Well, the school year has started for a lot of kids and adult teachers and yeah school should be starting around the first month of September but in Nebraska we usually start around the last week in the month of August, don't ask me why it's basically how it's always been though out my years in Central Nebraska. But I'm not here to talk about school starting or ending when it comes to Central Nebraska. I figured with school commencing in August or September I wanted to recommend a film about high school kids moreover directed by George Lucas who gave us Star Wars. And you're probably surprised that George Lucas, the man who made one of the greatest movie franchises and well when you're trying to be a starting filmmaker George Lucas had to make films like American Graffiti in order to get an audience with producers back then so he can just say "hey I made this aspiring film for all kids I want to make this" moreover this was defiantly one of the better teenage movies I've ever seen because after watching so much crap of Friday Night Lights or remembering watching the O.C. I now must point at this movie and say that this movie is amazing and, it's fifty years old so Happy Anniversary American Graffiti.
On the last day of summer vacation in 1962, friends Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), Steve (Ron Howard), Terry (Charles Martin Smith), and John (Paul Le Mat) cruise the street of small-town California while a mysterious disc jockey (Wolfman Jack) spin classic Rock’n’roll tunes. It's the last night before their grown-up lives begin, and Steve's high school sweetheart, a hot-to-trot trouble, a bratty adolescent and a disappearing angel in a Thunderbird provide all excitement they can handle.
I know I've been bashing teenage drama's left and right for good moreover real reasons teenage drama's now a days are just God awfully bad and the more you grow up, re-watching some of these movies you use to love you slowly began to realize that these are not as good as they once were, it's like Creed and Matchbox Twenty they use to be my favorite bands growing up now I can't listen to them anymore. Or a better example is Varsity Blues and TV show Felicity starring Kerri Russell, you watched those movies and shows because of the characters and the drama but then you slowly realize that this is just bad. The best way to explain this badness is that they just keep over dramatizing the story, I mean come on Kerri Russell in the last season of Felicity goes back in time for some bizarre reason and a star QB breaks up with his cheerleader girlfriend when she cheated on him, then later gets back together then decides to cheat on her in the last few episodes of the first season of Friday Night Lights, I mean if that's being a little on the over dramatic side of creating drama I don't know what is anymore. And with American Graffiti, this is a great example of keeping that coming-of-age story to a simplest of forms just a bunch of kids spending what maybe their final lives as teenagers until they're to grasp the nature of adult life, with a kiss of some greatest hits from the sixties. Granted this was the first time watching American Graffiti and to be truthfully honest I wished I watched it a lot sooner because you have a great list of actors that would one day become legendary actors in their own right moreover great film makers, you have Richard Dreyfuss who does a great job in the movie moreover two years later would be in Lucas's best friends next film Jaws. Ron Howard who of course was famous for a lot of things as an actor but then would become a great filmmaker with films like Apollo 13, and Rush. And let’s not forget the legendary actor Harrison Ford who at the time was just focusing on a carpentry career and yet fate grasped him with a better purpose in life and in all honesty Harrison Ford's career in film was a lot owed to George Lucas because without Lucas's ideas we would not of had a better Han Solo or a better Indiana Jones. The making of the films is a lot more interesting than I can image, although granted I've heard about them while reading or listening to books. With the inspiration behind American Graffiti, it all started during the production of Lucas's first film THX-1138, producer Francis Ford Coppola really challenged George to write a script that would appeal a mainstream audience, and Lucas really embraced the idea of using his early 1960's teenage experience cruising around in Modesto, California. Lucas in his own words explained "cruising was gone, and I felt compelled to document the whole experience and what my generation used as way of meeting girls", and through the course of developing the story he comprised of the four main characters he really based them all on his high school years and his college years for which really when you think about it that's really a great way of splitting yourself into different characters I'd say is a great way to developing a story especially when you’re making a coming of age story set around a bunch of high school kids. And even with coming into making American Graffiti, Lucas learned a valuable lesson after the financial failure of THX-1138, in what he explains "THX was about real things that were going on and the problems we're faced with. I realized after making THX that those problems are so real that most of us must face those things every day, so we're in a constant state of frustration. That just makes us more depressed than we were before. So I made a film where, we can get rid of some of those frustrations, the feeling that everything seems futile", and really that's a good way when it comes to making movies because some of those deep movies that Martin Scorsese makes I never really quite got into those movie's mainly because I wasn't old enough moreover ready to experience those kind of films and the same with No Country for Old Men, when I first watched the movie never quite understood the movie for many reasons I was always use to the bad guy dying at the end of the movie not getting away with murder. Now I'm not say that some of those deep movies should have those elements, but really as an audience member should wait on those movie's to experience those movies at a right age, and Lucas was really all about was trying to leave our problems outside of the movie theater and experience a film were we can experience a new world, furthermore you really should keep this as an open mind but, the problem with movies now there just coming out with the same movie every year of superhero's, remakes, twenty years in the making sequels that it's really hard to take them seriously and yet the real problem is that writers are just getting way too lazy to come up with things that I'm really starting to think that this whole writers’ strike is really their fault because there not taking their jobs seriously to not just sit down and create something new and different. American Graffiti is a movie that I would highly recommend watching with your kids to experience and enjoy from start to finish, moreover this is a true representation of how you write a coming-of-age story, it's both comedy and drama at the same time furthermore it's a great reason to show people that other teen dramas are just way to much like soap opera's meaning way to annoying. Also, the film itself inspired the show Happy Days so props to George Lucas because without him we wouldn't have Henry Winkler in his finest performance as Fonzie. Though more importantly without American Graffiti we wouldn't be having or love for old cars moreover having old car shows that happens all over America so another reason to thank George Lucas, for Star Wars and giving us are love for old cars.
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