American Graffiti: A Screenplay

by George Lucas

Production rates and stills from the motion picture accompany the complete script for the nostalgic portrayal of teenage life in 1962

Genres: Fiction, Plays, Historical Fiction, Comedy

188 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

George Walton Lucas Jr. is an American filmmaker and philanthropist. He created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and founded Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairman of Lucasfilm before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012. Nominated for four Academy Awards, he is considered to be one of the most significant figures of the 20th-century New Hollywood movement, and a pioneer of the modern blockbuster. Despite this, he has remained an independent filmmaker away from Hollywood for most of his career.
After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Lucas moved to San Francisco and co-founded American Zoetrope with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. He wrote and directed THX 1138 (1971), based on his student short Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which was a critical success but a financial failure. His next work as a writer-director was American Graffiti (1973), inspired by his youth in early 1960s Modesto, California, and produced through the newly founded Lucasfilm. The film was critically and commercially successful and received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. Lucas's next film, the epic space opera Star Wars (1977), later retitled A New Hope, had a troubled production but was a surprise hit, becoming the highest-grossing film at the time, winning six Academy Awards and sparking a cultural phenomenon. Lucas produced and co-wrote the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). With director Steven Spielberg, he created, produced, and co-wrote Indiana Jones films Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Temple of Doom (1984), The Last Crusade (1989) and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and served as an executive producer, with a cursory involvement in pre and post-production, on The Dial of Destiny (2023).
In 1997, Lucas re-released the original Star Wars trilogy as part of a Special Edition featuring several modifications; home media versions with further changes were released in 2004 and 2011. He returned to directing with a Star Wars prequel trilogy comprising The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005). He last collaborated on the CGI-animated movie and television series of the same name, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008–2014, 2020), the war film Red Tails (2012) and the CGI film Strange Magic (2015). Lucas is also known for his collaboration with composer John Williams, who was recommended to him by Spielberg, and with whom he has worked for all the films in both of these franchises. He also produced and wrote a variety of films and television series through Lucasfilm between the 1970s and the 2010s.
Lucas is one of history's most financially successful filmmakers. He directed or wrote the story for ten of the 100 highest-grossing movies at the North American box office, adjusted for ticket-price inflation. Through his companies Industrial Light and Magic and Skywalker Sound, Lucas was involved in the production of, and financially benefited from, almost every big-budget film released in the U.S. from the late 1980s until the 2012 Disney sale. In addition to his career as a filmmaker, Lucas has founded and supported multiple philanthropic organizations and campaigns dedicated to education and the arts, including the George Lucas Educational Foundation, which has been noted as a key supporter in the creation of the federal E-Rate program to provide broadband funding to schools and libraries, and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a forthcoming art museum in Los Angeles developed with his wife, Mellody Hobson.

Reviews

[Anthony McGill · Rating 3 out of 5]

The complete Academy Award nominated screenplay * as written by George Lucas, Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck for the 1973 sleeper turned blockbuster: "American Graffiti."

This film, produced by Francis Ford Coppola & Gary Kurtz, directed by George Lucas and featuring a young and upcoming cast including Richard Dreyfuss, Ronny Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charlie Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark and Harrison Ford, garnered rave reviews when it was released and earned 5 Oscar nominations including Best Picture.

1962 High School days - coming of age - hot rods - drive-ins - Mel's - rock 'n' roll. A nostalgic glimpse of a group of California teenagers as they cruise the streets on their last summer night before college played out against the unforgettable music hits of the era. And an innocent period prior to the JFK assassination and the expansion of the Vietnam War catastrophe.

This paperback edition also contains 70 stills to compliment the screenplay.

"An altogether endearing movie that turns back the clock to an age of sublime innocence. Warm, funny, and poignant, a richly entertaining movie guaranteed to please nearly everyone!" -- Kathleen Carroll, New York Daily News.

"Brilliant ... bittersweet ... Lucas and his co-writers Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, build a structure of rich comic incident that is rooted in wisdom about adolescence ...... " -- Paul D. Zimmerman, Newsweek.

* Winner Best Screenplay - National Society of Film Critics.
* Winner Best Screenplay - New York Film Critics Circle.
* Nominated Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen - Writers Guild of America.

[Jeff Mayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the screenplay for the legendary movie. What makes it such an interesting read is that it is the original screenplay, meaning that scenes that were never filmed, or were cut due to time and budget, are still here. This adds a layer of depth to the characters for fans of the film. Each character has several scenes and quite a bit of dialog that never appeared in any version of the finished film.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was born in Stockton and raised in Modesto (where this movie takes place - George Lucas was from Modesto). I entered the freshman class of Thomas Downey High School (Dewey High? - the names are pretty similar) in September, 1962, so figuratively speaking I was at the Hop where Steve and Laurie led out with the first dance. When I first saw the movie in 1973, it had tremendous sentimental significance for he. Having just read the screen play, my recollection of those teenage years all comes back. Lucas changed some of the names, but others I remember: G Street, 10th Street, Paradise Road, Pharoahs, etc. Though I didn't buy into the language, antics and night-time "cruising" or "dragging" scene, many of my friends did, and Lucas' portrayal is true to life. A slice of Americana particularly nostalgic to me.

[Ivy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book to have around for impromptu recording parties, as it contains the entire screenplay for this iconic film along with inspiring pictures. Get two copies if you can swing it. Beyond that, you just need four people of passable acting talent, two bottles of wine to warm the vocal chords, and a tape recorder to document it all. If you're feeling ambitious, get out your record player and your AmGraf soundtrack and synchronize the songs to the scenes as you perform them. It's like movie karaoke!

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous job of conveying the unconveyable: all that excitement with the Wolfman as the de facto host of the party. A book (and movie) which somehow wraps up all the loose ends and individual characters into a perfect whole. Much like the similarly manic Fast Times at Ridgemont High would do a decade later.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

American Graffiti is about my hometown of Modesto, Ca. I love the movie and what it represents, so I really enjoyed reading this book.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember watching this movie multiple times growing up. I loved all the cars and music (my parents had the soundtrack) and seeing all the young actors who were by now grown and famous. My favorite part of this book was the short bios of the director, producer, and top cast of characters at the end. George Lucas was the director, but this was written well before he became famous for Star Wars, so the strongest praise they have for him at this point is that he was an assistant to Coppola on a few films and made THX-1138 (which is really interesting if you haven’t watched it!). Harrison Ford was not even high enough on the list of actors to be given a bio! It was really interesting to see where a lot of young people got their big break.

[G. Salter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scripts may never be quite as good the films made from them, bit this is an unusually readable one, and shows that with the right collaborators, Lucas could make stories with the human touch that his later movies lacked.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an okay story.