“American Graffiti”: Where Were YOU in ’62?

Want to feel old? Ron Howard, once cherished by American TV viewers as little Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show, is now in his seventieth year. And American Graffiti, the very last movie in which Howard was billed as “Ronny,” is now celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its release. This meandering saga of one post-graduation night in a California town effectively launched the filmmaking career of George Lucas. Lucas was then a recent graduate of the famous USC film school. His Hollywood career began in 1971 when he expanded his eerily futuristic student film into the big-budget THX 1138. After it failed to measure up at the box office, he turned to his own earlier life in the Central Valley town of Modesto, California. Thus was American Graffiti born. Its young characters, who roam the streets of Modesto in their souped-up cars, all reflect aspects of Lucas’s own teen-age years: the hot-rodding; the shaky intellectual ambitions; the dorky phase; the urge to “get out of this turkey town.” 

 When I was researching my biography, Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon . . .  and Beyond, I learned how Ron (then 18 years old and about to start USC film school himself) was surprised by George Lucas’s approach to moviemaking. The movie, shot in Petaluma, California (standing in for Modesto) over the course of twenty-eight nights, cost a mere $775,000. Auditioning for a part, Howard was asked to improvise scenes with other actors. This was his first hint that George Lucas didn’t do things the Hollywood way. Lucas shot take after take in what he called “documentary style,” hoping his actors would catch him by surprise, and then cobbled his film together in the editing room. The scene in which Howard and Cindy Williams, as Steve and his girlfriend Laurie, patch up their quarrel at the film’s end was improvised and shot in five minutes, to catch the light of dawn. Since the story is supposed to take place in one night, Lucas shot more or less in sequence, a choice that Howard belatedly learned to appreciate: “As the production wore on, we became more and more exhausted. By the end we all had circles under our eyes, and we looked like we’d been up all night. Well, we had been up all night for weeks! And it showed.”

 Though American Graffiti seems to be about small matters—like the klutzy Terry the Toad (Charlie Martin Smith) trying to impress a pretty but not too bright blonde (Oscar-nominee Candy Clark) and the local greaser (Paul Le Mat) stuck babysitting a gawky fourteen-year-old girl (Mackenzie Phillips)—it ultimately has more to say. Rewatching the film, I was struck by how few grown-ups are part of the story. It’s about kids trembling on the brink of adulthood. Once they leave this tiny burg and go off to college, as at least one will do, their parents will play a much smaller role in their lives. There’s also an underlying comment about this particular generation. Though they don’t realize it in 1962, Vietnam hangs over their future. The film’s famous final crawl makes that quite clear.

 The little film captured the hearts of baby-boomers, while also winning the respect of industry honchos. Though it took home no Oscars (this was the year of The Exorcist and The Sting), American Graffiti was the recipient of five nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.  But after American Graffiti, perhaps Lucas had had enough of modest filmmaking. His very next project, in 1977, was Star Wars.