| More American Graffiti | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster byWilliam Stout | |
| Directed by | B. W. L. Norton |
| Written by | B. W. L. Norton |
| Based on | Characters byGeorge Lucas Gloria Katz Willard Huyck |
| Produced by | Howard Kazanjian |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Caleb Deschanel |
| Edited by | Tina Hirsch |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 110 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2.5[1]–3 million[2] |
| Box office | $8–15 million (US)[2][3] |
More American Graffiti is a 1979 Americancoming-of-agecomedy film written and directed byBill L. Norton, produced byHoward Kazanjian. The film, shot in multiple aspect ratios for comedic and dramatic emphasis, is the sequel to the 1973 filmAmerican Graffiti. While the first film followed a group of friends during the evening before they depart for college, the sequel depicts where they end up on consecutive New Years Eves from 1964 to 1967.
Most of the main cast members from the first film returned for the sequel, includingCandy Clark,Ron Howard,Paul Le Mat,Cindy Williams,Mackenzie Phillips,Charles Martin Smith,Bo Hopkins, andHarrison Ford. (Richard Dreyfuss was the only principal cast member from the original film not to appear in the sequel). It was the final live-action theatrical film in which Ron Howard would play a credited, named character.
The film, set over the course of four consecutive New Year's Eves from 1964 to 1967, depicts scenes from each of these years, intertwined with one another as though events happen simultaneously. The audience is protected from confusion by the use of a distinct cinematic style for each section. For example, the 1966 sequences echo themovie of Woodstock using split screens and multiple angles of the same event simultaneously on screen, the 1965 sequences (set inVietnam) shot hand-held on grainysuper 16 mm film designed to resemble war reporters' footage. The film attempts to memorialize the 1960s with sequences that recreate the sense and style from those days, with references toHaight-Ashbury, thecampus peace movement, the beginnings of themodern women's liberation movement and theaccompanying social revolt. One character burns hisdraft card, showing a younger audience what so many Americans had done on the television news ten years before the film's release. Other characters are shown frantically disposing of their marijuana before a traffic stop as a police officer pulls them over, and another scene shows the police overreaction to ananti-Vietnam War protest.
The storylines and fates of the main characters include the following:
The final scenes show Steve, Laurie, Andy, and Vicki in front of the appliance store watching the TV, Debbie, Newt and the Electric Haze in the band's van, and Terry walking alone wearing civies, now AWOL after faking his death. All of them are singing "Auld Lang Syne". Milner is in his deuce coupe at night on a hilly road while listening to the song play on the radio, driving toward his fatal encounter.
Wolfman Jack briefly reprises his role, but is only heard in voice-over. The drag racing scenes were filmed at the Fremont Raceway, later Baylands Raceway Park, now the site of multiple automobile dealerships inFremont, California.
After the success of the original film,George Lucas, who directedAmerican Graffiti, felt that he should direct a sequel. However, his colleagueGary Kurtz and the film's producerFrancis Ford Coppola declined to make a sequel since sequels were not as well received. Lucas shelved the sequel to work onStar Wars andRaiders of the Lost Ark.
After the success ofStar Wars,Universal City Studios presidentSid Sheinberg felt thatAmerican Graffiti could have a sequel. Lucas was initially reluctant to do a sequel,[4] but after discussions with producerHoward Kazanjian, he agreed to do so.
Lucas felt that he should not direct the film due to various circumstances, such as handling his company's financing, developingRadioland Murders withWillard Huyck andGloria Katz, whom he had worked with on the film, and writing the screenplay ofThe Empire Strikes Back and planning hisIndiana Jones franchise with fellow directorSteven Spielberg. Finding a director was problematic for Lucas and Kazanjian. Kazanjian's top choice wasJohn Landis, who declined to work on it. Lucas’ professorIrvin Kershner was also considered, but rejected the offer due to his lack of experience in comedy.
Lucas consideredRobert Zemeckis, who had finished directing his first feature filmI Wanna Hold Your Hand, but he turned down the offer.Bill L. Norton was picked by Lucas as being suitable due to his California upbringing and experience with comedy. Lucas and Kazanjian asked him to do a screenplay, which Norton quickly accepted. Lucas was involved in the production by acting as the executive producer, editing both Norton's screenplay and supervising the finished motion picture, and even setting up a camera for sequences set in theVietnam War.
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The film was released on DVD in September 2003 and once more as a double feature teamed withAmerican Graffiti (1973) in January 2004. It was later released on digital disc in 2011 and finally released on Blu-ray for Europe in May 2012 and for North America in June 2018.
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The film also featured a 24-tracksoundtrack album featuring music from the film, along with the voice-over tracks byWolfman Jack. That album is out of print and has never been released on CD.
A fictional band named Electric Haze featuringDoug Sahm appears in the film, most notably performing theBo Diddley song "I'm a Man".
An earlier album, also titledMore American Graffiti, was an official album sequel to the first soundtrack toAmerican Graffiti. The album (MCA 8007) was released in 1975, four years before the film sequel of the same name was released. While only one of the songs in this album was actually used in the 1973 motion picture, this collection was compiled and approved by George Lucas for commercial release. In 1976, MCA Records released a third and final Various Artists double album set titled:American Graffiti Vol. III (MCA 8008). Unlike the first two albums,American Graffiti Vol. III does not include dialogue with Wolfman Jack.
More American Graffiti opened on August 3, 1979, the same weekend asApocalypse Now andMonty Python's Life of Brian.[5]The Numbers puts the gross at $8.1 million,[3] andBox Office Mojo at $15 million.[2] Despite its minor box office success, its gross was nowhere near as high as that ofAmerican Graffiti, even though Ron Howard, Cindy Williams and Harrison Ford were bigger stars (due to their major roles in the TV hitsHappy Days andLaverne & Shirley and the filmStar Wars) in 1979 than they had been in 1973.
The film received negative reviews from critics, in contrast to the critical acclaim received by its predecessor.Rotten Tomatoes reported that 20% of critics were positive based on 10 reviews.[6]
Janet Maslin ofThe New York Times called it "grotesquely misconceived, so much so that it nearly eradicates fond memories of the original ... The times— the story is scattered like buckshot from 1964 to 1967— have grown dangerous, but these people haven't awakened at all. They're still the same fun-loving rock-and-rollers, and there's nothing they can't trivialize. So here is a comic look at campus rioting. Here are the beach party aspects of the Vietnam War."[7] Dale Pollock ofVariety stated in his review that "More American Graffiti may be one of the most innovative and ambitious films of the last five years, but by no means is it one of the most successful ... without a dramatic glue to hold the disparate story elements together,Graffiti is too disorganized for its own good, and the cross-cutting between different film styles only accentuates the problem."[8]
Gene Siskel of theChicago Tribune gave the film two out of four stars and called it "one long confusing movie" that is "really too ambitious for its own good."[9] OnSneak Previews,Roger Ebert said he thought it was a "much better film" than Siskel did, that he "had no trouble following it" and that "it's a film worth seeing."[10]
Charles Champlin of theLos Angeles Times was also positive, writing that "the protagonists are affecting as before andMore American Graffiti is an uncommonly evocative trip back to our common past— a stirring reminder in both style and substance of what we've been through."[11] Gary Arnold ofThe Washington Post wrote "All this fussy, arbitrary switching of scenes, years and aspect ratios may wow them back in film school, but the complicated framework reveals nothing but one inconsequential or misleading vignette after another. Norton doesn't achieve a true dramatic convergence of parallel stories; and his historical vision is confined to cheerleading reaffirmations of all the old counterculture cliches about war, cops, Women's Liberation, you name it."[12]
Veronica Geng ofThe New Yorker called the film "a mess of time shifts and pointless, confusing split-screen techniques that make the images look dinky instead of multiplying their impact. For as busy a movie I have seen, it is visually one of the most boring. Norton trades in the grammar of moving pictures for a formula that says the sixties equals fragmentation equals split screen— and split screen we get; baby's first jigsaw puzzles of simultaneous action, until we long for a simple cut from a moving car to a closeup of the driver."[13]David Ansen ofNewsweek wrote "This is all very film-school fancy, but what does it mean? Alas, precious little. 'More' in this case is decidedly less. Once you get used to the cross-cutting— which is rather like switching channels between four different TV shows— the realization dawns that none of the segments is particularly interesting."[14]
George Lucas reflected on the experience in 1997 during the production ofStar Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, remarking toFrank Oz: "You just never know on these things. I did aMore American Graffiti; it made ten cents. Just failed miserably."[15]
In 2021,The Guardian's Matt Mitchell wrote about the film, by then "largely forgotten", for the newspaper's "Hear Me Out" series, in which critics argue for more favorable receptions for films often seen as artistic failures. He argued that its commercial failure was all but certain given its box office competition on opening weekend (Apocalypse Now andMonty Python's Life of Brian), and that it suffered by association with most sequels at the time being perceived as financially motivated since they were not part of studios'business models yet. "More American Graffiti is an experimental love-letter to teenage omnipotence becoming adult mortality", centered around Milner's death and the characters in the later storylines processing it. "There is a beautiful melancholia lurking beneath the comedic surface. It's an empathetic look at the distances in which our sorrows can migrate."[5]
