American Graffiti
- Title / Office:
- National Film Registry (1995)
- Awards And Honors:
- Golden Globe Award (1973)
American Graffiti, a coming-of-age film directed and cowritten by George Lucas and released in 1973. It was shot on a budget of about $750,000 and wound up grossing more than $140 million worldwide and snagging five Academy Award nominations. American Graffiti focuses on a group of teenagers cruising the streets of Modesto, California, during a single night in 1962. It features several young actors who would become household names, including Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, and Harrison Ford.
Conception
Lucas’s first full-length feature film, the science-fiction THX 1138 (1971), released when he was 26, was a commercial flop. Lucas later recalled that his friend, director Francis Ford Coppola, counseled him, “Don’t be so weird. Try to do something that’s human....make a warm and funny movie.” Coppola also helped Lucas salvage American Graffiti when Universal Pictures wanted to reedit and release it as a TV movie by persuading the studio to release it in theaters instead.
The project’s early days were rocky. Lucas had received an advance of $10,000 to complete the script, but he ultimately gave the money to Richard Walter, a writer Lucas had hired to draft the script who veered from Lucas’s intended direction for the film. Lucas eventually wrote the script in three weeks with Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck. Lucas’s request for financing was rejected by multiple film studios, including Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox, until Universal Pictures signed on. Lucas had originally envisioned a soundtrack with more than 70 rock-and-roll hits, including music by Elvis Presley; he had to trim the list down to 40 songs and exclude songs by Elvis to reduce music reproduction costs.
The film is semiautobiographical, partly inspired by Lucas’s early years cruising his hometown of Modesto. The characters are composites of him and his friends. It came out during an era of ’50s nostalgia, which included works such as the musical Grease, which opened on Broadway in 1972.
Production, casting, and storyline
Although American Graffiti is set in 1962, the film, especially its soundtrack, which primarily plays on the car radios of the teens cruising around town, has a 1950s feel. And it was Howard’s role in the 1972 pilot of the anthology series Love, American Style, which is set in the ’50s, that persuaded Lucas to cast the young actor as Steve Bolander in American Graffiti. A few months after American Graffiti came out, ABC turned that 1972 pilot into the popular TV show Happy Days. Both the movie and TV show open with the 1954 hit “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets, although Happy Days later changed its opening song. Other musical artists featured in the film include the Heartbeats, the Regents, and Buddy Holly.
Howard, who was already known to American audiences as the child character Opie on the 1960s TV comedy series The Andy Griffith Show, was initially told that American Graffiti would be a musical, and he cautioned Lucas that he was not right for the part because he could not sing; however, Lucas explained to him that the musical aspect of the film was the “rock radio.” Dreyfuss was cast as Curt Henderson. Ford, in a minor role, refused to trim his hair and shot most of his scenes wearing a Stetson.
The film was shot in the town of Petaluma in the San Francisco area over 28 days, within budget and on schedule. It was not, however, without its share of accidents. Lucas’s hotel room burned down a few days before filming closed; the cause was never determined. Several actors had accidents on set, and a technical team member was arrested for growing cannabis. Ford was kicked out of the cast motel after he and another actor injured Dreyfuss by throwing him head-first into the shallow end of the swimming pool.
Howard’s character is class president and spends much of the night squabbling with his girlfriend, Laurie (Cindy Williams), about seeing other people after he goes off to college the next day. Dreyfuss’s character, Curt, is also set to leave for college in the morning but is having second thoughts and unwittingly winds up hanging out with a gang called the Pharaohs. Paul Le Mat plays John Milner, a cool kid who has a pack of cigarettes rolled up his sleeve as he cruises in his hot rod, only to have his style cramped when he gets stuck with Carol, a smart-aleck played by 12-year-old Mackenzie Phillips. She would go on to star in the sitcom One Day at a Time (1975–84). Ford plays Milner’s nemesis, Bob Falfa, who is itching for a drag race. Charles Martin Smith plays Terry, also called Terry the Toad, a nerdy kid who gets to borrow Steve’s car for the night and makes fumbling attempts to get together with an attractive girl named Debbie (Candy Clark).
Reception, awards, and legacy
When American Graffiti was released in the summer of ’73, The New York Times raved that it was easily the best film of the year and “the most important American movie since ‘Five Easy Pieces’—maybe since ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’ The nostalgia boom has finally produced a lasting work of art.…Lucas has brought the past alive, with sympathy, affection, and thorough understanding.” The Los Angeles Times called it “masterfully executed and profoundly affecting.” The film was also a financial success and gave Lucas the freedom to work on his next project, the blockbuster Star Wars (later renamed Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope), released in 1977.
American Graffiti was nominated for five Academy Awards: best picture, best director, best original screenplay, best film editing, and best actress in a supporting role (for Clark). It won the Golden Globe Award for best motion picture—comedy or musical, as well as awards from several critics’ groups. In 1995 it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, which catalogs films that have been deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” to America’s film heritage.