American Graffiti **** (1973, Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul LeMat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, Cindy Williams) – Classic Movie Review 4,739

George Lucas’s incisive, nostalgia-fuelled 1973 hit comedy drama film American Graffiti is propelled by 40 superlative songs of the Sixties, and effortlessly captures the flavour of the era.

In 1962, four small-town California high-school graduate buddies – Curt, Steve, John and Terry (Richard Dreyfuss, Ron [Ronny] Howard, Paul LeMat, Charles [Charlie] Martin Smith) – spend a summer night cruising the streets and trying to pick up the girls, while contemplating an uncertain future before they go off to college.

Co-writer-director George Lucas delivers a sharp, hit backward-looking 1973 retro comedy drama film, propelled by at least 40 superlative songs of the Sixties on the soundtrack, and effortlessly captures the flavour of the period. His perceptive, funny script about courting and coming of age is incisively performed by the talented young ensemble cast, especially by Dreyfuss (who rocketed to stardom), Howard (soon cast in TV’s similar Happy Days) and Candy Clark as a sexy teen.

Also in the cast are Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, disc jockey Wolfman Jack as himself, Harrison Ford as Bob Falfa, Bo Hopkins, Kathleen Quinlan, Manuel Padilla Jr, Jim Bohan, Jana Bellan, Deby Celiz, Lynne Marie Stewart, Terry McGovern, Tim Crowley, Scott Beach and Beau Gentry. Suzanne Somers and Joe Spano have cameos.

Lucas’s friend Francis Coppola produced, helping finance it as a low-budget ($775,000), quickly shot (in 29 days) movie after his success with The Godfather (1972). It is co-written by Lucas, Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck. Lucas went on to Star Wars (1977) and remembered ninth-billed Ford when casting.

American Graffiti was nominated for five Oscars. The film was shot in sequence. After its preview, Universal Pictures head Ned Tanen pronounced the film unreleasable, but a compromise was reached where Universal could and did ‘suggest modifications’ to the movie, upsetting Lucas. But, after the success of Star Wars, Lucas was able to add three scenes cut from the original release for the 1978 re-release.

Shooting the film, Lucas had to miss his high school reunion.

More American Graffiti followed in 1979, with most of the cast returning to tell the tale of the following five years after the single-night events of the first film. But Richard Dreyfuss is missing, and it is written and directed by Bill Norton.

Gloria Katz (1942–2018).

Gloria Katz, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter who partnered with her husband Willard Huyck on the scripts for George Lucas’s classics American Graffiti and Star Wars, died on 25 November 2018, aged 76.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,739

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