Motion Pictures Hard To Believe - 50 Years !

I can picture exactly what you just described.

 

58s were odd to my dads group as well. Seems like if you were into Chebbies in the late 50s early 60s the 58/9 cars were p***ed over for a Tri 5 or a later 60, my favorite .

 

I graduated in 1962. I'll never forget the '58 Impala custom, copper colored beauty an upper cl***man owned. Now I'm stuck with this....................


Oh, well.

 

These are the ones I found, some official, some unofficial. I thing the only official one by the city has the arch on it. But it’s been 40 or so years. Lol

BTW, found a few “Shakeys Pizza” coupons if you need to save 50 cents on a pizza

 

Not too shabby. Snowman ⛄️

 

Oh yeah.....I was 12 when it came out. The oldest girl in our neighborhood (16), had just got her license, and was dying to drive her 1964 Dodge Dart 4 door her dad had bought her. So for four nights in a row, Thursday - Sunday, we went to the local drive inn in town......"The Sunset". Three girls, and three boys.....we were too young and stupid to know any better.....loved the movie....and besides....what was gonna get done with six of us in a 4 door Dart??!! The location of the drive inn turned into condos years ago....but it was four summer nights I'll never forget. If you have an hour of your time, it's worth watching "The Making of American Graffiti"....it's on YouTube. Great behind the scenes stories of how it was made, and interviews from the actors and George Lucas! 50 Years.....an absolute cl***ic!!!!

 

Well, heck. Got me riled up that it was on Netflix, off tonight so just put it on.

 

That’s weird the whole tuner “Fast and Furious” thing was big went I was in high school (Cl*** of 2000) have never understood or related to those movies, in fact it wasn’t until about five year ago I had ever seen it. I was chaperoning a cl*** trip to Englishtown NJ to the NHRA Spring Nationals. The whole time I was thinking “What in the hell does this movie have to do with cars?”

Even though I was born 9 years after the release American Graffiti I always related to it because of my father’s stories about cruising State St in Schenectady NY/Central Ave. in Albany. In his era it was muscle cars and 55-57 Chevys with ball joints.

 

With all due respect Trent, I don't get this. There were plenty of rad '58 Chevies back in the day. Sure there were many more Tri-5's but hey the Tri-5's are probably the most ubiquitous American cars of all time.

Y'all probably already know this story:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a...d-the-58-chevy-impala-from-american-graffiti/
Ray says: “When I was growing up, it was about that car,” said Ray Evernham of the 1958 Chevrolet Impala owned by graduating senior Steve Bolander

 

Had a buddy in '68-69 with a '58 Chevy with a Pontiac 400, dual quads, that car was a beast!

 

No worries, just going off of dads comments on the era/region, but I have heard the same from many other sources. I think the biggest issue was just that, in 58 and 59 the cars got bigger. And a lot of folks did not care for the quad headlights introduced in 58. Even a lot of Vette guys prefer the earlier single headlights. I think for many, the change was just too drastic. By 62, the knowledge about W motors had grown. In Eastern Sodak (NHRA Div5) you started to see more guys running the bigger Chevies at this point until around 65, our cutoff here, when you could buy a Goat with tripower or the "new" BBC right off the lot

 

Cob, I totally agree with you, I was 12 years old in 1962 and I was introduced to Hot Rod Magazine, loved reading Henry Gregor Felsen's books and bought my very first short lived '32 Ford coupe,I absolutly loved Hot Rods!

The American Graffiti movie reminded me of my teenage years, the music in the movie was still very much a part of what was on the airwaves and the local bands still played all the early 60's music, nights the streets here Friday & Saturday small town America mimicked what we saw on the big screen and as such us baby boomers were reliving part of our youth.

I honestly believe this movie in some small way helped jump start the interest in hot rods that had lost favor to all the high performance cars coming from Detroit.

In the movie it was 1962 but it took me back to my high school days, simpler times. HRP

 

One of my buddies had this picture in a poster form , I was 13 and it literally blew my mind and I still love it just as much 50 years later

 

I painted my 65 GTO red because of that movie !

 

Just for you bud...

 

Who remembers the Midas commercial with Lee Van Cleef, Robert Tessier and Bo Hopkins,"Thems the brakes" it may have only aired in Canada. It's on youtube.com/watch?v=MojzEw54

 

I can believe he's not in good health. I saw him a number of years ago and he looked like death warmed over

 

These threads make you realize just how old you are. Where were you in 62? I was just being born. In 1973 I was not quite 11 when the movie came out. One of my buddies who was a couple years older than me wanted to go see it so I went along too. I didn't even know what the movie was about before we got there. I walked out of the theatre just blown away. Between seeing American Grafitti at the movies, rides in a 427 Vette my Dad's buddy owned, and going to see the funny cars several times at Englishtown as a boy, I was gut hooked on this stuff from an early age.

 

Exactly!!!

 

I just watched that Youtube video...very cool insight and to hear that back ground activities and thinking at the the time. Thanks for posting the reference!

 

I purchased a dvd of the movie decades ago.

 

Sheesh... what a night.

 

I didn’t come along until 66. My dad graduated in 60 mom in 64. They saw it when it came out and brought the soundtrack LP home to me. They took me to see it at the 41 outdoor drive in later. I was blown away by the cars! The music! Now I was screwed up for life, I blame my parents! I have worn out countless vhs and dvds. American Graffiti, Hollywood Knights are my 1&2 movies of all time!

 

Please don’t sully this thread with inferior Hollywood Knights talk.…

 

The ladies of AG.
Just because.

 

I have to agree with your Dad!

Dave

 

I saw this movie for the first time in 1993ish when I was 15ish, it was on regular TV in the middle of the night and I wasn't exactly what you would call a role model student in high school as I would stay up all night either reading car magazines or watching old movies on TV usually it was a combination of both (about the only thing I can guarantee you is I wasn't doing homework).
Somehow my parents never caught me with the TV on in the middle of the night but that's another story.
Anyways at 15 years old I was big time into hot rods and every single thing I can find with a hot rod in it or on it or that I can read about it I was all over it. I had heard about this movie from my father and when it came on in the middle of the night I was really excited It was worth falling asleep in third period the next day.
As I get older and tend to grasp time a lot better as everyone does as they age but I always found it odd until recently that this movie was reminiscing about a time that was only 10 or 12 years prior. I guess it's all a matter of perspective because if a movie came out today about the rockabilly/ratrod/HotRod crazy car culture of the late '90s early 2000s that I got to participate in as a young adult gearhead I would watch it in a heartbeat and that time frame was 20 to 25 years ago now (It's so crazy how fast time goes).
Obviously I wasn't around in the early 1960s and was it really a great time I'll never really know but if this movie was true to the era of which everybody says it was You could probably argue that American graffiti helped influence that whole hot rod revival scene and was probably one of the biggest influences on bringing back traditional hot rods and probably even helped get the site rolling.
It's funny I'm not really a Hollywood fan nor am I Ron Howard fan or even a happy days fan But I definitely appreciate this movie and this isn't a joke I think I'm going to watch it right now It's been probably a year or two since I've last seen it.

 

Cruising the strip is what I did from the age of 16 to the age of 18 +. Every Friday and Saturday night, From 1985 on. Sitting at home and being bored at other times. Make a few laps to p*** the time. This was what I did. Roll all those experiences altogether. Might be able to make a good movie as well. Hollywood Nights was a bit to unrealistic. AG is a movie you could relate to. It`s a part of life everybody should experience. Being a custom guy from day one. They missed the mark with the Merc. All the other cars, fit the movie. And what`s up with no pickups in the movie. I think I watched it on HBO every time it was on. Watched it again a couple nights ago. Everybody needs an AG poster on their shop wall. It should be mandatory.

 

And you need the AG album cover of the car hop girl in black leather pants displayed as well.