30th Anniversay of American Graffiti (Post your memories)

"Where were you in 62?" It was 1973 and a virtual unknown named George Lucas released a super small budget film with an even smaller shooting schedule and a cast of virtual unknowns that would launch very sucessful acting careers for many.
I could go on and on about trivial facts etc.as alot of you old timers on here will remember.Axle and I were about the biggest A/G nerds that ever lived I believe! haha.. I posted this because Little or nothing I think was ever mentioned about this year being the 30th Birthday of in my opinion was the coolest movie about the period.Post your thoughts,quotes,memories,pics whatever you got."Paradise Road"

 

I liked the scene where the freako in the hockey mask m***acred the drunk frat-boys with a chrome-plated cheese grater and a light-duty masterlock on a chain... wait, we talkin about the same movie?

 

one of the first movies i got really attached on when i was a kid i must have watched it like 10 times when i was 7 or something i was kinda in love with that girl that rode with milner when i was like 9...

 

eh up marcus tis one cool film ifirst saw it on a black &white portablbe telly in a caravan on holiday ingreat yarmouth! .when i was about 6 ,35 now think their might have been an influence in that film.it took 3years to build{and most of my money}hope you like my ride .keith.

 

It's me....but not my car.

 

That's how I found this place. Watched it this past February, and decided to do some research when it was over on the internet. Typed "AG" into google and viola! Here I am.

Jay

 

i was 16 ,driving a 1957 thames,hot rod black with red pinstriped flames and a beefed up 4 banger.the Canadian premiere of "AG" was at the "New West Drive In".me and my best bud Bill went every night for a week! knew it off by heart by the end of that week.still remember the parking lot being just stuffed with cool cars every night and everyone smokin the tires when they left.one of my fave memories! thanx Marcus.
the Reverand

 

The first time I saw it when I first saw the piss yaller chicken coop I thought to myself, "Self. why the **** did they do that to the radiator and those stoopid headers!
Other than that I thought it was cool because they didn't make ALL the kids out to be a bunch of hoodlums, just the % who probably would have been. A year or so ago my wife bought me the AG video and we sat down to watch it...A ways through it I said "don't you really like this part? to which she said "I don't know, I've never seen it!....After all I was only nine when it came out"....

Sadly,
I think the movie marked the point when "nostalgia" and the concept of "collectibles" became mainstream. There had always been antique shops but they dealt in actual 100+ year old antiquities, not stuff that peoples parents had bought and currently had around the house. Now every ****in' thing is a "collectible" stuff is sold as and claims on it's packaging ads that it is a "collectible" whatever...
And it really hurts to go into an antique & collectibles stoer and see dinnerwear being sold as "antique" that you yourself bought a set of in the 60s!
Now you cant' eve get quality old furniture in a Goodwill Store" because they put everything they even suspect of being actually "old" in their "collectibles" section and price it up higher than even the antique stores do. A friend went into the local Goodwill and saw a slightly rusty hand crank can opener that was marked up way high. He told them that's crazy because they still sold the same can opener across the street at Sav-on drug store. He got a shrug, so he went over to Sav-on and bought one and brought it and the reciept back, that was worth two shrugs...
I guess I'm tired of so many people instead of saying "Oh, That would be a nice treasure to own" They say "Oh, You can get a lot of money for that!" like the money has become the collectible?
They aren't really "collectibles", they are "sellables"!

 

First time I saw it I went away with the question "What gives with the lousy hood gap on the Pharoahs Merc?" It was good, but not good enough to make me want all the action figures.

Other than that most of my memories of the movie have been replaced with scenes of rooms full of old fat guys reminiscing while watching it, and line ups of old guys looking for autographs at ISCA shows.

 

I saw it in '75 or so at a little theater in Burnley, Lancashire. This ****hole sitting behind me sang along to every song very loudly.
It's a great movie, almost as good as The Cars That Ate Paris.

 

On a very recent road trip from La to Vancouver I decided to cruise the strip in Modesto with my wagon as a special AG tribute, I was also starving and hoping for a little mexican restaurant, all I found where Bail Bond offices and pu trucks. I spied several brite neon storefronts and ***uming they where restaurants I headed toward them only to be disappointed by yet another bail bond office. Maybe I should have been looking for "The Fall Guy" instead of A BAD *** black chevy g***er.
Favorite part of the film is when Milner kills his eng by dumping the the clutch before he jumps out of his deuce to save Falfa and "Suzy" (really).

 

I first saw that movie in high school...ina cl*** called "Film Study". I pissed the teacher off by writing my report on the movie all about the cars and how I thought Milner's car woulda flat got SPANKED by Falfa's 55!!!

 

My first memory of it was as a little kid. It was showed latenight at norw. tv, but I wasnt allowed to see it by my mother who thought it was a bit "unsuitable" (it must have been the ****-margarine-goatkiller part..). I raised hell, and was allowed to see the final race after all. Liked the 32, dug the 55. Saved up to buy the Revell kit of the 32 shortly after.

 

Obviously a great movie, but I cannot talk to authenticity since I wasn't around in '62. However, the one item that appears to be dead-on is Toad's order at Mel's:

"Double Chubby Chuck, Mexi-Cali Chili-Barb, two orders for french fries... and cherry Cokes".

Nobody writes that well - those gotta be real!

 

Where the hell's axle?

 

Where was I in 1962?

I was in the midwest, putting my 5 year old 1957 Chevy up against nearly every car and every smart-*** that thot the were that baddest thing on the streets...they lost.

I was cruising "Main Street USA" in a 1957 Chevy in Fremont, NE; Omaha, NE; Lincoln, NE and Sioux City, IA and every little small town in between that had a Main Street

I was out-running cops that loved to hand out "defective" tickets to cars with dual exhausts or thot we were a little out of hand doing burn-outs and drag races out on county asphalt roads or in town stop-light to stop-light "speed contests."

Hell, I lived "AG"...

Way many years before it became a cult movie.

And have no regrets...and lots of memories!
R-

 

40SD.. You ARE Bob Falfa.

Me... I was only 6 when it came out. Grew up watching Happy Days and loved Grease when it came out. Didn't see AG until much later in life. What surprised me the most about the movie was actually how GOOD it was. I was expecting the usual ****, no plot, spot the cool car kind of movie.

Instead I got a great story with good acting, some absolutely cl***ic lines ("I'm lookin' for a piss yeller Deuce Coupe") AND cool cars. What more could you want.

Long Live American Graffiti.

 

I first saw it as a 12 year old kid in Las Vegas. I remember getting mad becasue my parents wanted me to go to bed and I argued with them that I wanted to see this movie (it was on ABC or something like that). Maybe the cars weren't perfect to people who were around in '62, but they sure as hell were to me. That's when I decided that I hadto have a 5 window coupe one day (and also found out that my dad had owned a '31 5w with an Olds in it around the same time as the movie's based on). It was the coolest movie I had ever seen, right up there with the Spaghetti westerns I would record with an audio recorder.

The rest of the school year, I slicked my hair back and wore white T-shirts. What a geek.

I beg to differ about the movie making everything slightly old become an antique, although it does ad fuel to the fire. I think that as soon as everything became disposeable and made of plastic, those big, heavy kitchen appliances that lasted forever and big cars that were designed for looks AND reliability seemed pretty damned cool. Very few things of that sort of quality have been m*** produced in my lifetime. Go count how many Vegas and Reliant Ks are still on the road as opposed to heavy ***ed 50s cars.

I guess that was $.03.

 

I must have been 5 or 6 sitting in the back seat of my Dad's 1967 Camaro eating popcorn out of a brown paper bag (my mom made it and we brought it with us) and drinking Pepsi out of a gl*** bottle. We were at the Campus Drive-In (corner of College and El Cajon Blvd in San Diego) and it had this giant neon majorette twirling a baton out front. I rember thinking how the cars in the movie reminded me of all of my dad's friend's cars. When I was a kid I loved going to the drive-in with my parents. I can tell you what cars we were in when we went and what movies that we saw up until about 1978 or 1979.

 

What is this with parents not allowing kids see this movie? I guess I'm priveleged in this dept. My dad watched it everytime he could catch it on TV and come tell me that it was on...no matter what I was doing. On the other hand whenever a Billy Jack flick came on we had to go to bed.

To this day if he sees it in the TV listings he gives me a call and says "Grafitti's is on tonight..." and this leads into what is your favorite part....and your mom and I got married in '62...Your uncle had a '55 that would whip the **** out of that '55 in the movie and we never had rollbars in our cars, we ran out of money after we were done with the motor...them coupes never run as good as that yellow one...

Rippin' the *** end out of the cop car has to be one of my favorite scenes. And seeing Mackenzie Phillips' firm, pert and pointy ****s in a that white T-shirt gave me *****cent wood!

We also dig on Hollywood Knights the same way...pisses me off that Danza could'nt drive a stick and "Huffed" a motor at the stop light scene in that one...WHO"S THE BOSS and CHARLES IN CHARGE is more like what he should stick to. That little homo gets the best looking costars though.

Now for a little secret....I've never seen Two Lane Blacktop...is it really that good?

 

All I know is I wanted to be out in the tolies with the girl that toad was with and the bottle Old Harper boy did that bring back old memories.--TV

 

I only saw it two years ago!

"Hey, who cut the cheese??!!"

 

I always thought that both the Falfa car and the Milner car could have been done a lot better than they were. I do appreciate that they were on a budget, though. I always thought Milner should have been running an Olds with dual-quads or three-deuces and that the car he lost to should've been a stock 425 horse Impala SS. Sort of a symbol for the end of the hot rod era. With that hokey Man-A-Fre I'd think there was a fuelie Vette somewhere in the valley that could have already blown him off.

Still and all it's my favorite car movie. I also like Gone in Sixty Seconds. Hollywood Knights is just dumb and I've never seen Two Lane Blacktop though it sounds pretty far-fetched.

 

"Peel out! I just love it when guys peel out!" That Candy Clark was one Boss chick!

 

I graduated from HS in '62 so that movie has always been kind of special to me. My dad was in the Air Force and we were stationed in Michigan (Oscoda, Wertsmith AFB) about 200 miles north of Detroit.It was a small town and the air base made up about 1/2 of the popuation. I had moved there from Lincoln, Nebraska (Lincoln AFB) home of Speedway Motors, Americas oldest speed shop (yea, right).
I was driving a '29 Ford coupe with the engine out of my grandfathers 1947 Ford School bus. I drove the coupe with the stock engine in it from Oscoda across Canada to NY and down to Pennsylvania to spend the summer on my grandfathers farm where we transplanted the engine out of the bus in his farm maintainance shop. The bus BTW was the one I rode to school in first and second grade. I digress.
Anyway, AG sure brought back menories, I saw it when it first came out and could relate to many things depicted in it.

Frank

 

i remember I never really liked that movie , and all the best cars were only on the screen for a second or two . . . the cars that were cruising when dryfus was looking for the girl in the T-bird . that crazy 40 ford I think , with teh scallops . and the scooter was cool . the dopey girl that goes for the ride with the kid in the impala was cool coz she was a **** and liked to drink " a pint of the old stuff " . thats what i remember

 

except for a few dragstrip scenes, TWO LANE BLACKTOP, is a terrible movie. If you never have seen it, dont expect too much- Maybe you are suppose to smoke a little "wacky weed" before watching it. I didnt and I was very disappointed...Of course I am sure I will get chastised for this review..LOL

 

I got laid in my '40 Ford during the movie.......the fenderwell headers heat migrating through the shifter hole keep us toasty......

 

In 1973........I drove a black 55 Chevrolet 2 door post 150 (complete with a BBC) to the movie show.


I was so impressed that in 1988.....A-Bomb and I rented the largest indoor arena in our town and paid Wolfman Jack 10 grand to come and host the indoor car show we were promoting.

I went out to eat supper with the Wolfman and he was a very nice guy. He talked that way.....all the time. It was his natural voice. He told stories about the filming of the movie, his collection of cars (he had a red 59 Caddy convertible that Elvis gave him) and other neat stuff. He was working on a show theater at Myrtle Beach SC when he died. He was going to book all the oldies groups and MC the show himself.


He told A-Bomb and I that he had a percentage of the movie AG. It was in the Top 10 grossing movies of all time (years ago). He said he had recieved over 1 million dollars for his % of the royalty.