5 Graffiti Gamble

Chapter 5 Graffiti Gamble With Zoetrope gone, George formed his own company, Lucasfilm Ltd. He considered trying to write a screenplay about the Vietnam War called Apocalypse Now. But in 1971 no one was interested in producing a movie about the war in Vietnam. So George put that idea on hold. Instead, he began working on a movie about his own teenage years. He'd loved driving up and down the streets of Modesto. Maybe movie audiences would be interested in a story about cruising. He called it American Graffiti.

If he was going to make a pitch to a studio, he needed more than one idea. As a kid, he had loved science fiction comics. Maybe he could do an exciting action movie set in space. He sent both ideas to the movie studios. Many people in Hollywood who were twice George's age and had far more experience had never even had one of their ideas picked up by a major studio. But George was confident that his could be hits. Would anyone in Hollywood agree with him? On George's twenty-sixth birthday, David Picker of United Artists offered him a two- picture deal if George would turn in a full screenplay for American Graffiti, for which they'd pay $10,000. George asked a film school friend, Richard Walter, to write the script. But George was disappointed with Walter's script. Walter had written a movie about wild teenagers—not the movie that George had envisioned. Now George had to write the script himself— for free, since Walter got all the money for his draft. George wrote furiously, listening to the rock-and-roll songs of his youth that he planned

to use on the sound track of the movie. He borrowed money from his father and even turned down a studio directing job. Even though he needed the money, he wanted to work on his own stories. The studio hated George's first script and turned it down. He rewrote it and showed it to other studios. Finally Universal Pictures showed interest, but only if George could attach a famous name to the project—a famous name that audiences would recognize. Francis Ford Coppola was famous now. After Zoetrope folded, he took a job directing the movie version of the best-selling novel The Godfather. (George had assisted him, filming some scenes himself.) The movie became one of the biggest hits of 1972. So when George convinced Coppola to produce American Graffiti, Universal gave the go-ahead for the film.

George's friends Bill Huyck and Gloria Katz wrote the screenplay, a coming-of-age story about one night in the lives of four young men. The characters were mostly based on different aspects of George's personality. Terry the Toad was the young, awkward George. John was the drag racer. Curt was the boy who leaves his

hometown. The fourth boy, Steve, was the class president. The Faros gang members also became characters in the movie, and Wolfman Jack appeared in the film as himself. George shot the film quickly over twenty- eight nights. He then edited a version to show to movie executives along with a test audience. The test audience loved it—the studio hated it. "It's unreleasable!" a Universal representative said to George and Coppola. "You let me down." George was in shock. Coppola was enraged. "You should get down on your knees...! This kid has killed himself to make this movie for you. The least you can do is thank him!" Coppola then offered to buy the movie back from the studio.

George was devastated at the studio's reaction. He got angry when Universal demanded that changes be made before they would release the film. "They were simply coming in and putting a crayon mark on my painting and saying, 'Hey, don't worry about it. It's just a crayon mark.'" He vowed never to give up control of a movie again. On August 1, 1973, American Graffiti was finally released. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Screenplay. The little movie that cost only $775,000 to make earned over $118 million.