“American Graffiti” was a culture-shifting blockbuster when it came out, a modestly-budgeted movie with a mostly-no-name cast that spawned 1950s-early-’60s nostalgia that swam against the tide that gave birth of disco and punk.
Its warmth, innocence and fun, celebrating “car culture” in the middle of an Arab Oil Embargo, gave us “Happy Days” and “Laverne & Shirley” on TV, movies from “The Buddy Holly Story” to “La Bamba” and oldies radio stations that endured well into the ’90s.
But looking at anew, 50 years after it launched the career of George Lucas, passing over its impact on the culture, you can’t help but be struck by how beautiful it is — the glossy images, indelible, quick-sketch archetypal characters, the visual and aural grandeur of it all.
“American Graffiti” is something of an American Epic.
It’s about the allure of leaving for a bigger life vs. the pull of the comforts and security of home, the celebration of youth culture and nostalgia for its rituals, an eagerness to “grow up” battling the ease of arrested development, curiosity and naivete contrasted with the first insights of worldly wisdom
Director and co-writer Lucas plainly felt bittersweet, conflicted about it all, looking back on it a mere decade after he lived through it. His film became his “Great Gatsby,” his statement on his generation, and looking back, it’s clear that as popular as his later works became, this was his masterpiece.
Lucas was recreating his rural, overwhelmingly white Modesto, California youth, serving up a sort of “Andy Griffith” past where the farm-town’s Latin populace is represented by a lone character, and the tiny number of Black residents didn’t register.
But race and a shift in the culture worked its way in, through the music and by this admission from annoying tween Carol (Mackenzie Phillips) about her favorite DJ.
“I just LOVE listening to the Wolfman! My mom won’t let me at home, because he’s a Negro.”
The four threads of the totally masculine story are firstly, the Great Romance. Ron Howard is Steve, college-bound and clumsily trying to extract himself from his steady girlfriend. Laurie (Cindy Williams) is the only girl to wear his #62 letterman’s sweater.
“Where were you in ’62?” was the movie’s poster tag-line. And Steve’s big George-Bailey-in-“It’s-a-Wonderful-Life” becision is whether he has the guts to hurt someone he loves. Howard is wonderful as the exasperated, conflicted and responsible center of the movie. Cindy Williams is here to break his and our hearts.
You Can’t Go Home Again if you Never Leave is the thread about Curt. Richard Dreyfuss is Curt, Laurie’s brother and just as college-bound as Steve. But even though Curt has no real ties holding him there, he’s conflicted about going to college way out East. He will spend this “last night” sampling the world he might be leaving behind, tempted by the mysterious blonde in the white T-Bird (Suzanne Somers), buffetted by all the people urgin him to “LEAVE.”
“We’re finally getting outta this turkey town,” Steve pleads. Besides, you don’t “wanna end up like John.”
That would be John Milner (Paul Le Mat), the Big Fish in a Small Town icon and story thread. He’s an auto mechanic, and thanks to his yellow Little Deuce Coupe, the king of the illegal drag racing subculture. Like Wooderson, the “Dazed and Confused” character he inspired, Milner never left town, still acts like a juvenile and cruises every Friday night, looking for high school girls.
In Western terms, Milner’s the fastest gun. There’s always somebody new gunning for the legend. This night, that would be hotrodded ’55 Chevy cowboy Bob Falfa, played by future superstar Harrison Ford.
Curt? In a town of hot-rods and every V-8 under the sun, Curt drives a tiny Citroen 2CV. He’s plainy too hip for this ‘burg.
And the final thread is a Princess and the Frog story. Toad (Charles Martin Smith) is the runty mascot of them all, liked by everyone, respected by few. He figures his ticket out of that pigeon-hole isn’t leaving town. It’s Steve’s generous act of leaving Toad his ’58 Chevy Impala, fuzzy dice and all, to drive and take care of while he’s in college. Toad can reinvent himself in a town that thinks it knows him.
As we’ve seen him tumble off his Vespa pulling into Mel’s Drive-in, we know he’s got the steepest hill to climb. A lot of lies and misadventures trying to impress Deb (Candy Clark) lay ahead of him on this long, late-summer night.
As the music of the era — oldies from the ’50s, pre-Beatlemania/British Invasion pop and rock of the early ’60s — weaves in and out of the soundtrack, everybody in this narrative meets, flees or embraces his or her destiny.
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