“American Graffiti” (1973) was filmed almost entirely after dark, with a young cast working until sunrise while George Lucas edited during the day and returned to direct at night.
Universal nearly buried the picture before audiences saw it. Executives doubted its unusual structure, unfamiliar actors, wall-to-wall oldies, and roughly $780,000 budget.
Lucas pulled the movie from his teenage years cruising through Modesto, California, with the radio blasting. He graduated in 1962, loved cars and drag racing, and divided parts of himself among Curt, John, and Terry. The police-car prank came from something a friend had done on Halloween. After “THX 1138” (1971) disappointed commercially, Francis Ford Coppola urged Lucas to make something warmer and more human. Lucas later explained, “But it’s also about the fact that you can’t live in the past, which is part of the same idea.”
Lucas developed the story with married screenwriters Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, but United Artists rejected it, and other studios passed. Universal vice president Ned Tanen finally supported it, but the studio wanted Coppola involved after “The Godfather” (1972). Ten percent of the budget went toward 42 original rock-and-roll recordings. Attorney Tom Pollock spent fourteen months negotiating rights because copyright owners were difficult to locate and some demanded more than the production could afford.
Casting director Fred Roos searched high schools, community theaters, and acting circles for faces that did not already feel famous. Ron Howard was the most familiar young performer. Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, and Mackenzie Phillips were still building careers. Harrison Ford had done carpentry work for Roos and accepted Bob Falfa after a compromise over his hair. Instead of getting the scripted flattop, he covered his longer hairstyle with a cowboy hat. Three hundred unpaid teenagers filled the sock-hop scene after being offered chances to win stereos and radios.
Production began in San Rafael, but after the first night, a bar owner complained that filming hurt business and the town withdrew permission. Lucas moved the cruising scenes to Petaluma, which he had feared would be too dark. Merchants helped by leaving store lights on overnight. The crew worked from about 9 p.m. until sunrise for 28 days. Candy Clark remembered, “The shooting conditions were pretty spartan. There were no chairs so if you wanted to sit down you either had to sit in a car.”
The darkness created another crisis. Lucas disliked the early photography, so cinematographer Haskell Wexler joined as visual consultant during the second week. Wexler filmed commercials in Los Angeles by day, traveled north at night, and sometimes slept only three nights a week. He developed ways to illuminate faces inside moving cars and create passing headlights. Ron Howard also experienced freedom away from his child-star routine. “That was the first project where I didn’t have to have an on-set welfare worker and I didn’t need parental supervision.”
Lucas stretched every dollar. Two cameras often filmed conversations between separate cars, while the inexpensive Techniscope process reduced film usage and created a rough, documentary-like image. Walter Murch, Lucas, and Gary Kurtz mixed songs five different ways so music could sound as though it came from inside a car, across a street, or from passing vehicles. Editors Verna Fields and Marcia Lucas assembled a 165-minute version, then spent six months cutting it while Lucas fought Universal over the final form.
The studio’s doubts collapsed when the film became an immediate hit. It eventually earned more than $200 million by AFI’s accounting, received five Academy Award nominations, helped ignite 1950s nostalgia, and pushed several young actors toward major careers. Its success also gave Lucas the freedom to pursue “Star Wars” (1977), a project unlikely to have existed on the same scale without this small nighttime movie.
A rejected memory became one of Hollywood’s greatest off-screen success stories.
