John Stockwell

You are out of your fucking mind.

John Stockwell is also very good in this.

Yes, John Stockwell.

I don't think he's quite as strong an actor, but I do think he's very good in this and also went on to become a director.

I

think John Stockwell does a pretty good job of just being like, I'm out of my depth

in this.

like someone who's like you know what I'm saying like yeah yeah

But, Like, I think he does a really good job.

I think John Stockwell as Dennis is very good.

I think Alexandra Paul as Lee is brilliant.

Robert Prosky and Harry Dean Staunton in the same movie, they're brilliant and they are titans of the screen.

John Cusack also read for the part.

We've also got John Stockwell.

We call him Timu Kevin Bacon, who also was in talks to play Dennis in this movie, but he signed a footloose instead.

Stockwell appears in some high-profile movies primarily in the early 80s, starring in the dogshit sex comedy Losing It and Eddie and the Cruisers, a movie that video stores in 1984 wanted you to think was the biggest hit of the 80s.

Stockwell falls in with Albert Pugh in the mid-80s before producers knew any better and makes the ridiculous post-nuke Maltese Falcon pastiche Radioactive Dreams and then again the next year in Dangerously Close, which he also wrote.

Similar to co-star Keith Gordon, John Stockwell also gets into directing and works on some real low-budget business.

The only title among his filmography I recognize is the early 2000s torture porn cash-in Turistas.

Wow.

did with women's surfing in the blue crash generation.

And then fast forward, you know, Brian Grazier, John Stockwell, Universal, they want to come and do a movie on women's surfing at Pipeline.

And, you know, they really have to find the people that can actually, the women that can surf it.

And so it's like, they needed to find the surfers that were going to be able to surf.

Poppin', Mockin'.

Um, MVP of Christine, John Stockwell.

As I watched it, I was like, he is really giving like such a good performance.

I actually was liking everybody.

I've always liked, uh, Gordon Gordon in it.

I was way more dialed in on Alexander Paul and way dialed in on, on John Stockwell.

Yeah.

They make it to the, they're like at the end, right? Okay.

Well, it's very kind of you to say, Rob.

Anyway, Cannon re-secured the rights in 1987 and win over as a place by little-known actor-director John Stockwell, with a script written by Stephen Tolkien.

Tolkien had been a writer on TV soap opera Knott's Landing, as well as one of the uncredited writers of Cannon's Masters of the Universe movie.

They

A lot less cringy, and I will give it to actor Keith Gordon, who I think has since stopped acting, but he played that very well, too.

Again, not overdoing it and just having that almost Kubrickian stare, that little sinister glint in his eye, but not overselling it so that his friend Dennis, played by John Stockwell, would be like, whoa whoa whoa man you're acting kind of weird you know it's like the slow growth or the slow deterioration of him

being an asshole

that worked

We have a crush on the ocean.

We're in love with the ocean." And so, you know, like further down the line when, you know, all of a sudden, like, you know, John Stockwell and Brian Grazer wanna make a film, and they wanna make it about Pipeline and this whole deal, and they're coming to me and Bill, and they're like, "Well, we, we know that there's not [laughs] that many girls that surf Pipeline, so clearly I need to find an actress that looks like you." [laughs] You know? And Keala, it's just like it had to be certain women to pull it off.

And they're like, "We can't think of a better name than Blue Crush." And thank God, you know, before this happened, you know, I'm like, Bill and I sat and we're like, "We better license this name.

We better own the rights to it, because it's a killer name." And so they bought it from us, and that was very helpful for both of our careers.

Watching it now, I think it's great.

Keith Gordon stars, who went on to be a great director himself, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky, and Harry Dean Stanton.

It's a solid cast from the early 80s, based on the novel by Stephen King, and Larry J. Franco, who produced John Carpenter movies at the time, produced this.

John Carpenter also did the music.

But this movie makes the case, and the book did too, that the car can get you anywhere.

Keith Gordon, I think, plays the nerd perfectly who becomes a more forthright dude.

John Stockwell was playing very much the typical guy He's a good guy, but, you know, he's still kind of shy and can't ask the new girl, Alexandra Paul's character, out when she first gets to school.

And eventually, Keith Gordon's character, Arnie, gets her.