Motion Pictures How true to life is American graffiti?

Ive been watching old films like Thunder Road, American graffiti, etc. I've wondered how true to life these movies are, I know Thunder Road is very dramatized, but I'm not too sure on just how dramatized American Graffiti is.

 

The late Deuce Roadster (Randy Nash) spent several weeks on location when Thunder Road was filmed, Moon shinning in the Blue Ridge Mountains was pretty much a way of making a living, good money but hell to pay if you got caught, there were some chases and some accidents but I'm sure Hollywood did make some allowances.

American Graffiti could have been made anywhere in small town America and California was like the the small towns with teenagers only everything was larger than life on the west coast.

Life in general revolved around cars, drive in's, racing, pranks and young love.
actually I think both movies hit the nail on the head. HRP

 

Whooo Boy. Here we go

 

Based on real like events I hear, just like Borat and Spinal Tap. A documentary really. Wow Friday came early this week.

 

I’m sure American Graffiti was a true representation of cruising in the early 60s in California. I think all of us can see parts of the movie in our own lives, two very fast cars racing down Main Street or out on a blacktop, the girls, staying out all night with our friends etc…

 

It was a lot more exciting in the movie, than it was in real life....

 

I grew up in Phoenix, AZ, and was into hot rods by 1957 because of my older brother's hot rods.
For me and my circle of rodding friends, American Graffiti was a true reflection of our experiences
from 1957 through 1970. We had Bob's Big Boy for drive-in service which had 30 spots plus indoor
dining. 6 lane wide Central Avenue where the east met the west on Friday and Saturday nights. Guys
were looking for girls, girls looking for guys and loud/fast cars. Grudge matches ran over on either
3rd or 7th avenues. Lots of motorcycle cops looking to hand out tickets. What a great time. Met two
of my "favorite" girl friends there. Nothing like it today that I am aware of. This was
what I street raced back then....

 

I can only tell you what was told to me. My dad was born and raised outside of Modesto, the “cruise” at the time was 10th and J street. But his time was mid/late 50’s. Lots of stop light to stop light stuff, but he didn’t recall the AG stuff like in the movie. Might have been the group he hung out with? Anyways forward 20 years and McHenry was the cruise and yes, many a race, a few fights, but nothing like the movie portrayed.
That said, I’m no expert, but being a movie, I’d bet it all happened, maybe not “in one night” but maybe over a course of time and for the movie made it into “one night”?
My grandparents lived on a road (Garrison?) that dead ended into paradise road, man, Paradise road was really narrow as I recall it. I know the movie wasn’t made in Modesto, but running side by side down Paradise would have taken more balls than I had.

 

For those that lived the times,like my self,,I drove a hotrod then in highschool,1960 to 62.
A to Q=It's {AG} true too life ,is going to depend on who n were you were.!
I liked the movie a lot,it came pretty damn close too how it was! I have pointed out in notes here on the HAMB;;{ In my many "Time for Way Back Story" by me ,of things we really did do* ,in an around Coconut Grove/Miami Fla. in that same time frame=Enough for a hole other movie or two.
The pretty young gals still like to site in hotrods ,but we don't have Carhop Drive Inn hang out's any more, like we did, an most of the cars are not cool now.

 

I always thought I was born 10 years too late and missed out. Where were you in "62"? Kindergarten for me.

 

I'm a geezer but i sure relate to AG. Had a group i hung with, drive in where we met starting Friday night, looking for races, deserted road where we went-sometimes we had around 200, fights, the guy who had the most badass car of 'em all, cops who tried to bust it up, getting back home around 5am, etc.etc. plus it was a relatively small town where everyone knew everyone. I've asked some of the guys i was with back then if they could relate to it-every one of 'em said absolutely.
And, i've always heard that Thunder Road was a Hollywood representation of Junior Johnson's life as a moon runner in the hills. They used him as a technical reference for the movie.

 

There's a lot of truth to both American Grafitti as well as Thunder Road. All the stuff in AG was like the timeline of my life from about age 16 to 22. Cruising the Capitol Plaza Hot Shoppes in Landover Hills, Maryland or the Mighty Mo in Queenstown. We never yanked the rear end out of a cop car though....Lots and lots of street racing back then.

Growing up in East Tennessee, until I was 11, everyone knew who made and/or transported illegal alcohol. It was quite common. I still have a piece of the grille from a brand new '58 Ford that missed a turn by our house and wound up 50 yards down in a corn field in the middle of the night. Everyone knew who it belonged to and what it likely was hauling. The car was pulled out with a tractor and long gone before the crack of dawn.

I've likely watched Thunder Road a hundred times. It was filmed in and around Asheville, N.C. Much of the scenery and locations I've been to many times. It was a cult classic in the South, often paired with Thunder in Carolina as a Double Feature at the local Drive-in.

 

Those pretty young girls are not so pretty or young anymore but the cars are faster...

 

Neither me nor my dad were even thought of, and my grandparents were still in middle school!

 

Living in L.A. in the mid to late '50's I can vouch for the relative accuracy of the film. Like some one said, not all this action was packed into every weekend night but it's a fairly accurate representation of cruising in the '50's.

 

Yeah, this is how it was. But remember, everything is better in the movies. The cars are desirable and so are the women. I grew up in a tiny rural town in the late 60's where the most common occupation was farming. There were some OT muscle cars but nothing like the cars we see on here other than a few tri-five Chevies, and they were already getting rusted out by then. This is Michigan, where rust never sleeps and takes everything. Even so, we had a lot of fun with what we had, and cruising was what we did. We had a quarter mile marked off, complete with white lines painted across the road. It was a safe spot, flat and level with good new pavement and no houses. Convenient for me, only a half mile from our shop. Slicks may have been mounted on our old manual coats tire machine, but I have no idea how that paint got on the road. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. Police didn't really bother us much. I think they were glad to keep the action out of town and it was a safe spot. Practically speaking there were very few cars around that were fast enough to get in much trouble in a quarter mile. We had a tacit agreement among most of us not to run it out the back door. When you cross the stripe, shut it down before you get too far into G.T.O. territory (God Takes Over at 100).

 

Well, I wasn’t around in 62 but middle of no where Iowa in the late 90’s cruising was pretty close to that. We cruised Friday/ Saturday/ Sunday different circuits in different towns not to far away.

plenty of what transpired in the movie. Glad I didn’t miss it

 

My dad was in HS in 62 and a car guy. It was pretty spot on and could translate to most parts of the Country.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and can say that Cruisin and the car culture was solid up until sometime 25ish or so years ago here locally. It was just how we socialized.

 

I meant to mention that even though the film is pretty true to life, I never saw anyone cruising with their bare butt sticking out the window. That could possibly be a little embellishment.

 

Cruisin was a real thing in the 50's and 60's I lived it. There was no virtual reality it was real. There was the fastest cars, the prettiest girls and the cops that tried to put a damper on everything.

 

......That's true. In the early 60's, malls were a relatively new phenomenon and weren't to be found everywhere. There was no internet or cell phones. We had to actually get out of the house and go hang at the local diner or burger joint to meet people and find out what was going on. Where was there going to be a party or a match race later that night. Everyone brought out their cars, clean of course, and talked trash. Whose car was fastest, which burger joint had the cutest waitresses. It was a relatively innocent and prosperous time in America. A time we'll never experience again.

 

American Graffiti, Hollywood Knights, Thunder Road, and others. All happed to or around us. Not at one time, or one night but it happened. Especially if you were into in no particular order, girls, cars, booze or just having fun with your buddies! Back then it was called growing up. Getting life experience. It was the best time of our lives. To bad we didn’t know it then. We know it now! Your high school years are your best ones. Life will never be that fun again. But yea it’s all true.

 

.Not sure if you came up in Tennessee or if you are a newcomer, but Morristown and Newport were always some hot spots for cruising in the 50's and 60's.

 

Hmmm, I was in 17 1974....Lived in NJ near NYC... There was driving around mostly to pick up girls.There were drag races on isolated roads. There was some holligan shit and we would have thought of The American Graffiti crowd as prey...

 

It is a movie, but as good a representation of what I participated in, graduating from a northern CA high school in 1964, as I know of. By ‘64 viet nam was more factor in our lives, and the second AG movie has an awful lot in it that I can also relate to. My 327 powered ‘29 Tudor and a buddy’s 265 powered ‘58 Volvo 544(?) were the two hottest cars of my senior year. It was a blast, but was followed by growing up, more school, Vietnam, families, etc.

the essence of the 2 AG movies was very real.

 

cruising in Fremont in the late 70's was much more fun than American Graffiti days since any kid with a job could buy a cheap 10 year old used muscle car and go out and destroy it right before your eyes..

 

In '62, I was a tenth grader in high school. I grew up in College Park, Ga, out south near the International airport, a suburb of Atlanta, Ga. Every local suburb had it's own favorite cruising spots. For us, it was Shoney's down to McDonald's on Main St (US 29). When ever we got a hot set of new wheels or maybe a new lumpy cam, we headed to downtown Atlanta to the Varsity across from Georgia Tech. At one, time it was the world's largest drive in restaurant. At the Varsity, the hottest cars of Atlanta cruised through every Friday and Saturday night. It was a good time to be a gear head in the early sixtys.

 

Pretty sure I remember seeing a bare butt or two cruising in the mid-80’s... And, it is what we did every weekend and every night during the summer. Cruising, racing, drinking, etc. Sadly, because of the last thing in that list, I don’t remember as much of it as I wish I did... But, I am also thankful that there wasn’t any video or even film evidence of what happened back then.

 

I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s in Toronto

cruising , street racing , hanging out where all done Friday , Saturday nights


Actually pretty much every night the weather was good.

just north of the city there was a strip mall right on the edge of town and that’s where the “ real street racing “ went on.

open roads , no houses , in the wee hours of the morning some guys would actually do a rolling barricade on the highway so guys could race.

it got so big that real drag cars would be trailered in etc .

once it got to a couple hundred people showing up every Friday and Saturday it got shut down!
It’s was almost a sanctioned event it got so big !!

but cruising lakeshore , young street , Newport drive etc etc etc was the “ norm” growing up until the internet and social media screwed it all up if ya asks me !

 

I can tell you everything that happened in AG happened to me and my friends in Muskogee, Oklahoma back in the sixties and seventies! Except maybe jerking the cops cars rear end out! We did have some cop friends that we messed with and of course they messed with us!
But! It all never happened all in one night! It was spread out over six or more years for me, steady, then occasionally , well for the rest of my life! I still crusie the streets upon occasion! But instead of looking “ cool”, I guess I kinda look pathetic, you know an old man in a hot rod! Lol






Bones