American Graffiti
“American Graffiti”
Classic is not a term that I just throw around when it comes to movies. This one earned the moniker of classic almost immediately. American Graffiti released in 1973 was the pet project of a new young film maker on the scene named George Lucas. He was the creative spear head of the film pulling double duty by both writing and directing the film. He had in his corner producing it two other Northern California young talents Francis Ford Coppola and Gary Kurtz. This group of young film makers were considered and proved to be the future of Hollywood. Lucas would also use his new production company for the film Lucas Film Ltd.
You see before the glitz and glamour and all the hoopla that would come in the following years for Lucas with Star Wars this is the film that made all that possible. Without the great success of American Graffiti and the teenage adventures of cruising town and chasing the lady in the white T-Bird then we would most likely would never have had Luke, Han and Liea running around the galaxy far far away in the Millennium Falcon. The appeal of this story is simple it is hitting the adults of 1973 and many more generations of adults afterwords right in the nostalgia heart strings. It doesn't matter what generation you grow up in EVERYONE can relate to a night of cruising and balancing that fine line between having as much fun as humanly possible fun and walking that thin line of trying to stay out of trouble while having said fun. It is chronicling that time when our worlds change. High school is over friends are moving away and life as they know it will never be the same.
It is a magical and scary time which is why it holds such found memories in so many peoples minds. It is why when any coming of age story is done well that it sticks with so many people and becomes a beloved film. This film not only launched Lucas into the stratosphere it also forged life long bonds with an already well established but young Ron Howard and a new upstart actor/carpenter Harrison Ford. Howard would go on to direct Willow for Lucas Film Ltd. and win a Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for A Beautiful Mind. Ford would go on to play Han Solo and Indiana Jones for Lucas and become a Hollywood icon. Richard Dreyfuss would go on to also star in Jaws for Lucas’s close friend Steven Spielberg. This film is not only a great film and shows George Lucas’s care in the look of a film it is also a touchstone in film making. It is the beginning of the blockbuster age of film. Years later it would be followed by Jaws, Star Wars, Superman and many other to follow. So if you love you some Star Wars then at least go give American Graffiti a watch because without it you would have never went to “Once upon a time in a Galaxy far far away... 4 out of 5 Yellow Suckers
*This movie review was originally published in The Current River Observer as the River Reels article written by Jeffrey Riggs
