Motion Pictures Hard To Believe - 50 Years !

I was 22 when my girlfriend, Pat, and I saw the premier at a theater in Washington, D.C. She didn't really get it then and I'm sure she still wouldn't get it today...

 

Seen it more than a few times. Have these hanging in my office.

 

Best part of the movie for me may have been the Wolfman...

 

I feel ya. It’s probably about the era a person grew up in and what was around at the time. What was happening in ‘62 was happening is ‘72 and years on.
To put it in perspective, when the movie came out I was like 10 years old. If my math is right, when you were 10 would have been 1996. So that would be the era you might have started a connection with. And what you may have been driving/doing 6 years later in the 2000’s wouldn’t be anything like what the movie was about.
Not even trying to knock on you, heck, I have a step daughter your age and I wouldn’t even watch a movie she tells me about

 

Thanks for trying to relate why it missed for me, but you were off a bit as well. It's not that I couldn't appreciate the culture shown, it was that the story telling of the movie was dry and slow to me, and didn't resonate. It was the movie itself I wasn't resonating with, not the subject.

In those years you mentioned (90's-early 00's), our local car meet was a vintage style burger place that looked liked a vintage drive in. It would gather hundreds of cars until early in the morning every Friday and Saturday. In the early 00's, time outside of school was spent cruising the main drag and racing light to light against my classmates. Not unlike the movie. Prior to that, I was the kid that memorized the brochures for all the new cars and trucks, plus the magazines and books my dad had for vintage cars. Sure, the car wasn't the same freedom machine for most as it was for baby boomers. For me, it was a freedom machine as I grew up outside of a small town. We didn't have computers until about 1997, and I didn't have a phone until I was in my 20's. We lived rural, so "go outside and play" was every day. Except our toys were bicycles, high-powered snowmobiles, dirt bikes, and eventually cars. In the 90's my dad had a 64 Impala SS and built a hot rod 41 International truck that we went everywhere with, and I still have my first vehicle, an OT custom truck with way too much engine for a 16-year-old. I can relate my teen years to those shown in the movie, even if it was years apart and the cars are different. Sure, I grew up in a different era with a different feeling of hope and freedom, but it's still relatable. Vintage movies don't always tell a story in a way that resonates in the modern world, and that's what I was trying to get across.

 

Wolfman Jack was the glue that held the movie together.

 

Have a popsicle!

 

The movie did have a slow feel to it in a lot of the scenes off the street. Actually illustrated reality, I think... a certain contrast between humdrum life, subdued conversations vs the carnival atmosphere of the streets. I think Lucas did it on purpose.

It's as though Two-Lane Blacktop tried to emulate some of the more laid-back delivery of American Graffiti. But without the fun parts. Or the good music.

Things did pick up later in American Graffiti. Kurt got a call from Blondie. I think maybe Toad got more than just a call from Candy. Milner kicked those guys asses. There was a race between a yellow Deuce Coupe and a black '55 Chevy...

 

I enjoyed reading all your notes!!
I was doing what AG was about +,I built an drove my hotrod to Miami Sr High School 1960 to 62//in Miami Florida. I also loved "Grease".

The AG movie was well done,about what we were doing in the early 1960s/some of the late 50s also.
I was doing a lot of stuff like in the movie for real,so it hit home nice for me an my wife.
I could write a lot better true ,funny things we also did in the early 60s<enough for another hole movie.
I super liked the AG a lot,,>all except the bad tacked on added bull crap writing at the very end*< if you stayed to read it ;=The made up"What happen to the movie characters after" < That was bad typical hollywood poor thinking,done too often = then to make that added screw up,stand out poorly,it was used for the plot of MAG.
I could go on about"How to kill a happy feel good movie,in too sad*,with added on BS like that at the end"
I think AG is awesome MOVIE ,if you just stop it,before the added end BS.
I still have my 28A Bob Tailed Roadster"A Bucket",powered by Thunderbird V8,,,take it back for school Home Coming ,still a big hit with the teen kids.

 

Great memories! I was 19 at the time, and a Hot Rodder. I had a 38 Chevy coupe, and 68 Vette }. We were on a double date in my friends 58 Chevy. Kind of the same thing happen with us as Hot Rod primmer. There were people looking at his 58 when we came out also. Yeah, we made our dates sit through the second showing too.

 

“I am looking for this girl.’”
“Aren’t we all”

 

Can't remember how many times we went back to the theater that summer to watch the movie and then my buddy Wayne and I took three inches out of the roof on his deuce 5 window. We were young and dumb.

 

End of summer, '62, I was on a plane with the family moving to Hawaii for my senior year. Eleven months later I was on a troop ship headed to Ft. Ord for basic.

 

It's on netflix-saw it last night, again.
Wanna feel old? Look at Harrison Ford in the 55-
-and i've often wondered, did they burn a real 55 in the closing scenes?

 

A real 4dr '55.

Edit:
Corrected.
It was a 2dr HT.

I had read a long time ago that it was a different model that was crashed.
Forgot and thought it was a 4dr.

 

Like Ron and HRP, I too drove my Rod to the theater to take in the movie with my then girlfriend (now wife); when it came out. My old buckboard looked like this back in ‘73 , glad the ‘32 has faired better than what is left of the original poster; that’s still hanging in the garage!

 

Yes, that was probably worth around $100.00 at the time.

 

They were at their lowest point of demand, especially a sedan.

 

My folks graduated in 64 so they lived it. They took me to it and at 4 years old it is my first memory of a movie followed a couple years later by Vanishing Point. They took me in my jammies and I got to have a Sprite (rare in those days for a kid before bed). Mom covered my eyes when they mooned em. Just like Bond movies when AG came on annually on some Network, it was a family affair to sit down and watch it together.

 

I was born in '77 so the first time I saw it was on VHS. Then as a teenager I got a copy of the DVD and have see it probably 100 times. I even did my final paper in high school English class and got an "A".

This move will not impress modern audiences with special effects, but it is authentic. It represents an end of an era, a loss of innocence that everyone experiences as we grow. More specifically the early 60's were still a hang over of the idyllic 50's before Vietnam, protests and the tumultuous 60's got up to speed. The world changed permanently and even though I didn't live then, I get it. Waxing nostalgic for a simpler time is good medicine to take a break from the dumpster fire that is our world today.

I feel like I was in the last generation to do "American Graffiti" things. We were still Scoopin' the Loop in downtown Des Moines in 96-97, driving up Grand Ave. and down Locust for hours. Albeit in really boring cars, but generally hanging out, racing stop light to stop light, talking to girls, playing pranks, etc. Same stuff just different year. The kids after us didn't really do that anymore. Too busy playing video games and texting I guess.

The advent of the internet and smart phones in the early 2000's promptly changed they way teenagers grow up. Most kids I know today don't even really want driver's licenses. Anyway, I'll stop rambling, and I know movies are subjective, but if you look deeper, past the slow moving plot, you see authentic mourning of what used to be, which we can all relate to. It's a great movie, and if you don't get it, you don't get it.

 

The 55 they burned was actually a 2 dr. Hardtop. They put a block of wood between the roof and the door so it would look like a post car.

 

Well, then it was worth $300.00

 

A lot has been said about the number of acting careers it launched, but the three most authentic for the parts they played were Paul Lamat, Bo Hopkins, and Charles Martin Smith. At least, that's my take, living in that era. Especially Bo, "No, I'm talking about the other 50 creeps around here" !

 

"If da Wolfman was here he'd say getcha ass in gear!"

 

I thought it interesting how they would use a vehicle to describe a cast members character.
Dreyfus.. Citroën
Suzanne.. T bird
And so on

It was interesting watching the movie, again, after learning that.

 

I think they missed it with Bolanders 58. He just didn't look like the person that should have owned that car!?!

 

I nearly fell out of my movie chair,when Suzanne and the T-bird came on the screen> Her and the T-bird are deadringers for one of the girls, I dated in high school,with a white T-bird her Daddy gave her. Daddy even had the inside redone in pink with white trim piping.

 

I agree.

I can recall my dad telling me, 58 Chevy owners are weird. He was trying to talk me out of buying a 2dr 58 Biscayne, I had just found for $400 including a 4dr 58 BelAir parts car.