I sheepishly confess to seeing George Lucas's pre-Star Wars paean to 1960s teenage angst ten times during its U.S. theater run in 1973. Nearly 45 years later, that DVD and my little Sony player frequently get together for a couple of hours of nostalgic fun.
While it meets the classic requirements for "coming of age" flicks (raging hormones, fast cars, rock and roll music, parent-duping, and continuous misbehavior), there's a certain depth to this film that still touches me after all these years; something of a philosophical message, if you will.
We were so damn INNOCENT back then, an innocence we sacrificed at the altar of sophistication. You won't see cell phones, the Internet, email, digital cameras, GPS, texting, MP3 players, personal computers, surveillance cameras, or Google in this movie. Yet the characters had one hell of a night with only drive-ins, hot rods, a howling disk jockey playing continuous rock and roll, movies, gangs, blondes driving T-Birds, sock hops, and the single-minded pursuit of sex to entertain them. They were a hardy breed back then, weren't they? Hardy ... innocent ... unsophisticated. We're so much happier and better off today entombed in cyberspace and our virtual realities.
Aren't we?
Aren't we?
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is thinking about it.
Even the juvenile delinquents of the day didn't seem quite so ... delinquent ... in retrospect. Sure, they drove souped-up cars, rumbled, smoked, drank, and chased girls.
But make no mistake about it: every "nice kid" in the neighborhood secretly admired and envied them. I know I did. Why? We "nice kids" lived vicariously through the neighborhood gossip of the bad boys' misdeeds, sampling a swagger, attitude, and lifestyle we knew we'd never experience. The line between "nice" and "bad" wasn't often crossed; so they were our connection to life's "wild side."
But even the bad boys sometimes had their moments.
I recall one tough guy from my old neighborhood. Although Frank came from a solid and close-knit family, my father labeled him a JD and warned me repeatedly to stay the hell away from him. Frank wore a black leather jacket and white t-shirt, smoked cigarettes, slicked his hair back, and had that carefully-cultivated aura of BAD about him. His reputation around the 'hood was that of a dude not to be messed with; a future guest of the state prison system, right?
Wrong!
I remember Mister Black Leather Jacket spending hours with me in my backyard trying to teach me to play baseball. He did manage to show me how to catch the ball without my looking like a complete klutz. That in itself was a major accomplishment. He also took the time to teach me the finer points of pitching, laughing under his breath as he struggled to corral my out-of-control throws. Frank did laugh at me a lot during those hours but I hereby publicly forgive him. Because thanks to a juvenile delinquent similar to AG's John Milner, I was infamous for a wicked curve ball in our street-corner baseball games.
Anyway, AG's setting is Modesto, California (although most of the exterior filming was done in Petaluma), on the final summer night of 1962. A tight-knit group of friends is enjoying a final night's mischief together before two of them would depart the following day for an eastern college.
Lucas does concede to a little character stereotyping: Terry the nerd complete with pimples, glasses, a perpetual hard-on, and romantic ineptitude; Curt the sensitive, intellectual, future writer who spends the evening searching for sex, gang membership, truth, justice, the American way, and an elusive blonde in a white T-Bird; John the bad-ass hot-rodder with a marshmallow heart and a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve; Laurie, an overly needy (but unbearably cute) head cheerleader portrayed by a pre-Laverne-and-Shirley Cindy Williams; and Steve, the clean-cut, every mother's son played by a post-Andy-Griffith-but-pre-directorial Ron Howard.
I won't grind though the entire plot here, but suffice it to say the five principal stories intertwine and diverge repeatedly throughout the night, backed by the ubiquitous howling of enigmatic disc jockey Wolfman Jack and one of the best movie soundtracks ever assembled.
Even the music of that era reflected an America only slightly bruised by the stony terrain of the Cold War.
The Beach Boys sang of surfing safaris, good vibrations, surfer girls, and little deuce coupes; Elvis Presley, well, he was Elvis ... need I say more?; Bobby Vinton, Connie Francis, Bobby Vee, and a thousand others sang of broken hearts and starry-eyed love; countless doo-wop groups shang-a-lang'ed, waa-waa-waa'ed, sha-la-la'ed, and dooby-dooby-doo'ed while we listened and dreamed of finding true love at the drive-in; songs such as Since I Don't Have You, Sixteen Candles, I Only Have Eyes For You, Come Go With Me, and Barbara Ann told stories of puppy love untainted by a world destined to turn upside down all too soon.
But the old concerns about driving a cool car, having enough money to buy the latest records (what are "records"?), evading the radar-like surveillance of one's parents, getting to "first base" (or even beyond, you lucky dog!) with tonight's date, getting passing grades, and finding someone cool to dance with at the high school hop would soon be replaced by worries much more ominous, many having potentially deadly consequences.
That idyllic American innocence was about to come to a shattering end. Massive rocks and boulders were waiting just beyond the next bend in the road.
Lucas chose to conclude his film with a downbeat ending. I won't reveal it here, but his decision only added to American Graffiti's uniqueness, reality, and depth. Real life doesn't always end happily with everybody smiling and pretty music playing.
Steve, Laurie, Terry, Curt, and John could not have seen it coming; neither could anyone else. The age of America's innocence was about to end ... and never return.
With wide, disbelieving, and sometimes tear-filled eyes, we watched (and still do) as our comfortable old American tapestry was abruptly ripped to shreds and replaced by bizarre, confusing, and sometimes terrifying colors: the assassinations of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; the Marines landing at Da Nang and the start of the Viet Nam War; the Beatles; Watergate; the Challenger Disaster; the Internet; anti-war protests rocking the streets and college campuses; terrorism; the civil rights movement; rogue nations with nuclear capabilities; disco music; the war on terror; the Kent State shootings; social media; the British music invasion; LSD; Chicago's 1968 Democratic Convention; climate change; personal computers; our inner cities in flames; the sexual revolution; cell phones; bullying; pet rocks, lava lamps, and mood rings; the fall of Saigon; 9/11; the My Lai Massacre; the hijacking of personal privacy by business and government; street, school, home, church, and workplace violence; hacking and data breaches.
After all that, can I interest anyone in a little innocence and unsophistication?
American Graffiti is truly a time capsule, a cinematic record of how simple, easy, and carefree life used to be ... once upon a happier time when we were so wonderfully innocent. It's a great place to go back and visit. And there have been many moments when I again wanted to live there.
Don't forget to pet your thesaurus today.
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