2012 Summer Arts Festival: American Graffiti
Venue: Lyric Theatre, Blacksburg
Directions: Google Map Link
Date: Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Time: 3:00 - 5:00 PM
Event Types: Arts & Theatre
Cost: Free
Description:
As part of the 2012 Summer Arts Festival, The Lyric will be showing classic films for free throughout the summer. The second film is American Graffiti directed by George Lucas.
Fresh off The Godfather (1972), producer Francis Ford Coppola had the clout to get his friend George Lucas's project made, but only for $750,000 on a 28-day shooting schedule. Despite technical obstacles, and having to shoot at night, cinematographer Haskell Wexler gave the film the neon-lit aura that Lucas wanted, evoking the authentic look of a suburban strip to go with the authentic sound of rock-n-roll.
Universal, which wanted to call the film Another Slow Night in Modesto, thought it was unreleasable. But Lucas' period detail, co-writers Willard Huyck's and Gloria Katz's realistic dialogue, and the film's nostalgia for the pre-Vietnam years apparently appealed to a 1973 audience embroiled in cultural chaos: American Graffiti became the third most popular movie of 1973 (after The Exorcist and The Sting), establishing the reputations of Lucas (whose next film would be Star Wars) and his young cast, and furthering the onset of soundtrack-driven, youth-oriented movies. Although the film helped spark 1970s nostalgia for the 1950s, nothing else would capture the flavor of the era with the same humorous candor and latent sense of foreboding.
The film was released in 1973 and is rated PG.
For more information, visit: http://www.sopac.vt.edu/events/summer_arts_festival.html or call: 540-951-0604.
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