaching, though. It's believed to have led in an uptick, an interest in surfing and skydiving, as Keanu Reeves said in 2017, quote, you know, all the time I run into people who are like,

point break. And I'm like, yeah, it's great. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's not what I meant. And I'm like, okay, what do you mean? I started jumping out of airplanes because of point break. I started surfing because of point break, you know, changed people's lives, just like it did mine. End quote. Reeves himself took up surfing after the movie. Aw. An FBI agent reader claims he knows of at least one case of people's stuff. studying the movie and trying to pull off a similar robbery, and it failed. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know if you've heard about this, Lizzie, but the movie has also inspired live parody performances for years now, in which a cast acts out the movie playing all of the characters except Johnny Utah, and they pick someone from the audience to play Utah in order to capture, quote, that irresistible Reeves vacancy, end quote. The audience is sprayed with water guns. It's a lot of fun. I think the cast and crew have embraced this as a loving homage to the film.

So despite the reviews and a solid, though not blockbusting box office performance, Bigelow had effectively announced her arrival as an action director who could, for lack of a better way to phrase it, throw her weight around with the boys. And I think she absolutely proved it on this film. Not to similarly, point break proved Bigelow right. Keanu Reeves was a bona fide action star. His subsequent turns in speed, The Matrix, and John Wick have made him one of the most reliable stalwarts of the genre that we have. What do you think about Keanu in this movie, by the way?

I'm just curious. We haven't talked a ton about it. Listen, is he technically good? No. Do I care? No. He's like, there is something so charming about Keanu Reeves, and it works very well in this where, like, you know, I think not too many years later, he's in much ado about nothing opposite Emma Thompson and

Kenneth Brana and it does not work. But she cast him perfectly. I think that Keanu Reeves, the actor, has gotten substantially better over his career. And there does seem to be, like, he's young in this. He's not super experienced. But that works for the part and it works for the movie. And there's something about him where he doesn't seem super self-aware. And that, I think, is what makes it work the best and what makes him so charming in this. I think he really does feel like the jock-turned FBI agent here. I guess I shouldn't say he's not good. He is good. No, no, to be fair, though, I think, for example, in the love scenes, Lori Petty is carrying those scenes, for example. But I do, I agree with you. I think Reeves has grown a ton.

Like, Constantine remains a movie I love that seems like not a lot of other people love. And I think he's excellent in. And I think he's great in John Wick and a lot of stuff. Anywho, Patrick Swayze was not propelled out of the film in the same way Reeves was. His turns in Ghost and Point Break remained, I would argue, the most successful one-two punch of his career. Though he did have many memorable roles, including one of my favorites in Donnie Darko. A film will cover later. Of course, Swayzey passed away on some.

September 14, 2009, a pancreatic cancer. He did always speak extremely lovingly of his time on point break and everything that he got out of it. He'll be missed and he'll get his due when we cover ghost and or dirty dancing at a later day. Yes. Lori Petty went on to a league of their own and free willy, though her career was damaged tremendously, unfairly so, I would argue, by 1995's Tank Girl, a very ahead of its time comic book adaptation that we, we will cover in the future. Most recently, she's been seen on Orange is the New Black. She's great on that. Rick King, the creator of the original idea, was still a bit miffed.

He didn't get to direct the film, and he did have some criticisms for Miss Bigelow that you can read about if you want to look them up. However, he was able to, he seems actually like a really interesting, fun guy, and his filmography is very eclectic and fun. I'd like to learn more about him. He was able to buy his current house with the residuals he made off of, of Point Break over the subsequent years. I think he was like kind of one of those like equal opportunity. Like he'd criticized James Cameron to his face. You know what I mean? He's just one of those guys like, I would have done it differently.

Good luck. Yeah, exactly. He wasn't nearly as disappointed as FBI agent or now former FBI agent Bill Reeder who saw the film and later said of it. Unfortunately, none of those pointers that he gave Keanu and the production came within a million miles of the finished film. For weeks after Point Break premiered, I had to endure a daily reign of grief from my bank squad buddies who held me personally responsible for what surely was one of the dumbest bank robber movies ever made, end quote.

Whatever. So it's fine. Writer Peter Eilf went on to co-write 1992's Jack Ryan Thriller Patriot Games. Oh, a good one. A good one. He then sold a script he'd written before Point Break, which was Varsity Blues. I believe it was the third script. I can't remember.

He'd written, in a later interview, Isleaf Cleggie. that he was hired to write a sequel to Point Break and was apparently, quote, going to direct it. Bodie would have survived the wave by hiding in a sea cave. He would then be living in Indonesia with his sons fighting eco-terrorism. A new Johnny Utah, an ex-military character, would then come out to stop them and question what he's doing. Unclear why it did not come to fruition, but he did mention Swayze's passing. We don't know. He also said in this interview that he's been trying to get Keanu

Reeves to produce a spinoff starring about Johnny Utah's daughter as like the next generation. Any idea of what Johnny Utah's daughter's name is? Jane, Utah, I don't know. No, Joni, Joni, Utah, which I would... That's worse. No, it's better. I would totally watch it. Honestly, come on.

What is Hollywood doing? Yeah, I'll watch it too. It's fine. I would watch... Keanu Reeves, like, mentoring, you know, I don't know, Margaret. but quali or something like that to be like the next generation. That sounds amazing. I would totally watch that movie.

Great. Of course, a reboot was eventually made in 2015. Erickson Corps directed it. We don't need to talk about it. Bigelow and Cameron divorced in 1991. Bigelow filed citing reconcilable differences. James Cameron, it seems, had again fall in love with both work and a woman. In this instance, Terminator 2's Linda Hamilton.

Though I would like to say, many jokes have been made over the years, assuming a mutual disdain, including a very funny one by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. It does seem that the two continue to support and root for each other through the years and to this day. In fact, Bigelow's follow-up to Point Break, 1995 Strange Days, was written by James Cameron. Bigelow did, however, get the last laugh in a certain sense, despite a series of stumbles following point break, including the weight of water with Sean Penn and perhaps, most disappointingly, 2002's K-19 The Widowmaker, a film I enjoyed but was a pretty big box office

bomb. Yeah. Bigelow found herself going head to head with her ex-husband, James Cameron, at the 2009 Academy Awards with her little film that could, relative to the size of Avatar, the Hurt Locker. Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, beating Cameron. And though many point to Cameron's jocular pantomime of strangling her upon congratulating her, as a sign of some sort of ill will. I'd first suggest that that is clearly an in-joke

between two people who know each other very well. And I remind you that Catherine Bigelow, when unsure of whether or not to do the Hurt Locker, sent it to James Cameron for his advice, and he told her to drop everything and do it. James Cameron said of his time with Bigelow, quote, I'm not sure I've ever enjoyed producing that much, but with Catherine, it was always a fun partnership.

She is so committed to making great films, without compromise, end quote. He's such an interesting guy. His relationships with the women he works with are fascinating. And yeah, it doesn't seem like there is a ton of bad blood. I could be totally wrong, but I think the same is true with Gail Ann Hurd. I think they are all equally obsessive over the things that they make. And I think that Catherine Bigelow is in her own way,

just as stubborn and obsessive and uncompromising. as we believe James Cameron to be. And I think that's why she makes great movies. And I think, again, it kind of, I think does her a disservice to say, it's because she's a woman that this movie has a different feel, for example, or that it has a different gaze. Oh, she's just a really good director of action. I think she's a great director of action.

Sure, is there something that's different because of a gender lens, maybe? Did she understand that Keanu Reeves is at, like, the high? he would ever be, yes. Yes, she did. She absolutely did. But, you know, she also threw that woman in a thong for no reason answering the door like five minutes. So you can go either way. I was fine with it.

I was thrilled. That concludes our coverage of Point Break, a movie that I had an absolute blast looking into and rewatching. And Lizzie, of course, that brings us to What Went Right. So What Went Right on Point Break for you? I, listen, there's so much that went right on this. I'm going to have to give it to Patrick Swayze's performance, though, because I think he has the hardest thing to pull off in this entire movie because he could so easily, it could be so hokey. It could be, you know, all the like philosophical speeches that he gives. It could so easily just be, you know, eye role inducing. And it's not. And somehow I really believe him. in this. He's so sincere, and there is just something about his performance that really feels just extremely genuine and grounded in a way that I think the movie would not work if you didn't have him. I really think he is like, he's the linchpin of the whole movie for me. So I'll

say Patrick Swayze. You stole mine. I was definitely going to say Patrick Swayze as well. Instead, well... You can say Patrick Swayze too. We all know what went, right? No, no, no, no, no. I'm going to give it to... Just give it to Catherine Bigelow. Yes. Like, why overthink this?

I think she was so ahead of the curve in terms of how to shoot a stunts movie in this way. And we've mimicked it and mimicked it in so many ways. And as we've talked about, it's become a genre into and of itself. I believe that the limitations of not having... VFX at her disposal really worked in her favor in this film. That is not a discredit to all of the amazing work that VFX artists do, but rather, I think that there is so much tension in knowing

there's no wire and knowing that it's a real jump, et cetera. It reminded me of Mission Impossible Halo jump that Tom Cruise does, where he actually does the jump out of the plane. I don't know if you remember that. Which one? He also jumped a motorcycle off a cliff. He's got to stand a car. Stop. The point is, he jumps out of a plane and it's kind of like this. But the difference is he flies into a storm that is, you know, very obviously computer-generated. And they do a great job computer-generating it.

But the minute he enters a computer-generated environment, it eliminates all of the tension that had been established seeing this person jump for real. Anyway, kudos to Catherine Vigelow, who was able to take a concept that seems at face value utterly ridiculous and make it ridiculously enjoyable. Yes, it's amazing. I love it. And Lori Petty. She's great.

Yes. And Gary Busey. The Buse. All right. Well, Lizzie, that's it for point break. And of course, we'll be back in two weeks covering another film. Lizzie, would you like to announce the timely film that we're covering? Sure.

In honor of its forthcoming, I guess, sequel slash spinoff, we will be covering Deadpool. Deadpool. I'm very excited. Me too. What an interesting character and what an interesting career. Yes. So guys, check out Deadpool if you've never seen it.

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For $5, you can get an ad-free RSS feed. And of course, for $50, You can hear your name, shout it out on the pod, like right now. Lizzie, are you doing it or am I doing it? I'm happy to do it. Brittany Morris, Darren and Dale Conkling, Paul DeZille, Jake Killen, Kang, Andrew McFagel, Matthew Jacobson, Grace Potter, Ellen Singleton, Jewishre Sermont, Lockland Morrow, Scott Gurwin, Sadie, Chris Leal, Kathleen Olson, Leah Bowman, Steve Winterbauer, this is the Parents Corner, Don Shibyl, George, Rosemary Southward, Tom Kristen, Nathan Orloff, Soman Chianani, and Michael McGrath. Thank you all so, so much. It blows my mind every time we read this list, that there are any of you, but that you keep adding and you keep sticking around. We love you. We love you.

Thank you. And with that, we leave you until Deadpool. Bye. Bye. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and check out our website at what went wrongpod.com. What went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing music by David Bowman.

Additional research for this episode provided by Jesse Winterbauer.