American Graffiti (1973) Starring: Richard Dreyfuss,
Ronny Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles
Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark. Directed by George Lucas. Screenplay
by George Lucas, Gloria Katz, Willard Huyck. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola. Run time: 110 minutes.
Color Comedy, Drama
Unlike most famous directors, the oeuvre of George Lucas is
a very short list: THX 1138 (1971), American Graffiti (1973), Star
Wars (1977), Star
Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), Star
Wars Episode II: Attack of The Clones
(2002) and Star
Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). Not that he hasn’t had an
oversized impact on film and culture, but while it would take several semesters
of study to watch all of, say, Alfred Hitchcock’s films, Lucas' films could be
watched in a weekend of binge watching.
We recently had a chance to complete the Lucas output for my
sons recently when TCM showed the film.
Lucas’s first feature film, THX 1138, a fuller
version of his student film at USC, was not a financial or critical success.
But it was during that production that Coppola challenged him to write
something with mainstream appeal.
Feeling that cruising, which had been an integral part of his upbringing, was dead, Lucas decided to make a film celebrating that bygone past time. He, supposedly, based the four main characters on different parts of his own life. A nerd his freshman year in high school, Lucas had become a teenaged street racer.
