Point Break - Production

Production

Originally, Matthew Broderick and Charlie Sheen were to star in Point Break with Ridley Scott directing. After acquiring the screenplay, the producers of Point Break began looking for a director. At the time, executive producer James Cameron was married to director Kathryn Bigelow, who had just completed Blue Steel and was looking for her next project.

Point Break was originally called Johnny Utah when Keanu Reeves was cast in the title role. The studio felt that this title said very little about surfing and by the time Patrick Swayze was cast, the film had been renamed Riders on the Storm after the famous rock song. However, Jim Morrison's lyrics had nothing to do with the film and so that title was also rejected. It was not until halfway through filming that Point Break became the film's title because of its relevance to surfing.

Reeves liked the name of his character as it reminded him of star athletes like Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana. He described his character as a "total control freak and the ocean beats him up and challenges him. After a while everything becomes a game...He becomes as amoral as any criminal. He loses the difference between right and wrong." Swayze felt that Bodhi was a lot like him and that they both shared "that wild-man edge."

Two months before filming, Lori Petty, Reeves, and Swayze trained with former world class professional surfer Dennis Jarvis on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Jarvis remembers, "Patrick said he'd been on a board a couple of times, Keanu definitely hadn't surfed before, and Lori had never been in the ocean in her life." Shooting the surfing sequences proved to be challenging for both actors with Swayze cracking four of his ribs. For many of the surfing scenes he refused to use a stunt double as he never had one for fight scenes or car chases. He also did the skydiving scenes himself and the film's aerial jump instructor Jim Wallace found that the actor was a natural and took to it right away. The actor ended up making 55 jumps for the film. Swayze actually based aspects of his character after one of his stunt doubles, Darrick Doerner, a top big wave surfer. After learning to surf for the film, Reeves took a liking to it and took it up as a hobby.