‘American Graffiti,’ turning 50, delivers happy days with a white gaze
Though I hadn’t seen George Lucas’s film until recently, I had seen 1975’s ‘Cooley High,’ known as ‘the Black American Graffiti’
My parents took me to see “American Graffiti” at a drive-in in New Jersey. It was on a double bill with its much more critically-maligned 1979 sequel, “More American Graffiti,” so I must have been around 9 years old.
“American Graffiti” ran first. As soon as I saw Mel’s Drive-In, the real-life restaurant and meeting point for many of the film’s characters, I got suckerpunched by the sandman. The next thing I knew, my Pops was shaking me awake outside of our house.
It would be 44 years before I saw another frame of George Lucas’s 1973 best picture Oscar nominee, this time at the legendary TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Calif., in April. The TCM Classic Film Festival ran the movie to celebrate its 50th anniversary. In attendance were two of the film’s stars, Richard Dreyfuss, who played the college-bound Curt, and Candy Clark, whose performance as blonde dreamboat Debbie yielded the film’s sole acting Oscar nomination for supporting actress.
I enjoyed hearing the recollections of Clark and Dreyfuss — he told us he’d never seen a director less happy to be directing than Lucas — but I really wished I’d stayed awake at that drive-in to hear my mom and dad’s commentary. “American Graffiti” was one of the first films to capitalize on Boomer nostalgia, but I bet it played differently for my parents than for white viewers.
“Where were you in ’62?” asked the film’s tagline. I hadn’t been considered yet, but my parents were slightly younger than the high school seniors who populate the screenplay by Lucas, Willard Huyck, and Gloria Katz. They would not have been cruising around in cars, an activity that takes up the bulk of “American Graffiti,” nor would they have been drag racing like Bob Falfa (a pre-Han Solo Harrison Ford).
The reason I think my folks would have been informative is that, in 1978, I was privy to their drive-in conversations during the movie version of “Grease.” That John Travolta hit took place in 1958 and hit a sweet nostalgic spot for my parents. I heard them talk about the film’s costars Eve Arden, Frankie Avalon, and Sid Caesar, none of whom I had any idea about at the time. These were staples of their youth, popularized on television, film, and radio.
Of course, in the 1970s I watched “Happy Days,” the 1950s-era sitcom that starred Ron Howard and also spun off “Laverne & Shirley,” which costarred Cindy Williams. Howard and Williams played Steve and Laurie, the bickering couple in “American Graffiti.” I always thought the film begat “Happy Days” in 1974. As it turns out, Howard was cast as Steve because Lucas had seen him in the show’s failed 1972 pilot.
I bring all this up because sitting in the Chinese Theatre, I started thinking about how the past had been packaged for me as a kid by pop culture. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary on “Happy Days.” That it was primarily lily-white seemed of no consequence, nor was its use of doo-wop and, as the show ventured into the 1960s, its use of the same early ‘60s-style rock that accompanied Lucas’s characters on their adventures.
That same music was on New York City’s oldies station WCBS-FM when I was a kid. “Oldies” meant Del Shannon, Frankie Lymon and The Flamingos, all of whom are heard in “American Graffiti” on the radio station run by Wolfman Jack (who plays himself ). I knew who he was back then as well — he was still on the radio.
(As an aside: I knew I was old when WCBS-FM suddenly started playing stuff like “Billie Jean,” a song that came out when I was 12. Suddenly “oldies” was an offensive term!)
These thoughts ran parallel to the ones I had as I examined “American Graffiti” strictly as a cinematic experience. It is a gorgeous film, as shiny as the outside of a New Jersey diner or, for that matter, Mel’s Drive-In. Shot by cinematographers Jan D’Alquen and Ron Eveslage, the colors pop off the vintage cars and the storefronts they cruise by. (Legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler is credited as a visual consultant; you can see his handiwork.) The banana yellow deuce coupe driven by John Milner (Paul Le Mat) singes the retinas every time it passes by the camera.
Even more memorable and impressive is the sound mix. Every song — and this film is wall-to-wall music — sounds as if it were coming out of a car radio. It could not have been easy to get that exact effect in conjunction with everything else we hear. Walter Murch, a titan in movie sound, worked on the film. I’m surprise he wasn’t Oscar-nominated, not that he would have won in the same year as “The Exorcist.”
The characters I identified most with were Curt, whom Dreyfuss explained at the TCM Q&A was the one character who was truly self-aware, and Terry “The Toad“(Charles Martin Smith), the hapless nerd whose run of bad luck is countered by the fact he spends the evening with the way-out-ofhis-league Debbie.
It was evident that Lucas loved these characters, whom he plucked from his own memories, and also how much he wanted to share the film’s 24-hour timeframe story with us. I enjoyed his first big hit very much.
Though I hadn’t seen “American Graffiti” until a few weeks ago, I did see 1975’s “Cooley High” when it came out. Director Michael Schultz’s masterpiece is also bathed in the nostalgia of its writer, Eric Monte. Set in 1964, the film follows a group of Black high school friends led by Glynn Turman’s Preach and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs’s Cochise. They’re students at the titular Chicago vocational school.
“Cooley High” is also filled with wallto-wall music (this time it’s Motown standards) and has the same vignette-style structure employed by Lucas. In fact, “Cooley High” was repeatedly referred to as “the Black American Graffiti.”
Though “Cooley High” heavily influenced the show “What’s Happening!!” (it was originally supposed to be a TV version of the film), that show took place in the 1970s, leaving my childhood understanding of the past to be influenced and normalized by “American Graffiti” and its television descendents.
I still wonder what my parents thought of “American Graffiti” and if they found it even remotely nostalgic. I suppose I could just call them and ask.