American Graffiti has a huge fan base in Japan as evidenced by the mad respect and love shown for the Milner Coupe at last years Yokohama Mooneyes show. And the fascination doesn't stop with the cars. Check out this link for www.americangraffiti.jp . That's the Japanese language version. You can access the English version here.
The translations have to be automated because they are strange at best and hilarious at times. But what comes through is their obvious love for our favorite film by the research they've done and the terrific resources they have provided. Lots of pictures, pages and links to sift through. Have fun and Arigatou gozaimasu to the Facebook friend who turned me on to this.
Aloha.
Showing posts with label All Graffiti All The Time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label All Graffiti All The Time. Show all posts
Monday, December 12, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Talking Shop With Paul LeMat
Sam Weisberg over at the Hidden Films website had a terrific chat with our favorite actor recently. Sam was kind enough to post the transcript and even took the time to let us know about it. Check it out. Aloha.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The Milner Coupe 2011 - Hot August Nights
Cousin JP was in Reno last month during a hot August day and found the Graffiti Bunch alive and well and the Coupe looking spanky clean.
Aloha!
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| The real Milner Coupe |
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| Pretty awesome site. Looks like a Paradise Road re-dux! |
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| Rick Figari's Falfa tribute is probably alot nicer than the real deal. Haven't heard it run yetthough. |
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| Candy Clark is way too popular to get a proper lunch break. |
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| Paul LeMat looking fit and ready to race. He's always accomodating to Graffiti fans. |
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| Popular Bo Hopkins is always a blur at these fan functions. |
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Where Were You In '62?
Riverdale evidently. This is Archie Graffiti drawn by Jeff Shultz & colored by Hedvig Haggman-Sund.
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Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
On Location: Cruising With 'American Graffiti' by Larry Abramson
This story was broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition August 11, 2011
Watch the opening scenes of George Lucas's 1973 classic American Graffiti, and you will catch glimpses of my hometown, San Rafael, California, as it flits past the windshields of the classic cars that serve as the real set of this movie. As the film opens, Steve, played by Ron Howard, and Curt, played by Richard Dreyfuss, are whiling away their last night home before leaving for college back east. Curt is plagued by doubts, and Steve has to speak a little courage to him. "We're finally getting out of this turkey town and now you want to crawl back into your cell, right? You just can't stay 16 forever! You've got to get that into your head!"
What is it about this "turkey town" that makes it so confining? We never really learn that. We just know that this place, a composite of San Rafael and a bunch of other Bay Area burgs, is nowhere. It is a cultural backwater that drowns anyone who stays there past high school. Take the character John Milner, the town's dominant drag racer. Just out of high school, he's already beset by nostalgia for a mythic past. He can still remember the time when it took a whole tank of gas to cruise the main drag. Even though there's still plenty of action on the strip, it's just not the same.
That sense of nostalgia is why we went back to the strip for our series "On Location," which looks at the places where movies are filmed, and the ones they evoke. American Graffiti was shot in small towns in Northern California, but its real stage is those lanes of blacktop.
So our heroes spend a restless night driving up and back, hooking up, looking for love, searching for some excitement. They have to keep moving, to get to that special place that they never find. It's a familiar feeling to me, and the guy I used to drive around with in high school, Rob Pollock.
Rob and I recently got together for the first time in about 25 years, for a memorial cruise up Fourth Street, to remember our endless wild-goose chases, for the elusive party we had heard was going on somewhere nearby. Usually, it wasn't clear whether there was a party to find, and often as not our drive led us in circles. But the search was all that mattered. If we sat still, we might as well sleep through our youth.
By the time Rob and I could drive, cruising was already in decline. Muscle cars drink a lot of gas, and it's tough to cruise in your mom's Toyota. When American Graffiti came out in our senior year, the movie actually reintroduced cruising, like an extinct plant returned to its native habitat. As Rob recently remembered during our reprise tour, the summer after the movie's premiere, San Rafael's main drag was clogged with cars seeking to reenact the movie's cruising scenes. But soon, the police shut cruising down, and the downtown was left to its inexorable decline.
American Graffiti had that effect in a lot of places, like Petaluma, where most of the film was actually made.
Petaluma is now the staging ground for an annual tribute to the film, full of classic beauties, like a cherry red 55 Chevy pickup that sits in the driveway of John Furrer, who helps organize the American Graffiti event. Furrer likes to give tours of spots where key scenes were filmed, like the final race on Paradise Road.
That race ends in a fiery crash that humbles both racers and helps convince the character of Steve to put off college, and stay with his hometown girl. John Furrer knows that feeling. Like the main characters, Furrer felt the pressure to leave town and go to college. But after two weeks, he turned around and came back. "I wasn't ready to leave home," Furrer says. "Kind of like Ron Howard in the movie, where he wanted to, he was ready to, he thought he could do everything. But yet there were too many things holding him back: his girlfriend, that kind of stuff. And that's kind of what happened with me."
Furrer married, settled down in Petaluma, and appears happy as a clam here.
In the movie, the character of Curt needs a major shove before he follows his destiny to leave this joint. Curt seeks out legendary DJ Wolfman Jack in a lonely radio studio, in hopes of getting a message to the mysterious blonde he has spotted. The Wolfman helps him find that girl, but he also gives Curt some advice. "There's a great big beautiful world out there," he tells him, and convinces the young man to go explore it.
Curt follows that call, and gets on a plane.
This movie, most movies, portrays this as the courageous choice: get out of town. But as we are reminded in the film's final scene, leaving your hometown doesn't change everything. John Milner, the racer, tells Curt, "You probably think you're a big shot, going off like this. But you're still a punk."
That is one undeniable fact I'm reminded of when I go home — no matter how far away you roam, your first step on home territory turns you back into that sniveling punk you were in high school.
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Cruising on Main Street: A scene from George Lucas's 1973 film American Graffiti.
What is it about this "turkey town" that makes it so confining? We never really learn that. We just know that this place, a composite of San Rafael and a bunch of other Bay Area burgs, is nowhere. It is a cultural backwater that drowns anyone who stays there past high school. Take the character John Milner, the town's dominant drag racer. Just out of high school, he's already beset by nostalgia for a mythic past. He can still remember the time when it took a whole tank of gas to cruise the main drag. Even though there's still plenty of action on the strip, it's just not the same.
So our heroes spend a restless night driving up and back, hooking up, looking for love, searching for some excitement. They have to keep moving, to get to that special place that they never find. It's a familiar feeling to me, and the guy I used to drive around with in high school, Rob Pollock.
Rob and I recently got together for the first time in about 25 years, for a memorial cruise up Fourth Street, to remember our endless wild-goose chases, for the elusive party we had heard was going on somewhere nearby. Usually, it wasn't clear whether there was a party to find, and often as not our drive led us in circles. But the search was all that mattered. If we sat still, we might as well sleep through our youth.
By the time Rob and I could drive, cruising was already in decline. Muscle cars drink a lot of gas, and it's tough to cruise in your mom's Toyota. When American Graffiti came out in our senior year, the movie actually reintroduced cruising, like an extinct plant returned to its native habitat. As Rob recently remembered during our reprise tour, the summer after the movie's premiere, San Rafael's main drag was clogged with cars seeking to reenact the movie's cruising scenes. But soon, the police shut cruising down, and the downtown was left to its inexorable decline.
John Furrer of Petaluma, Calif. in front of his 1955 Chevy pickup.
American Graffiti had that effect in a lot of places, like Petaluma, where most of the film was actually made.
Petaluma is now the staging ground for an annual tribute to the film, full of classic beauties, like a cherry red 55 Chevy pickup that sits in the driveway of John Furrer, who helps organize the American Graffiti event. Furrer likes to give tours of spots where key scenes were filmed, like the final race on Paradise Road.
That race ends in a fiery crash that humbles both racers and helps convince the character of Steve to put off college, and stay with his hometown girl. John Furrer knows that feeling. Like the main characters, Furrer felt the pressure to leave town and go to college. But after two weeks, he turned around and came back. "I wasn't ready to leave home," Furrer says. "Kind of like Ron Howard in the movie, where he wanted to, he was ready to, he thought he could do everything. But yet there were too many things holding him back: his girlfriend, that kind of stuff. And that's kind of what happened with me."
Furrer married, settled down in Petaluma, and appears happy as a clam here.
In the movie, the character of Curt needs a major shove before he follows his destiny to leave this joint. Curt seeks out legendary DJ Wolfman Jack in a lonely radio studio, in hopes of getting a message to the mysterious blonde he has spotted. The Wolfman helps him find that girl, but he also gives Curt some advice. "There's a great big beautiful world out there," he tells him, and convinces the young man to go explore it.
Curt follows that call, and gets on a plane.
This movie, most movies, portrays this as the courageous choice: get out of town. But as we are reminded in the film's final scene, leaving your hometown doesn't change everything. John Milner, the racer, tells Curt, "You probably think you're a big shot, going off like this. But you're still a punk."
That is one undeniable fact I'm reminded of when I go home — no matter how far away you roam, your first step on home territory turns you back into that sniveling punk you were in high school.
*
Friday, July 29, 2011
Friday, June 03, 2011
Hot Rod Deluxe - July 2011
So I'm down in SoCal last weekend and I get a message from John H to check out next month's Hot Rod Deluxe that just came out. Holy cow, what a nice surprise! Not only is there an article about the American Graffiti Coupe with a great picture of Candy Clark, more importantly it's also got a picture of Norm Grabowski and Mamie Van Doren from Sex Kittens Go To College (page 43)!!! Oh... and as a side note it even has a couple shots of The Naked Milner!
Part of the Roddin' @ Random section, the article is about the stars of American Graffiti and the continuing popularity of the film. They took the included photos and talked to Ms. Clark at the Sacramento Autorama that we took part in earlier this year. Now, we had no idea they were doing this (the SOBs didn't even mention our name, mistakenly referring to A&M as the builder, but I digress). And in addition to showing The Naked Milner three times, they closed the article by very generously declaring our coupe as perhaps being "closer to the original version than the yellow survivor itself" and "the best clone" they've seen yet. I'm not sure about that (yeah, right) but it's high praise indeed. Thanks guys.
Part of the Roddin' @ Random section, the article is about the stars of American Graffiti and the continuing popularity of the film. They took the included photos and talked to Ms. Clark at the Sacramento Autorama that we took part in earlier this year. Now, we had no idea they were doing this (the SOBs didn't even mention our name, mistakenly referring to A&M as the builder, but I digress). And in addition to showing The Naked Milner three times, they closed the article by very generously declaring our coupe as perhaps being "closer to the original version than the yellow survivor itself" and "the best clone" they've seen yet. I'm not sure about that (yeah, right) but it's high praise indeed. Thanks guys.
Aloha
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Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Greenline - March 15, 1994 Volume XVIII
Here's a specialized newsletter for Ford Edsel owners. Can you really blame them for claiming Laurie's car to be the 'real' star of American Graffiti? Not a lot of other famous Edsels in the movies, or anywhere else for that matter. It really wasn't the PT Cruiser of it's day.
And because this featured car has been pretty much ignored at the car shows and Graffiti tributes (Sweden being an exception), we guess it shouldn't be too much longer before the cloners discover this wide open opportunity. It probably had as much, if not more screen time in the film as the more iconic cars. And due to it's relative unpopularity when it came out compared to Deuces and Chevys, it would probably make a highly challanging and interesting project. We can't imagine parts are too easy to come by, especially for the Corsair 4-door.
The presence of one of these parked next to Steve's '58 and Milner's Coupe would sure fill out the next Mel's Drive-In reproduction nicely.
Then someone can tackle Kurt's ride!
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Monday, March 14, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Love American Graffiti Style
We have a couple of regular readers in Japan and one of them let all of us know via Facebook that he and his family were safe and well.
As demonstrated by the huge attendance at last years Mooneyes show, there are a lot of American Graffiti fans over there. The custom car scene in Japan rivals anywhere else in the world. Some of the rods and bikes they are turning out are truly awe inspiring. While we send are best wishes to eveyone in Japan, let's hope those cars were on the high ground.
Aloha and Bonzai!
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Wednesday, March 09, 2011
One On One With Paul LeMat
Mark Groesbeck of Kip's American Graffiti Blog talked with our man Paul LeMat at the recent Autorama in Sacramento, California. It's one of if not the most interesting chats on tape that have been posted with Mr. Milner. Take a few few moments and check it out. Aloha.
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Tuesday, March 08, 2011
American Graffiti In 3-D !
Well not quite but it is finally being released in the Blu-ray format.
Or as it says on Blu-ray.com...
Universal Studios Home Entertainment has announced that it will release American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) on Blu-ray on May 31.
Special features include:
U-Control:
Video commentary with director George Lucas
The Music of American Graffiti
The Making of American Graffiti
Screen Tests
Theatrical Trailer
My Scenes
BD-Live
Pocket BLU App
One of the special features is a screen in screen commentary from Lucas on what you are watching at the moment. That should be fun, but I wonder if he'll be able to explain the shots as fast as they're going by. It'll also be interesting to see whether there is a marked improvement in the picture since Lucas originally shot it in a format designed to keep some grain in the finished film. Are all films improved by Blu-ray? Maybe it'll make it easier to see details on the cars. Hope so.
This isn't the be all, end all of Graffiti editions though. There are still those 60 plus minutes missing from the first director's cut. Lucas never throws anything away. They gotta be in somebody's closet. That's when this film will need some commentary. But for now, we get a pristine version of our favorite film and some cool new gadgets. I'm sure the Wolfman will have never looked better.
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Or as it says on Blu-ray.com...
Universal Studios Home Entertainment has announced that it will release American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) on Blu-ray on May 31.
U-Control:
Video commentary with director George Lucas
The Music of American Graffiti
The Making of American Graffiti
Screen Tests
Theatrical Trailer
My Scenes
BD-Live
Pocket BLU App
One of the special features is a screen in screen commentary from Lucas on what you are watching at the moment. That should be fun, but I wonder if he'll be able to explain the shots as fast as they're going by. It'll also be interesting to see whether there is a marked improvement in the picture since Lucas originally shot it in a format designed to keep some grain in the finished film. Are all films improved by Blu-ray? Maybe it'll make it easier to see details on the cars. Hope so.
This isn't the be all, end all of Graffiti editions though. There are still those 60 plus minutes missing from the first director's cut. Lucas never throws anything away. They gotta be in somebody's closet. That's when this film will need some commentary. But for now, we get a pristine version of our favorite film and some cool new gadgets. I'm sure the Wolfman will have never looked better.
*
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Hot Rod New Zealand - April 1992
Or...
All the way back in 1992, these guys had it going on Graffiti style way down in New Zealand.
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"Connecticutt Yankees in King PÅtatau's Court"
All the way back in 1992, these guys had it going on Graffiti style way down in New Zealand.
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Sunday, January 16, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Crawdaddy - July 1978
Here's an article that came out just before the re-release of American Graffiti. We also put up a little homemade radio tribute to Stockton California. You know, the home of Herbie & The Heartbeats.
KSTN Stockton, CA 1962 - Big Daddy Radio
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KSTN Stockton, CA 1962 - Big Daddy Radio
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