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American Graffiti
original movie poster
Directed by	George Lucas
Produced by	Francis Ford Coppola
Written by	George Lucas Gloria Katz Willard Huyck
Starring	Richard Dreyfuss Ronny Howard Paul Le Mat Charles Martin Smith Candy Clark Mackenzie Phillips Cindy Williams Wolfman Jack
Cinematography	Jan D'Alquen Ron Eveslage
Editing by	Marcia Lucas Verna Fields
Distributed by	Universal Studios
Release date(s)	August 11, 1973
Running time	110 Min 112 Min Director's Cut (1978 re-release)
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	USD$750,000
Followed by	More American Graffiti
IMDb profile

American Graffiti is a 1973 film directed by George Lucas. Set in the late summer of 1962 in a small town in Northern California, it follows a group of middle-class teenagers on the last night of the summer vacation after their graduation from high school. The events take place against a background of commentary and period music spun by disc jockey Wolfman Jack.

Contents 1 Production 2 Synopsis 3 Cast 4 Radio plot thread 5 Reception 5.1 Academy Awards 6 Inspiration for TV series 7 Soundtrack 8 Trivia 9 References 10 See also 11 External links

The script was written by George Lucas, Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck. The movie was based upon the memories of George Lucas's teenage years in Modesto, California and was primarily shot on location in Petaluma, California. It features Mel's Drive-In formerly located at 140 S. Van Ness in San Francisco. The low-budget movie was mostly filmed at night over the course of less than a month.

Marcia Lucas did the initial editing cut, and then Verna Fields came in for the final version. As Gerald Peary described it, "... between them they set the style of cutting for the rest of the 1970s: to the nostalgic beat of old rock songs."^[1]

The film focuses on vignettes about the four young men: Curt, Steve, Terry, and John. Curt is not sure if he wants to go off to college, despite receiving a lodge scholarship, much to Steve's consternation. Steve, on the other hand, is not sure about his relationship with steady girlfriend Laurie, Curt's sister. Curt spends the whole night riding around in other people's cars obsessing about a mysterious blond driving a white Ford Thunderbird.

John splits his time between trying to pick up girls, "baby-sitting" a precocious 14-year old girl, and defending his reputation as the fastest drag racer in town. Harrison Ford appears in a few scenes as an 'out of town' racer trying to beat John's unbroken record. While racing, he crashes his car with Laurie in the passenger seat; both survive, but the car is wrecked. Steve lends his car to Terry while he plans to go to college, Terry uses his car to pick up a girl and spends the rest of the film trying to impress her.

By the end of the night, only one goes off to college, while the other decides to stay in town. As the film closes, a series of onscreen title cards reveal the characters' ultimate fates: one is killed by a drunk driver two years later, another is reported as missing in action in Vietnam, one of the protagonists becomes an insurance salesman, while another avoids the draft by moving to Canada and becoming a writer. At the time it was released, this type of epilogue was unique to American film.^[2] Since then it has been copied by other filmmakers many times.

• Ronny Howard as Steve Bolander
• Richard Dreyfuss as Curt Henderson
• Cindy Williams as Laurie Henderson
• Paul Le Mat as John Milner
• Charlie Martin Smith as Terry "The Toad" Fields
• Candy Clark as Debbie Dunham
• Mackenzie Phillips as Carol
• Suzanne Somers as Blonde in T-Bird
• Wolfman Jack as Himself
• Harrison Ford as Bob Falfa
• Bo Hopkins as Joe Young
• Jim Bohan as Officer Holstein
• Kathy Quinlan as Laurie's friend
• Debralee Scott as Falfa's girl

The movie gained some of its popularity through its accurate reflection of period music that is broadcast on The Wolfman Jack Show. Every car radio in town is tuned to the same radio station and each listener feels they have their own personal relationship with the hip disk jockey (DJ). Many times the characters in the film seem to feel closer to Wolfman Jack than to the person sitting next to them in the car. The mysterious radio personality causes each listener to imagine what the Wolfman really looks like and where he is. Some speculate that he is a "negro" who broadcasts from a plane that flies in circles. Others believe he broadcasts out of Mexico using a local transmitter, just outside of town, as a clearing station in order to fool the police.

In reality, Wolfman taped his daily XERB show onto several 10" reel-to-reel tapes in his Los Angeles studio. Each tape held about an hour's worth of specific recorded material on it. For example, one tape would have music only on it, while another had phone calls, and still others contained introductions or local LA commercials. Then the tapes, (along with instructions on how to put the show together), were transported into Rosarito, Mexico to be broadcast from XERB's 50,000 watt transmitter site the following night when radio waves would bounce off the Earth's ionosphere carrying the signal into California Valley towns like Fresno and Modesto and even farther up north into Canada and Alaska.^[3].

Award	Person
Nominated:
Best Actress in a Supporting Role	Candy Clark
Best Film Editing	Verna Fields Marcia Lucas
Best Director	George Lucas
Best Picture	Gary Kurtz Francis Ford Coppola
Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced	Willard Huyck Gloria Katz George Lucas

• In 1995, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

• Although it began as an unsold pilot called Love and the Happy Days that aired on the television series Love American Style, the unexpected success of American Graffiti helped to convince ABC to give the green light to the television series, Happy Days, which also starred Ron Howard. Both the film, and the television show, featured as their theme song "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets, which led to the song's returning to the American record charts in 1974, 20 years after it was recorded. After its first season, however, Happy Days began using a custom-written song as its opening theme.

• On Happy Days, Laverne De Fazio (Penny Marshall) and Shirley Feeney (American Graffiti star Cindy Williams) were two girls who were love interests for Richie Cunningham and Fonzie. Their occasional appearances led to their own series, Laverne and Shirley, which took place in the same city as Happy Days, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the 1950s and '60s. The show debuted in January of 1976 and was an instant success. Ranking number three in the Nielsen ratings for the 1975-1976 season, the sitcom lasted seven years.

41 Original Hits from the Soundtrack of American Graffiti

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• George Lucas has stated that the Roger and Penny Henderson characters in his 1994 film Radioland Murders are intended to be Curt's mother and father.
• The scene in which the rear axle of a police car is pulled completely off was proven unlikely to actually happen in an episode of MythBusters. The hosts of Myth Busters theorized that a ramp was used in American Graffiti to give the car and axle enough of a boost to wrench the axle completely free. Lucas was able to achieve the awesome spectacle without a ramp as the hosts of Myth Busters had surmised. The act of damaging the patrol car in the film was meticulously planned. The entire rear axle of the car was cut away from the frame and body and the cable. The real event involved a heavy cable being attached. The other end of the metal cable was not attached to a light pole (as in the story) but rather to a winch on a heavy-duty 10-wheel tow truck that was parked in the darkness at the far end of the lot. As the car sped away from its parked location, at the exact moment when it crossed the sidewalk, the winch was activated. The pulling of the cable along with the force of the forward moving car caused the axle to be effectively yanked from beneath the car.^[4].

• David Willardson did the famous (uncredited) air-brush artwork for the cover of the American Graffiti soundtrack. A few years later, he worked for Lucas and crew again by producing the famous Raiders of the Lost Ark movie logo.
• In the movie Swingers (1996) the license plate on Jon Favreau's car reads THX 138. The license plate is identical to the one on John Milner's '32 Ford deuce coupe in American Graffiti. The license plate in Graffiti is an homage to George Lucas' first feature film, THX 1138, while the same license plate in Swingers is tribute to American Graffiti.
• Two of the '55 Chevys used in the filming of Two-Lane Blacktop were later used in the filming of American Graffiti.
• Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002), also directed by George Lucas, features two references to American Graffiti: The yellow airspeeder that Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi use to pursue the bounty hunter Zam Wesell is based on John Milner's yellow deuce coupe. Also, Dex's Diner is reminiscent of the diner featured in American Graffiti ^[5].
• The high school that the characters had just graduated from, is called Dewey High, a reference to the actual high school George Lucas attended. However the real name of the high school is Downey High. All the high school Sock Hop scenes were filmed in the boys gym at Tamalpais High School in Marin County while the school bathrooms, the hallway with lockers, and parking lot were filmed at Petaluma High School.^[6].
• When originally submitted to the Universal executives, they disliked the film and ordered Lucas to cut several minutes from it. In 1978, after Lucas achieved some fame from the film and from Star Wars Lucas made the executives reinstate the missing footage for its re-release. Aside from the reinstated footage, the soundtrack was remixed in Dolby Stereo and the date of John Milner's death was changed from June 1964 to December 1964 in the epilogue in order to fit in with the sequel More American Graffiti. The soundtrack recording, however, was never updated and still does not include Louie, Louie.
• In 1998, Lucas altered the opening of the film. In the background above Mel's Drive-In, the sky was cloudy and grey, it was changed so that the sun appears to be setting. This was done to add some symmetry to the sunrise at the end of the film.

• In 1998's Why Do Fools Fall In Love, one of Frankie Lymon's widows Elizabeth Waters (Vivica A. Fox) sets the tone for the film while discussing with her attorney uses of the title song for which she may entitled to royalties. Waters cites Graffiti, an American Greetings commercial, and Diana Ross' 1981 remake as unauthorized uses of the song requiring back payment.
• More American Graffiti, a sequel, was released in 1979 to lukewarm critical and commercial reception.

1. ^ Peary, Gerald (1980). "Verna Fields," The Real Paper, October 23, 1980. Online version retrieved December 2, 2007.
2. ^ GRAFFITI STYLE. Kip Pullman's American Graffiti Page. Retrieved on 2007-10-18.
3. ^ Wolfman Jack. Kip Pullman's American Graffiti Page. Retrieved on 2006-10-25.
4. ^ Behind the Scenes of American Graffiti. PETALUMA CELEBRATES AMERICAN GRAFFITI. Retrieved on 2006-10-24.
5. ^ Dex's Diner. starwars.com. Retrieved on 2006-10-02.
6. ^ On Location. Kip Pullman's American Graffiti Page. Retrieved on 2006-10-25.

• 41 Original Hits From The Soundtrack Of American Graffiti
• List of films recut by studio
• Popsicle

• Kip Pullman's American Graffiti Site
• American Graffiti at the Internet Movie Database
• American Graffiti at Rotten Tomatoes
• American Graffiti at Box Office Mojo
• Petaluma's Salute to American Graffiti
• Kip Pullman's American Graffiti Page
• American Graffiti Official Lucasfilm site

v • d • e George Lucas
Directed films	THX 1138 (1971) • American Graffiti (1973) • Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) • Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) • Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) • Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Short films	Look at Lifeu (1965) • Herbie (1966) • Freiheit (1966) • 1:42:08 (1966) • The Emperor (1967) • Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967) • Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town (1967) • The Making of 'The Rain People' (1969) • Bald: The Making of 'THX 1138' (1971)
See also	Lucasfilm • Industrial Light & Magic • Skywalker Sound • LucasArts • Skywalker Ranch
See also George Lucas productions