{"id":10033,"date":"2015-08-06T20:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-08-07T01:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=10033"},"modified":"2015-07-27T08:30:46","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T13:30:46","slug":"american-graffiti-1973-george-lucas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/10033","title":{"rendered":"American Graffiti (1973, George Lucas)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was pleasantly surprised by this – not the hyper-masculine grimy 1970’s picture I’d imagined (since it gets lumped in with Deer Hunter<\/em> and Godfather<\/em> and Saturday Night Fever<\/em> and Deliverance<\/em> in the “New Hollywood” category), but the Dazed and Confused<\/a><\/em> of its time, an early-1960’s-set ensemble drama following a group of boys (and grudgingly some girls, but they don’t get prominence in the storylines or credits) between high school and college.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia says all the guys are based on Lucas, in personality fragments, so people who knew him well must’ve seen this as a sort of George Lucas Multiplicity<\/em>. Cowriters Huyck and Katz made Messiah of Evil<\/em> around the same time, later worked with Lucas on Temple of Doom<\/em> and Radioland Murders<\/em>. Lucas was a producer on the mid-60’s-set sequel with the same cast minus Dreyfuss.<\/p>\n

Curt = Richard Dreyfuss just two years before Jaws<\/em> but looking ten years younger (based on my admittedly fuzzy memory of Jaws<\/em> and the admittedly fuzzy picture of this movie on the Railyard screen). He’s got a scholarship but is thinking he’ll skip college. After a wild night getting roped into a local gang and trying to track down his dream girl, he changes his mind and heads off to school.<\/p>\n

John = tough-guy racer Paul Le Mat (Melvin and Howard<\/em>, Handle With Care<\/em>, Puppet Master<\/a><\/em>), who gets stuck with a young girl (Carol: TV’s Mackenzie Phillips) in his car, and is being hunted by street-race enthusiast Harrison Ford.<\/p>\n

Steve = college-bound Ron Howard, who spends all night breaking up with his girlfriend Laurie (Cindy Williams of Laverne & Shirley<\/em>), then reconsiders both college and the breakup.<\/p>\n

Terry = nerdy Charles Smith (De Palma’s Untouchables<\/em>, director of Air Bud<\/em>), who somehow picks up an out-of-his-league blonde named Debbie (Candy Clark of Q: The Winged Serpent<\/a><\/em>, The Blob<\/em>) and keeps trying to impress her.<\/p>\n

IMDB trivia: Harrison Ford is driving the Two-Lane Blacktop<\/em> car!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was pleasantly surprised by this – not the hyper-masculine grimy 1970’s picture I’d imagined (since it gets lumped in with Deer Hunter and Godfather and Saturday Night Fever and Deliverance in the “New Hollywood” category), but the Dazed and Confused of its time, an early-1960’s-set ensemble drama following a group of boys (and grudgingly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[400,387,388],"class_list":["post-10033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1970s","tag-george-lucas","tag-harrison-ford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10033"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10093,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10033\/revisions\/10093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}