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American Graffiti Watch Along (Patreon)

Published:
2024-04-19 16:01:01
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Another one checked off the AFI List! Man it feels good! TBH this is not one of my fave movies but I can appreciate it!

OBS gave me a hard time again (this time I think it really is Mercury Retrograde) so I apologize for some mic blips! It's not too bad thou! Thank God

Let me know your feels about this movie!!!

xx

ames

Files

American Graffiti (1973)

Comments

RFK Fan

Launched soooo many careers including the Directors. When they first screened this for the studio the executives were grumbling they financed a complete BOMB. Francis Ford Coppola was standing next to them and told them they’re nuts! This movie will be a massive hit. He offered to write them a check that instant for the $750,000 the Studio paid for it. They quickly changed their minds and it went on to become one of the most PROFITABLE movies in history. Anybody recognize young Kathleen Quinlan here who would go on to play Tom hanks wife in Apollo 13?

Noell G

This movie is incredible!! I say this about every movie haha, but it’s one of my favorites❤️ everything about this movie is immaculate. The 50s/ 60s music absolutely rocks, I’m in awe of the cinematography, the beautiful cars😭 what a great pick!

Baron Imhoof

I appreciate this film, not because it is a particularly brilliant piece of art (I agree with Ames), but because of its consequence in cultural history. Right off the bat, it helped rebirth interest in the 1950s/early 60s/Happy Days vibe, plus it gave Lucas his seed money for Star Wars, Raiders, and so forth, so it also helped launch revolutions in special effects and subject matter. Beyond that, taking into consideration the careers it launched and how much they have impacted the economy and popular culture, it would be very hard to calculate the ways in which this movie remains historically important.

Toc

It may not be your favorite, but you most certainly weren't lying when you said you appreciated it! You got every joke, noticed virtually every great thing about the movie.....EXCEPT one thing, the very, very end! [EDIT: The famous ending has been removed, inexplicably, from Amazon Prime! Ames was watching it on Prime!] It's in that moment that you realize you've been watching a drama the whole time, not a comedy! I remember the movie theatre going silent during that part and someone gasping. Definitely a bittersweet, haunting ending.....very 70s! I didn't live during that period, but it means as much as to me as if I did. As you say: it's just so authentic feeling. The sound design in this.....unbelievable, with the radio going all around, from car to car.....blows me away every time. The photography and production design and costume design in this movie are just so beautiful. And the movie was done cheap! In less than a month! Un-freaking-believable! In short......GREAT reaction video, no matter how you feel about it! And you cross it off the AFI list, deepen your understanding of George Lucas, who directed your favorite trilogy......AND see what "Dazed And Confused" is paying homage to! I think you WILL enjoy it more upon a chance rewatch, especially now that you know what to expect, maybe I'm wrong (You've been watching a lot of nostalgia pieces AND driving movies, so perhaps you felt a little bit carsick/retro-sick, which made it feel flat! Because otherwise, you definitely "got" the movie! ) THANKS AMES!!!!

Hold Down A

UMMM i didn't see an epilogue!!! did i miss something OMG i sat and watched a lot of the credits! WHAT THE HECK

Toc

Question to the chat: on the copy of American Graffiti Ames watched, THERE"S NO EPILOGUE TEXT! It just shows the four yearbook pictures, with no text. Was that on the copy you guys just watched??? Did George Lucas mutilate his own mastepiece (again) and remove the "bummer ending"? Did Amazon Prime screw up or something??? How could they change the ending to American Graffiti? She just sat through the whole movie only to have the ending changed! Is this not an outrage?? People are renting "American Graffiti" and not getting the ending!

JM63

Borrowed this from the library when I was a kid b/c it said George Lucas and Harrison Ford on the box. Needless to say, I was VERY confused. The Last Picture Show, American Graffiti, and Dazed and Confused make a nice post-war American youth trilogy. But I think AG doesn't quite measure up to the other two. For a hangout movie to work, the characters have to do a lot of heavy lifting, and I wasn't all that engrossed in Curt's storyline. Still, it was cool to be reminded that young Lucas was a hell of a talented director, and I enjoyed soaking in the innocent (and perhaps naive) atmosphere of pre-British invasion, pre-Kennedy assassination, pre-Vietnam, and pre-hippy America. (I think nostalgia for **that** feeling probably influenced the AFI voters to put it on the list.)

Ron Plourde

I was watching on Netflix and the captions were there. I did think it odd that you didn't comment.

Justtired

There are several films on the AFI list I appreciate but don’t really enjoy. This is one of them. It’s well acted but it has always fallen a little flat with me, as well. Still, it was an enjoyable reaction as always. I especially appreciated the Wayne’s World reference 😂 You should create your own top 100 Greatest Movies of all Time based on the votes of your followers. Could be fun seeing everyone’s top 5 (could be 10 but 5 seems more manageable) and how many overlap. Just a thought

John Courtright

Let me just go ahead and apologize in advance. It's just my opinion guys, so don't come at me. I know others really love this movie, but I'm afraid this one didn't really resonate with me. This was a first time watch for me, and while I did find it a bit nostalgic, to me it seemed more of a caricature of the 60s than the actual 60s. The whole coming of age, end of summer, loss of innocence vibe kinda fell flat with me. I didn't relate to the characters and they all seemed two dimensional to me. The 60s songs were okay and well-chosen, but I'm more of a 70's music guy so I didn't love them. I DID really appreciate the ubiquitous radio music travelling with the camera from place to place and I thought some of the camera shots were great, whether through a fence or through the reflections on car windows. To a certain extent I can understand the symbolic impact of the film, but I believe I would have personally resonated more deeply with one character's well-developed story than a series of vignettes about characters we never really get to know at a deep level. Still, I'm glad I watched it.

Clay F

Nice rewatchinig this movie along with your reaction. Aspects I like about the movie are the music and seeing all those actors at a young age, and the movie capturing that time. We watched weekly the "Happy Days" TV series (starring Ron Howard) inspired by this movie. The movie is loosely based on George Lucas' experiences in Modesto, California. The movie is set in 1962, which many consider the spiritual end of the 1950s. It was pre-Kennedy assassination, which was a dividing line back then. The movie was released in 1973, only 11 years after the time setting of the movie, but a signficant difference (distance) in terms of cultural change. One reason American Graffiti was impactful is people responded to that memory lane. You suspected a nostalgia aspect in your outro.

Hold Down A

I look forward to responding to all of you ASAP! Some great Convos! Love you all!

Shawn Goforth

I'm with Noell on this one, in that it's long been a favorite (yes, probably the music), though I do not watch it as often as other favorites, I also believe it to be somewhat overrated, and it took me a handful of viewings to appreciate it as much as I do. As far as the epilogue is concerned, maybe Ames was actually spared. I wish it had never been put in. Anyone I have ever watched this with has looked over at me afterwards with a wtf look on their face, like we just watched this nice, nostalgic, uplifting, though bittersweet film, only to have the ending reveal that most of the characters we've followed went on to experience disappointing lives and deaths. I also have never been invested in Curt's story line. He is the only one that has an okay ending. He becomes a writer...so he can write about things that happen to other people (in my best Billy Crystal). Many of the writer/directors from the American New Wave, or New Hollywood, use a character (or two) to reflect themselves and their own feelings or life experiences. Most can be divided into two camps. The characters are either overly self-involved, allowing things to happen TO them, or they are more self-aware, understand how small they are in the big scheme of things, and spend the majority of the story processing, overcoming, and chasing the dream to make it happen. Curt (Lucas) falls into the former. He's really just blowing with the wind in this one, and since he hasn't made up his mind, I'm not overly invested in any choice he makes. I have little to root for. I love this movie in spite of those things, but I'm a sucker for nostalgia. The music chosen for this was meant to resonate with those who lived through the period. It Belonged to them, and it is meant to set the mood and carry the tone throughout. Music would evolve for another couple of decades before I would even be born, but it puts me into the same state of mind that the music of my generation does for us. We all remember those few transformative years, when every lyric and note of every song we heard was important, to a point that one of them comes on in the background, and we can see the face of someone we haven't thought about in years.

Greg In East TN

One of my favorite movies. I was a kid in the early 60s, but love seeing the old cars I grew up with. Sadly, after this movie, the war started and the decade got really tumultuous. But things were cheap, like 10-cent cokes and 5-cent candy bars and 25-cent per gallon gas. My "wild" years were about 10 years after this in the 70s. A lot of it was similar, but culturally a lot of things had changed. Richard Dreyfuss was a great actor then, too, but it's weird seeing him in this then watching his later movies. Of course, I was used to seeing Ron Howard as Opie in Mayberry, so it was weird seeing him in this role. I don't think a lot was mentioned about it, but that was Suzanne Sommers driving the white T-bird. And of course, Harrison Ford went on to be one of the great actors of all time. There's some things I think you would have liked about that era, but some things you wouldn't have liked about that era as well. Probably true for any era. It's great watching these movies with you! Thanks!