![[box cover]](../../reviewimgs/a/americangrafitti.jpg)
American Graffiti: Collector's Edition
American Graffiti, when it was released in 1973, demonstrated that writer/director George Lucas had a talent for filmmaking that was well beyond his years. Covering one night in 1962 Modesto, Calif. (Lucas's hometown), American Graffiti blends the music, cars and fashions of the day with several interwoven stories of young people who face the difficult transition from adolescence to adulthood. Many members of the cast, which includes Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams, Charlie Martin Smith, Paul le Mat, Candy Clark, McKenzie Phillips, and a very young Harrison Ford, got their first big breaks in this low-budget film — a project that, at the time, Universal didn't understand or know what to do with. They get it now, of course, and their Collector's Edition DVD sports very good source print of the Lucas-approved cut, the original Dolby 2.0 soundtrack, the original theatrical trailer, textual supplements, and an 80-minute documentary on the making of American Graffiti with many insights from the cast and crew, producer Francis Ford Coppola, and Lucas himself, who talks extensively about his struggles to get American Graffiti made and how he sees the film in light of his subsequent career. Essential viewing for Lucas fans.
—JJB
