Reel Classics: ‘American Graffiti’

Today’s Reel Classic begins with the ques­tion “Where were you in ’62?”  I know some of you read­ing this weren’t even born yet.  Some of you may have been tod­dling about the house or yard chas­ing  sib­lings or play­mates.  But there will be some who remem­ber 1962 as part of their teenage years and will remem­ber lis­ten­ing to the music from the local radio sta­tion on the car radio or on their tran­sis­tor radio.  American Graffiti address­es one evening in the lives of friends recent­ly grad­u­at­ed from high school and about to step into the next phase of their lives. 

The set­ting is a sum­mer evening in 1962 in Modesto, California.  Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss) and his friend Steve Bolander (Ron Howard) are fly­ing out the next day to attend col­lege in the East so this is the last night of their sum­mer vaca­tion.  They plan to meet up at Mel’s Diner with friends John Milner (Paul Le Mat), a drag rac­er, and Terry “Toad” Fields (Charles Martin Smith) who is awk­ward and not very pop­u­lar.  Steve has been dat­ing Curt’s sis­ter Laurie (Cindy Williams) and she is sad­dened by his impend­ing depar­ture.  Steve sug­gests it may be best to see oth­er peo­ple but Laurie is hurt by this sug­ges­tion.  The friends take off to go to the sock hop at the local high school. 

On the way to the dance, Curt sees a love­ly young blonde woman in a Ford Thunderbird who, see­ing him, mouths the words “I love you.”  Curt’s mis­sion for the rest of the night is to find and con­nect with this love­ly woman (Suzanne Somers).  He gets roped into hang­ing with a gang of “greasers” who steal mon­ey from a local arcade and get involved with the local police.  Curt man­ages to get away from the gang and goes to the local radio sta­tion to ask the disc jock­ey “Wolfman Jack” to read a mes­sage to the unknown blonde on the air, ask­ing her to con­tact him at Mel’s Diner. 

Meanwhile, “Toad” has been giv­en the hon­or of car­ing for Steve’s car while Steve is away at col­lege.  This is a big deal to him as he does not have a car but rides a Vespa scoot­er.  “Toad” decides to cruise the strip and picks up a young girl named Debbie (Candy Clark).  Trying to impress her he tells her that his friends call him “Terry the Tiger” and that the car is his.  He also man­ages to get some alco­hol with no ID and drinks with her in his efforts to impress her.  His ven­tures lead to a night of a stolen vehi­cle, a beat­ing, and a blos­som­ing relationship. 

In the mean­time John has gone out cruis­ing him­self and ends up pick­ing up a young 12 year old, Carol (Mackenzie Phillips), who manip­u­lates him into dri­ving her around all night.  He tries to explain her pres­ence to friends that she is his cousin and he is babysit­ting.  He lat­er ends up in a drag race with a com­peti­tor and learns that the com­peti­tor, Bob (Harrison Ford), is accom­pa­nied by Laurie who has picked her up after she and Steve argued.  She is upset over Steve’s leav­ing her.

All of this and more occur dur­ing the course of one sum­mer’s evening and, as is usu­al, the sun even­tu­al­ly begins to appear in the sky and a new day is about to begin.  Did John get away from the manip­u­lat­ing 12 year old Carol?  Did “Toad” find romance?  Did Curt find his mys­te­ri­ous blonde?  Did Steve and Laurie rec­on­cile?  As usu­al, no spoilers.

George Lucas was both direc­tor and writer for American Graffiti.  The sto­ry was based on his own expe­ri­ences grow­ing up in Modesto, California and par­tic­i­pat­ing in cruis­ing the streets and attend­ing the high school dances, or sock hops as they were called.  He stat­ed, “Cruising was gone, and I felt com­pelled to doc­u­ment the whole expe­ri­ence and what my gen­er­a­tion used as a way of meet­ing girls.”  He also want­ed to include “Wolfman Jack,” as lis­ten­ing to the pop­u­lar disc jock­ey on the radio was a big part of life in those times.   Lucas said that the char­ac­ters of Curt, John, and “Toad” were based on dif­fer­ent stages of his own life as a young man.  Curt was based on his life dur­ing the years he attend­ed col­lege while John was based on his teenage years of street rac­ing and his fas­ci­na­tion with hot rods.  “Toad” was Lucas as a fresh­man in high school—a bit of a nerd and awk­ward at dating. 

American Graffiti took a page from the play­book Of Easy Rider (1969) with regard to the sound­track.  Rather than hav­ing music com­posed for the film, Lucas chose pop­u­lar songs from that era and wrote the scenes to fit with the music.  He picked many from his own per­son­al record col­lec­tion.  The sound­track has 41 songs and at first the stu­dios were not inter­est­ed in pay­ing out all the licens­ing fees involved. But even­tu­al­ly they struck a deal for a flat rate with the iden­ti­fied record­ing com­pa­nies.  One com­pa­ny, RCA, refused the deal and that is why there is no Elvis Presley on the soundtrack. 

After nego­ti­at­ing with mul­ti­ple film stu­dios an agree­ment was reached with Universal Pictures but it was a low bud­get of $600,000.  The stu­dio added anoth­er $75,000 to the bud­get after Francis Ford Coppola signed on as pro­duc­er.  The stu­dio saw that as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to mar­ket the film with the phrase “From the man who gave you The Godfather.”  Filming was com­plet­ed in four weeks.  Interestingly, and to the sur­prise of the stu­dio, American Graffiti earned more than $55 mil­lion at the box office. 

Though many of the cast mem­bers were new to the big screen at the time, we will rec­og­nize many famil­iar faces.  Almost every­one would rec­og­nize Ron Howard from his days as Opie on The Andy Griffith Show.”  Suzanne Somers would become famous in Three’s Company, Cindy Williams in Laverne & Shirley, Mackenzie Phillips in One Day at a Time, Harrison Ford in Star Wars, and Richard Dreyfuss in mul­ti­ple films includ­ing Jaws  and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  “Wolfman Jack” appeared as him­self at the insis­tence of George Lucas, who had such fond mem­o­ries of lis­ten­ing to him on the radio while in high school.

Not only was the film a suc­cess at the box office, but crit­ics loved it as well.  Roger Ebert was glow­ing in his praise, giv­ing the film a four of four star rat­ing and describ­ing it as “...not only a great movie, but  a bril­liant work of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion;  no soci­o­log­i­cal trea­tise could dupli­cate the movie’s suc­cess in remem­ber­ing exact­ly how it was to be alive at that cul­tur­al instant.”  Gene Siskel described it as “well-made...and does pro­vide a sock (hop) full of mem­o­ries.”  The crit­ic for Variety wrote that American Graffiti was a “recall of teenage atti­tudes and morals, told with out­stand­ing empa­thy and com­pas­sion through an excep­tion­al­ly tal­ent­ed cast of unknown actors.”  The crit­ic for Time mag­a­zine wrote that the film “reveals a new and wel­come depth of feel­ing.  Few films have shown quite so well the eager­ness, the sad­ness, the ambi­tions and small defeats of a gen­er­a­tion of young Americans.”

The Critics con­sen­sus at Rotten Tomatoes states:  “One of the most influ­en­tial of all teen films, American Graffiti is a fun­ny, nos­tal­gic, and bit­ter­sweet look at a group of recent high school grads’ last days of innocence.”

American Graffiti was nom­i­nat­ed for five Oscars, includ­ing Best Picture, Best Director, Best Story and Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress (Candy Clark). 

Many folks think that the pop­u­lar TV show Happy Days came about as a result of American Graffiti.  To some degree that is true but maybe not in the way you might imag­ine.  Ron Howard appeared as Richie Cunningham in a pilot for the series in 1972.  The pilot was not picked up by the net­works and instead the episode appeared as part of the ABC series Love, American Style.  George Lucas picked Ron Howard to play the role of Steve in his movie after watch­ing that episode.  The suc­cess of the film spurred ABC to agree to air the TV series.  The film also led to the addi­tion of a “greas­er” char­ac­ter to the cast of Happy Days.  The series debuted in 1974 and Richie and Fonzie con­tin­ue to enter­tain folks today.

In 1979 a sequel was made called More American Graffiti.  It reunit­ed much of the orig­i­nal cast and focused on their lives from 1964–67.   The orig­i­nal film, set in 1962, was set pri­or to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assas­si­na­tion of President Kennedy, and the Vietnam War.  The sequel reflect­ed the tur­moil of the times.  It was a fail­ure at the box office.

Mel’s Drive-in was a real dri­ve-in locat­ed in San Francisco (and report­ed­ly a favorite of George Lucas).  Though the film was set in Modesto, sev­er­al north­ern California loca­tions were used, with Petaluma lead­ing the list.  Sadly, Mel’s Drive-in was torn down after the movie was com­plet­ed.  The own­er’s son lat­er re-opened a chain of restau­rants in Los Angeles and San Francisco and George Lucas con­tin­ued to dine occa­sion­al­ly at one of the San Francisco locations.

In 1995 American Graffiti was select­ed by the Library of Congress for preser­va­tion in the National Film Registry. 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates American Graffiti at 7.4 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 95% and an Audience Score of 84%. 

In search­ing my Roku device, I found the film stream­ing for free on the sites Freebie TV and Cineplex.  Though it is not free, I know many peo­ple have Netflix and it is also avail­able there.  I also found that the Clark County Public Library has a copy of the DVD on the shelf that also has the sequel More American Graffiti.

So, I go back to the ques­tion at the beginning—”Where were you in ’62?”  I’ll tell you where I was. 

I was a teenag­er in Baltimore, a sopho­more in high school and a big fan of my tran­sis­tor radio and the won­der­ful music com­ing out of it then.  Now in 2025 I am no longer in Baltimore and no longer a teenag­er, but I still have a love of the music (though it no longer comes from a tran­sis­tor radio, but from a Bluetooth speak­er instead). 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.

Let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as WinCity Voices Facebook page.