Wavelength Surf Magazine – since 1981

Behind The Scenes On Big Wednesday: Tales From The Set With Stunt Double Ian Cairns

[The Wavelength Drive-In Cinema is back for 2021, bringing you a range of surf cinema, cult classics and family favourites from the clifftops of Cornwall, kicking off with Surf’s Up and Big Wednesday on Friday 16th July. Browse the full lineup and get your ticket here. Or, subscribe to Wavelength now to get free entry to a screening of your choice.]


Nineteen seventy-six was a big year for innovation. Apple Computers was founded, NASA unveiled its first space shuttle, Concorde took its maiden commercial flight and, of equally critical importance, surfing had its very first crack at a joined-up international contest circuit. 

Conceived by Randy Rarrick and Fred Hemmings, The IPS, as it was known, was a little haphazard during that first foray according to those in attendance (or “chaos” if a certain wounded winged Novocastrian is to be believed.) 

For starters, it was only decided that the tour was a tour halfway through the year, with a few events from the dozens of surfing comps that had already taken place around the world chosen retrospectively as the opening leg. The points were aggregated and surfers were informed of their standing and which competitions would constitute the second half of the tour. Other highlights included a complex dual scoring system and hilariously swollen heats sizes, often featuring up to eight competitors, (which sounds like a heavy crowd, but thanks to a lack of leashes and clean up sets, still resulted in frequent periods of entirely empty lineup.)

Cairns was renowned for his big wave prowess and radical manoeuvres in smaller waves. Photo from the front cover of his biography: ‘Kanga – The Trials and Triumphs of Ian Cairns

In early ‘77, the points were counted and Peter Townend emerged as the first-ever winner, with fellow Bronzed Aussie Ian Cairns taking the runner up spot. 

Townend was just gearing up to embark on the tour’s second spin around the sun when he received a phone call from John Milius – a long time Malibu surfer and Hollywood director – inviting him to fly to LA to stunt double on a new film he was working on. 

His presence had been specifically requested by one of the film’s starring trio, Jean Michelle Vincent, who happened to be a personal friend of Townend’s after the pair had met half a decade earlier surfing at California’s Hollister Ranch. 

PT leapt at the chance. He flew to Hollywood and headed straight for Warner Brothers studios, where he happened to pull up a chair alongside another of the film’s stars, Billy Kat. When Milius saw them sat next to each other, he couldn’t believe the likeness, immediately switching PT’s role to that of Kat’s double instead. After roping in a few replacements, including Billy Hamilton, to stand in for Vincent and famous Malibu surfer Lance Carson to double for the third star, Gary Busey, the crew set off for El Salvador, where the filming for Big Wednesday got underway. 

The first week was fairly fraught, beset by illness, bad waves and a standoff with a gun-toting local militia. At some point, Lance bailed. So, PT told Milius, hey, I’ve got a bronzed Aussie buddy who could replace him. And with that, Ian Cairns was in. 

Recently, we called him up at home in Laguna Beach to see what he could remember from his time working on the film. 

Busey & Cairns.

WL: Can you tell me about getting the call up to double for Busey?

IC: One day I was at home in Australia and the phone rang and it was Hollywood calling. They said, “Hey, it’s Warner Brothers, do you want to come to El Salvador?”

I said of course, who wouldn’t! I jumped on a plane and flew down there to join the crew, who were about a week into the shoot. We pitched up at Sunzal, which happens to be where they’re holding the ISA World Games this week. You can see the wave all over Instagram today, with all the surf teams there. We surfed there and down at La Libertad and it was pretty fun, just hanging out with the crew. 

Jean Micheal Vincent and Billy Kat were there but the Masochist wasn’t. He didn’t really surf, where as Jean Micheal and Billy were reasonable surfers, so they were down there to have fun, hang out and shoot as many scenes as possible. Youl’ll see in the movie Jean and Billy paddling out, pushing under and catching a couple of waves and then you’ll see the stunt doubles come in. Most of the shots of Gary Busey paddling out are me, so I kind of have a lot of those stunt double pieces. 

EL Sunzal. Photo: ISA / Ben Reed

WL: I hear that trip was pretty fraught?

IC: The guys were held at gunpoint at Sunzal one morning as part of the revolution thing, but that was before I got there.  Because we were at a beach club far away from the city, and weren’t travelling back and forwards too much, we didn’t see much of that stuff, but yeah, they had some bugs out there and we all got sick. We had a huge bottle of water, and what they didn’t tell us was they were filling it up out of the well, so everyone got amoebic dysentery. I went there 190lbs and ended up a 170, and in fact one night I lost 10lbs, vomiting and shitting, just incredibly sick. 

WL: Are there any other memories from that trip that particularly stand out?

IC: We were with the whole Hollywood crew, and the stunt coordinator was this really famous guy that did Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones movie called Terry Leonard, a real man’s man. He looked at these little skinny surfer idiots and he thought these guys are total pussys! So anyway one Sunday we took him out surfing at Sunzal, it was about 3 feet, and he got smashed and almost drowned and had to be rescued and brought in. That completely changed his mind, because here was a day when the surf was barely breaking and he almost dies, and we’re out there on big days. All of a sudden he realised hey there’s a lot of shit going on out there in the water. 

We never got a ‘Big Wednesday’ day down there, and I was always just saying to Milius, dude, you should have just gone to Western Australia. This thing would be wrapped up in two weeks. After that whole period in El Salvador, they wanted to do some shots in California so they set up at Bixby Ranch to get that really sparkling California look. But even though we did the Ranch for a month, and El Salvador for a couple of months, they still didn’t have the big day, so they just said ok we’re going to Hawaii., we’re going to sit up there and make it happen. Of course, that’s where you get all the stuff from Sunset that wraps up the movie. Without going to Hawaii it would have fallen flat, but those big wave sequences at the end of the movie are pretty amazing.

The surfers and stunt doubles with director John Milius.

WL: I just watched it the other day and it’s incredible the surfing you guys are doing on those big single fin longboards. Tell me about your experience at the Ranch? 

IC: Well, we were in the Northern Ranch, where the breaks Cojo and Governments are. There was no one living there and you had to come in by boat, even until today it’s really uncrowded. Back then they built the whole Hollywood wall set and we were staying in this country town called Lompoc, which is just north of the Ranch, in the middle of farmland, with all the actors and crew. You’re not allowed to drive into the Ranch, so every day you’d just wait for your car to come and pick you up. It was pretty bizarre. We’d have certain times where we’d be shooting scenes and the rest of the time we were just hanging out on the film set watching shit happen. You know they’ve got craft services there so you can go to the catering truck and order anything you want. It’s pretty sweet, I’ll tell you that.

We were allowed to be out surfing all the time and Cojo is pretty nice… it’s a bit like Little Rincon at Bells. The prevailing wind is offshore, summertime there’s swells. We’d surf and then get a filet mignon for lunch. Honestly, the whole experience completely ruined me for being back on the pro tour. You just get treated like a king, you’re part of the crew, hanging out with the actors, writers and directors.

WL: And then you all jetted off to Hawaii…

IC: Yeah, we were all there hanging at Sunset. The film production hired the Hui to clear the water for us. So we’d gone from death threats in ’76 to having them protect us in the water the following winter. 

WL: Of course, that was right in the middle of the whole Bustin’ Down The Door saga. Did working with them that winter help smooth things over a bit?

IC: Well, it was pretty horrible in ’76. Then in ‘77, they were getting paid, so we were cordial. But then it just reverted back to normal from there on, it wasn’t like we’d bought a lifetime membership into the Hui.

(1) Cairns in a Sunset tube (2) PT off the bottom.

WL: Tell me about the filming of the final sequence?

IC: For about two months we were on the North Shore, filming mainly at Sunset, but also other places to get pick up shots. We were really fortunate to have those big days at Sunset. The board I was riding was an 8’6, so it wasn’t really a longboard, but it worked kind of fun. I’m actually really stoked on the surfing in that final sequence, they did a really good job stitching it all together .

WL: So it was year two of the new IPS tour, and you were defending a runner up spot, did all that filming not get in the way of competing? 

IC: Well in May we were in El Salvador, in the summertime, from August to September we were in the Ranch, then we did surf the winter events on the North Shore. But to be perfectly candid my interest in competing on the tour dramatically diminished, because I realised there was another world out there. I was the number one money winner in ’76, I earned $8000 prize money. Working on big Wednesday in ’77, we earned 50 grand. It was a lot of money. It was super fun. We were treated like rock stars and I still get a cheque every year from the screen actors guild. That experience working on Big Wednesday was kind of how I hoped pro surfing would be.