“Where were you in 62?”
The trailer for American Graffiti asks this question, and anyone who was anyone during that year would probably recognize themselves in virtually everyone in George Lucas’ phenomenal movie about teenagers and cruising the streets. I was not alive during the early sixties, but my parents were, and when I watched this film with them, that experience was peppered with excitement as they pointed out cars they once had or songs they rocked out to. Most endearing, though, was how nostalgic they got over the very act of simply cruising around with their friends, just being out on the streets doing nothing. This movie meant something to them that a different generation would have a hard time tapping into. My generation had the mall; my parents had their T-Birds and the city streets.
Years before George Lucas had Star Wars, he was a struggling director, just a few years out of college. He’d made the low-budget THX-1138 with the help of his friend, producer, and director, Francis Ford Coppola, but that film saw limited distribution and wouldn’t really find an audience until much later. He formed his own production company, Lucasfilm, around this time and, with the direction of Coppola, set out to create a film that would have more mainstream attraction. Thinking back on his own teenage years in Modesto, California, he settled on the idea of cruising, an activity that had somewhat died out by the early 70s. It was a concept that he felt was getting forgotten, and he wanted to preserve those memories through film.
He wrote a script that incorporated the various stages of his young life, including using cars to drive up and down the streets of Modesto looking for girls and generally trying to have a good time. Included in that would be some of the best vehicles a young man could have if he wanted girls to notice him, as well as a soundtrack that couldn’t be beat, featuring more than forty tracks from the doo-wop era, a truly unique period in American pop music. And to round out that soundtrack, Lucas incorporated the legendary rock and roll DJ Wolfman Jack, a man he had considered making a documentary on when he was in college. Wolfman Jack DJ’d well into the 1990s but was most famous in the 60s. He featured heavily in the advertisements, on the soundtrack album, and even plays himself on screen. He acts as the film’s DJ and helps set a tone for everything we are to see over the course of a single evening.
American Graffiti doesn’t have a traditional narrative structure per se. We have four main characters that we follow over the course of a single evening, and they each have their plots, but what we are mostly there to experience is a feeling of recognition. In each of these characters, all of whom have recently graduated high school, there is a bit of us to identify with. The first of these is Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss), a young man who is slated to head east for college. Curt has a full scholarship but is feeling the pressures of leaving home and is strongly considering not attending after all, staying in Modesto and just existing. Curt ends up on the bad side of a group of greasers called The Pharaohs, who force him to accompany them while they get into all sorts of mischief that could easily land him in jail, including sabotaging a police car and robbing the very business that has offered him the scholarship.
Set to accompany him to college is Steve Bolander (Ron Howard), who is trying to convince his steady girlfriend and Curt’s sister, Laurie (Cindy Williams), that since they are going to be so far apart soon, it would be best if they agree to see other people in the meantime. He tries to spin this off as a means to strengthen their relationship, but this doesn’t go over well with Laurie who feels betrayed and nearly breaks up with him over this.
Steve leaves his car, a 1958 Chevrolet Impala, in the care of Terry “Toad” Fields (Charles Martin Smith), a nerdy young man who is desperate to meet women. Toad uses the car as a means to pick up a woman walking downtown, lying to her by claiming it is his, but things go from bad to worse as he gets involved with a liquor store robbery, and the car gets stolen while he and the girl, Debbie (Candy Clark), are making out in a field, leaving them to have to walk back to town.
Lastly, there is John Milner (Paul Le Mat), who, in an attempt to pick up a girl for cruising company, ends up with Carol (Mackenzie Phillips), a precocious 12-year-old who manipulates him into keeping her in his car all evening. This leads to all sorts of embarrassment as other people seeing them together make fun of them, accusing him of robbing the cradle. John is also repeatedly taunted by another driver, Bob Falfa (Harrison Ford), who wants to race him outside the city limits and take away John’s drag racing crown. Once they do race, things don’t quite go according to plans.
A lot happens in the course of a few hours, but the plot isn’t the important thing here. This is meant to symbolize George Lucas’s youth and the experiences he had growing up in Modesto. That was one of the main reasons he had such difficulty finding a financing studio. They felt the film needed to be more exploitative, featuring more violence and sex. Lucas fought back against that impulse, and it paid off. Instead of a schlocky exploitation picture along the lines of something Roger Corman would make, Lucas made a film that spoke to a generation that was feeling the pangs of nostalgia for a time not that far in the past.
American Graffiti had a very low budget, which allowed Lucas to make his film without studio interference. It proved to be so popular that it allowed Lucas to pursue other passion projects, one of which ended up being the film franchise his name would become most synonymous with: Star Wars. But the man behind that mega-franchise cut his teeth on much more humble films first and made a name for himself with a film that, on the surface, seems simplistic but in reality is profound in what it says about youth culture and their fears of the future. American Graffiti is that and so much more.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Francis Ford Coppola and Gary Kurtz
Best Director: George Lucas
Best Supporting Actress: Candy Clark
Best Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Produced or Published: George Lucas, Gloria Kurtz, and Willard Huyck
Best Film Editing: Verna Fields and Marcia Lucas
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Release Date: August 11, 1973
Running Time: 112 Minutes
Rated PG
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams, and Wolfman Jack
Directed By: George Lucas
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