Combining a detailed film analysis with archival research and social
science approaches, this book examines how American Graffiti (1973), a
low-budget and star-less teen comedy by a filmmaker whose only previous
feature had been a box office flop, became one of the highest grossing
and most highly acclaimed films of all time in the United States, and
one of the key expressions of the nostalgia wave washing over the
country in the 1970s.
American Graffiti: George Lucas, the New Hollywood and the Baby Boom
Generation explores the origins and development of the film, its form
and themes as well as its marketing, reception, audiences and impact. It
does so by considering the life and career of the film's co-writer and
director George Lucas; the development and impact of the baby boom
generation to which he, many of his collaborators and the vast majority
of the film's audience belonged; the transformation of the American film
industry in the late 1960s and 1970s; and broader changes in American
society which gave rise to an intense sense of crisis and growing
pessimism across the population.
This book is ideal for students, scholars and those with an interest in
youth cinema, the New Hollywood and George Lucas as well as both Film
and American Studies more broadly.