1973 – PG – 110 minutes

Before the show, join the Doo-Wop singers in a sing-a-long, featuring the music from American Graffiti!  6:45-7:45 pm at the Central Place on the Downtown Mall.

American Graffiti is a coming of age film co-written/directed by George Lucas starring Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Harrison Ford, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark and Mackenzie Phillips. Set in 1962 Modesto, California, American Graffiti is a study of the cruising and rock and roll cultures popular among the post–World War II baby boom generation. The film is a nostalgic portrait of teenage life in the early 1960s told in a series of vignettes, featuring the story of a group of teenagers and their adventures within one night.

Lucas’s choice of background music was crucial to the mood of each scene, but he was realistic about the complexities of copyright clearances and suggested a number of alternative tracks. Universal wanted Lucas and producer Gary Kurtz to hire an orchestra for sound-alikes. The studio eventually proposed a flat deal that offered every music publisher the same amount of money. This was acceptable to most of the companies representing Lucas’s first choices, but not to RCA – with the consequence that Elvis Presley is conspicuous by his absence from the soundtrack. Clearing the music licensing rights had cost approximately $90,000 and as a result there was no money left for a traditional film score.