Graffiti World

George Lucas' American Graffiti reveals a whole new world

Though it doesn't contain a single note composed directly for the screen, my belief that the music for George Lucas' American Graffiti is the best film soundtrack of all time is unshakeable. I wore it out on vinyl, am wearing it out on CD, and will no doubt wear it out at least one more time on whatever form comes next.

For me, it is not just the sound of the fifties and early sixties - the era my parents, like the characters in the film, grew up in - it is one long, doo-wop march, to which I dutifully stepped to in a dark, suburban theatre, and emerged, march over, an adult.

The movie we were there to see, my young sister and I, was in the adjacent theatre. It was yet another Disney flick, That Darn Cat, starring the studio's squeaky stalwart, Dean Jones. At 13, the forced innocence of these things was beginning to wear thin for me. About halfway through, I mumbled something about the men's room and excused myself.

Stepping out into the red velour lobby, it occurred to me that the usher, the skinny, mop-topped boy with the aviator glasses and the off-yellow wide legs, had disappeared. This, I realized, was it. My chance.

Graffiti was a film I had heard a lot about; nothing specific, just rumblings from stuffy parents about its shockingly generous rating; any fourteen year old could fork over his paper route savings and be corrupted by images of fast cars, sexual escapades, and other forms of post-war debauchery. Thinking back on it now, what they probably seriously resented was the misrepresentation of their era, their strictly enforced Eisenhower haircuts and conservative flirting reconceived as a South Cal Sodom and Gomorrah.

Regardless, their rumblings had sold me harder than any fast-paced television preview. I slid into a tiny crack I had created between the theatre's doors, and before me, big as life, danced the swirling colors, swift pace, and, of course, relentless, soaring music of the Lucas fifties.

My parents were right; this was not their world. This was a complete sensorial immersion, at least for me, into a world-to-be: adolescence. This was not a movie I was watching; this was long, hypnotic stare into a crystal ball.

I had no idea, up until that magic moment, that movies could hold another purpose, that they were not just entertainments, but living landscapes of inspiring escapades, imitable behaviors, and above all, role models.

I was Toad, Toad the four-eyed, funny-in-spite-of-himself runt of the ensemble cast. Undersized, myopic and awkward, I could just see myself growing into him. That's me! There I am, four, five years from now, ramming my scooter into a vending machine!

What I aspired to was Curt, Curt the everyman, not classically handsome, not inordinately charming, but just enough of a cut above ordinary never to take a major step backward, nor too great a leap forward.

A tug at my pants. Shit! Expulsion from Oz! The usher! No. My sister.

I walked her back to the Dean Jones film, just as American Graffitti was coming, to the glorious sounds of the Beach Boys, to its end. "Curt Henderson," the screen had just read, "is a writer living in Canada."

Yes, I told myself. I will be that.