Motion Pictures American Graffiti - The Perfect Car Movie?

0-100mph-0 in 14.5 seconds. I ain't racin' him for pinks

 

HOLY SCHEIDT!!!
Yep, local chain LesterBurgers were all over the Dirty 'No back in the day. There was one right by McLane HS and it was THE place.

 

Me too a couple days ago..

 

All we had was White Castle and A&W, Big Boy had already went the way of the Do-Do Bird... But then there was the mall parking lot, where all the deal's went down...

 

Everyone wants to be a Pha-roh!

 

I was born and raised in the San Diego area. Remember cruising the local hamburger places with servers bringing food on roller skates in the late 50’s and early 60’s. I had grandparents and Aunts and Uncles who lived in San Rafael CA. which was to be the shooting location for American Graffiti until the City Council got involved and it moved to Petaluma a short distance away. My Sister was working in Hollywood and recommend my Uncles auto shop in the middle of San Rafael for some background shots. They had lots of old cars and gas pumps out front. They did get some shots there but they were cut from the final version. I love that movie.

 

Yowser !!!! That Merc is soooo right it hurts !!!

Love it !!!

 

I saw this at a car show today.

 

Yes, it was, and is, one of the best "Rod Fliks" ever. Right up there with "Two Lane Blacktop, Hollywood Nights, Vanishing Point, California Kid, (can't remember if that was the title), and Easyrider" I still can bindge watch all of them. Bob H. Southern Indy

 

Thanks, much appreciated

 

Years ago i was in Modesto on business, had to leave very early for a flight. The guy driving passed "Paradise Road" right at sunup-the real deal. I looked at it, mountains in the background, cool, empty, etc. but it sure brought this scene to mind. Never forgot that trip.

 

Dazed and Confused is a killer car movie as well, for the muscle car Era...

 

Just rewatched AG for the umpteenth time. So good in so many ways. I've always liked Siskel and Ebert reviews, found this one. He makes a bunch of great points about AG that make it more than a car movie.

Roger Ebert August 11, 1973
My first car was a ‘54 Ford and I bought it for $435. It wasn’t scooped, channeled, shaved, decked, pinstriped, or chopped, and it didn’t have duals, but its hubcaps were a wonder to behold.

On weekends my friends and I drove around downtown Urbana -- past the Princess Theater, past the courthouse -- sometimes stopping for a dance at the youth center or a hamburger at the Steak ‘n’ Shake (“In Sight, It Must Be Right”). And always we listened to Dick Biondi on WLS. Only two years earlier, WLS had been the Prairie Farmer Station; now it was the voice of rock all over the Midwest.

When I went to see George Lucas’s “American Graffiti” that whole world -- a world that now seems incomparably distant and innocent -- was brought back with a rush of feeling that wasn’t so much nostalgia as culture shock. Remembering my high school generation, I can only wonder at how unprepared we were for the loss of innocence that took place in America with the series of hammer blows beginning with the assassination of President Kennedy.

The great divide was November 22, 1963,and nothing was ever the same again. The teenagers in “American Graffiti” are, in a sense, like that cartoon character in the magazine ads: the one who gives the name of his insurance company, unaware that an avalanche is about to land on him. The options seemed so simple then: to go to college, or to stay home and look for a job and cruise Main Street and make the scene.

The options were simple, and so was the music that formed so much of the way we saw ourselves. “American Graffiti”‘s sound track is papered from one end to the other with Wolfman Jack’s nonstop disc jockey show, that’s crucial and absolutely right. The radio was on every waking moment. A character in the movie only realizes his car, parked nearby, has been stolen when he hears the music stop: He didn’t hear the car being driven away.

The music was as innocent as the time. Songs like “Sixteen Candles” and “Gonna Find Her” and “The Book of Love” sound touchingly naive today; nothing prepared us for the decadence and the aggression of rock only a handful of years later. The Rolling Stones of 1972 would have blown WLS off the air in 1962.

“American Graffiti” acts almost as a milestone to show us how far (and in many cases how tragically) we have come. Stanley Kauffmann, who liked it, complained in the New Republic that Lucas had made a film more fascinating to the generation now between thirty and forty than it could be for other generations, older or younger.

But it isn’t the age of the characters that matters; it’s the time they inhabited. Whole cultures and societies have passed since 1962. “American Graffiti” is 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.

On the surface, Lucas has made a film that seems almost artless; his teenagers cruise Main Street and stop at Mel’s Drive-In and listen to Wolfman Jack on the radio and neck and lay rubber and almost convince themselves their moment will last forever. But the film’s buried structure shows an innocence in the process of being lost, and as its symbol Lucas provides the elusive blonde in the white Thunderbird -- the vision of beauty always glimpsed at the next intersection, the end of the next street.

Who is she? And did she really whisper “I love you” at the last traffic signal? In “8 1/2,” Fellini used Claudia Cardinale as his mysterious angel in white, and the image remains one of his best; but George Lucas knows that for one brief afternoon of American history angels drove Thunderbirds and could possibly be found at Mel’s Drive-In tonight... or maybe tomorrow night, or the night after.

 

AG is great and in the running for greatest car movie behind Vanishing Point, Hot Rod (aka Rebel of the Road), California Kid and Snake vs. Mongoose. Heart like a wheel is up there too with Ford Vs Ferrari and Duel.

 

Red Line 7000! Campy and corny for sure, but marvelous none the less. The sound of pure 100% American screaming race motors in full size real stock cars. The scene featuring Jr. Johnson flinging one of
his full size speedways car around Ascot parks dirt track is worth the watching the
entire movie. That scene can be found on utube. My all time favorite.

 

call me shameless, but i thought it was really cool when he appeared in the gallery on the old "perry mason" tv show!

 

i first saw AG as part of a double feature, with a film about an oldies concert called "let the good times roll." great pairing!

 

one thing i really like about AG was that all the kids loved each other. the only really bad guy was played by johnny weissmuller jr. ("badass #1").

 

True. not to many people know that. He was beating up Toad, un till John kicked his ass.
Paul LeMat had some boxing history in his young years.

 

I agree from what I remember it was a good movie as my dad took me to a drive-in theater to see it when I was much younger.

 

I still get the urge to watch at least a little bit of it sometimes.

It's more than just a movie.
It's like a frame of mind.

 

I agree Ricky, Still makes me smile, laugh, and remember when things were care free and fun.

 

Perfect? not sure but I was amazed when I watched the movie the first time, of all the similarities there were to where I lived in Stamford, CT. during the 60's. There was even a guy that showed up from out of town with a dark blue 53/54 Ford (not 55 Chev) with a Buick in it. Always looking for a race. And believe it or not he looked just like Harrison Ford and wore the same kind of cowboy hat. I owned a chopped five window with a small block Chevy and a 4-speed.
Mine was not yellow although the guy I sold it to in the 70's painted it yellow go figure. Also I was not quite as cool as LeMat I could match just about every character in the movie to someone I know. That is also true of the cars in the film. George Lucas nailed it coast to coast.

 

Bo Hopkins died.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/m...dead-wild-bunch-american-graffiti-1235155857/

 

Sorry to hear we lost Bo. He went to a lot of shows, and helped keep AG alive.

 

Bo's characters always seemed to be the kind of guy you wouldn't dare trust much... but you couldn't help but love him anyway. God bless Bo.

 

Sure a lotta heart attacks lately.......