According to a written postscript at the end of the film, “John Milner” was killed by a drunk driver in 1964; “Terry Fields” was reported missing in action in Vietnam in 1965; “Steve Bolander” became an insurance agent in Modesto, California; and “Curt Henderson” moved to Canada and became a writer. Along with these statements are the fictitious senior class photographs of each character. Onscreen credits stated that radio commercials appearing in the film were selected from Radio Advertisers Bureau.
       The film was conceived, directed and co-written by Lucas, who, like his main characters, graduated from high school in 1962. According to a Feb 1974 SatRev article, Lucas spent his high school years “`cruising’ the main streets of Modesto, California, with his car radio on full blast.” In a 12 Aug 1973 LAT article, Lucas stated that American Graffiti reflected memories of his adolescence, which he “compressed” into one fictional night. Many events in the picture were based on real events, he said, such as the sequence in which Curt disables the police car. This was something Lucas recalled that a friend did one Halloween night, although he admitted that the film’s depiction is a fantasized version. In a Sep 1973 NYT article, Lucas stated that Terry, John and Curt were aspects of himself and "his high school buddies," while Steve “was totally fictitious.” He reported that he had a serious interest in drag racing as a youth, but lost his enthusiasm after an automobile accident. Lucas attended Modesto’s local junior college and later enrolled at University of Southern California’s film school, where he made a short student film, THX-1138-4EB, that won him a six-month scholarship at Warner Bros. There, he was assigned to officially “observe” the making of Finian’s Rainbow (1968, see entry) and met director Francis Ford Coppola, who became a close friend and later executive-produced Lucas’ first feature-length, science fiction production, THX 1138 (1971, see entry), an expanded version of his student film. Afterward, according to a 7 Oct 1973 NYT article, Coppola suggested that Lucas next try to make a “warm and human” film.
       Many details about Lucas’ career and the making of American Graffiti can be found in modern books and articles. Most of the following was compiled from contemporary sources: A 24 Aug 1973 HR article stated that Lucas wrote the original treatment of American Graffiti with the married team of Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who were his contemporaries in age and cultural experience and who later rewrote the screenplay. According to 24 Aug 1973 HR and 12 Aug 1973 LAT articles, the film was developed at United Artists, but was then turned down, and several contemporary sources reported that other major studios declined the project. As noted in the 12 Aug 1973 LAT article, American International expressed an interest, but would not commit to the picture. According to an unsourced Sep 1972 article in the film’s file at the AMPAS Library, during this time of multiple rejections Lucas declined opportunities to direct other potentially lucrative projects in order to focus his efforts on selling American Graffiti and other projects in which he was interested. In a 24 Aug 1973 HR article, co-producer Gary Kurtz stated that Universal vice-president Ned Tanen was a “driving force” and championed the production at Universal, which eventually agreed to underwrite the film with the requirement that Coppola, who had had recent success with The Godfather (1972, see entry), become officially involved.
       A 24 Aug 1973 HR article reported that Lucas worked with a $780,000 budget, from which about ten percent was used to secure the rights to forty-two original rock and roll songs that were popular between 1955 and 1962, which he used to underscore almost every scene. The article noted that it took fourteen months for attorney Tom Pollock to negotiate the music rights. According to a 12 Aug 1973 LAT article, the copyright holders for many of the songs were hard to find and some wanted more money than the project could pay. A modern source reported that Kurtz, who was a friend of Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys, secured rights to play two of the group's songs in the film for an affordable price. According to the 24 Aug 1973 HR article, Pollock was able to get permission to use the song “Chantilly Lace” from the mother of The Big Bopper, the seminal rock and roll musician who died in 1959, and he negotiated for the remaining songs.
       According to onscreen information, three songs performed by Flash Cadillac and The Continental Kids were recorded specifically for the film. The mix of other songs, which was regarded by many sources as one of the notable features of American Graffiti, was created at Coppola's San Francisco American Zoetrope Studios by sound man Walter Murch, Lucas and Kurtz. They recorded the songs five different ways to simulate the sound each would make on car radios in various situations, such as from inside a car or as two automobiles passed each other. Although this was a groundbreaking technique in soundtracks, according to modern sources, Universal studio heads were not initially comfortable with the idea.
       Of the cast members in American Graffiti, probably the best known was Ron Howard, who is billed onscreen as Ronny. The future director had appeared regularly on television and in films since infancy and was best known for his role as “Opie Taylor” on the 1960s television series The Andy Griffith Show. Among the other young screen veterans were Bo Hopkins, who portrayed "Joe," the leader of the Pharoahs, and Richard Dreyfuss. However, the mostly youthful cast was largely made up of unknown actors, several of whom went on to successful careers. The film marked the first credited feature film appearance of Kathleen Quinlan ("Peg"). Making their feature film debuts in the picture were Kay Lenz ("Jane"), who is credited onscreen as Kay Ann Kemper, and Mackenzie Phillips ("Carol"), the thirteen-year-old daughter of John Phillips of the musical group The Mamas and the Papas.
       The role of “Bob Falfa” marked the first important role for Harrison Ford, who had done carpentry work for casting director Fred Roos, according to modern sources, but had appeared in small roles in many films, beginning with the 1966 release Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (see entry). Cindy Williams ("Laurie Henderson"), Suzanne Somers ("Blonde in T-bird") and Charles Martin Smith had made appearances in several television episodes and smaller films, and Candy Clark’s ("Debbie") sole but significant film credit was in John Huston’s Fat City (1972, see entry). Paul Le Mat, whose portrayal of John Milner was an homage to actor James Dean, had been a boxer. According to a 24 Aug 1973 HR article, three hundred unpaid teenagers appearing in the sock hop sequence were induced to participate in a four-hour rehearsal of 1950s dances by the prospect of raffled door prizes of stereos and radios. A modern source adds Linda Christensen to the cast.
       Onscreen credits state that American Graffiti was shot in Marin and Sonoma Counties, CA and completed at American Zoetrope. According to the LAT review, portions of the film were shot in Petaluma and San Rafael, CA. The unsourced 1972 article reported that Lucas and Kurtz scouted several Bay Area towns for location sites and found in Berkeley a small FM radio station of the right age for the Wolfman Jack sequence. In the “heart” of San Francisco, they found the film’s centerpiece, Mel’s Drive-in Restaurant. According to the 1994 LAT obituary of the restaurant’s co-owner, Harold Dobbs, the drive-in was part of a chain established in 1947. Modern sources elaborate that Lucas had contracted to shoot the cruising scenes in San Rafael, but after the first night of production, a local bar owner complained of losing business and the agreement was revoked by the town, forcing the production to move to Petaluma, a town that had been rejected as a location site because Lucas feared it would be too dark for filming.
       Except for the drag race and airplane sequences, the film was shot entirely at night and, according to a 12 Aug 1973 LAT article, the cast and crew worked from 9 p.m. to sunrise for twenty-eight days. As noted in the 24 Aug 1973 HR article, Petaluma merchants assisted with the cost of shooting the film by leaving their store lights on throughout the night.
       As noted by the Var review, Lucas shot in a grainy, somewhat outdated Techniscope anamorphic process, which modern sources reason was necessary due to budget constraints. Lucas shot the film himself with two local cameramen, but was displeased with the results. According to the 24 Aug 1973 HR and the 7 Oct 1973 NYT articles, during the second week of production, Haskell Wexler agreed to assist as visual consultant, accepting deferred payment for his services, and commuted nightly from his day job in Los Angeles filming commercials, and as a result slept only three nights a week. Wexler resourcefully devised several ways to light the actors inside the cars and create the effects of headlights from passing cars and devised the “jukebox lighting” that Lucas was seeking.
       The film was edited by Verna Fields, Lucas' former teacher at USC, and his wife Marcia, a film editor and fellow USC graduate (to whom Lucas was married from 1969 until 1983). The editors assembled a 165-minute version that was trimmed and reworked over the next six months. Editing and often heated negotiations over cuts continued between Jan 1973 and the film’s release that summer, according to modern sources, and reportedly, there was some skepticism among studio heads about the film’s viability.
       Despite such doubts, American Graffiti received mostly glowing reviews and was an immediate success with its 1973 audience. The Newsweek review stated that the film “captured a moment recognizable to every generation" that occurs at a vulnerable time just before adulthood. Noting that Lucas and his collaborators were about the same age, the LAT review described the film as “a kind of collective spiritual autobiography.”
       Ads asked, “Where were you in ’62?” In the decade between 1962 and 1973, the country moved on to the Vietnam War, drugs and a more dissonant style of rock music; in retrospect, many people considered the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy the true end of the 1950s and a more innocent era. According to the 5 Aug 1973 NYT review, American Graffiti “freezes the last moment of American innocence.” The WSJ reviewer felt that the film was an “absolutely authentic picture of the car-centered lives of small-town American youth” of an earlier era.
       Because of the film’s popularity and respect, Lucas and his leading cast were boosted into recognition and stardom. American Graffiti is now considered to be one of the most influential films of the 1970s, and many of its innovative lighting and sound techniques, as well as its use of alternating narratives, are regularly employed in film and television.
       The film was listed as #10 on box office charts for 1973. Lucas, Katz and Huyck were nominated by the Writers Guild of America for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen, and received awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Lucas also won Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures from the Directors Guild of America. The film received Golden Globes for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical/Comedy (Dreyfuss) and Most Promising Male Newcomer (Le Mat). The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Supporting Actress (Clark). Williams was nominated for Best Supporting Actress by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
       In 1995, Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry of culturally, historically and aesthetically significant American films. In 2005, Lucas was awarded AFI’s Life Achievement Award, and in 2007, American Graffiti was ranked 62nd on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies—10th Anniversary Edition list of the greatest American films, moving up from the 77th position it held on AFI's 1997 list. Internationally, the film won the Bronze Leopard award from the Locarno Film Festival in Swizterland and first prize at the Cartagena Film Festival in Columbia. Production notes on the DVD version of the film report that American Graffiti was Universal’s second-largest revenue producer, second to the 1970 film Airport (see entry).
       In 1978, Universal re-released American Graffiti with added footage, and in 1979, Howard, Le Mat, Smith, Williams and Clark reprised their roles in Universal’s sequel, More American Graffiti, which was directed by Bill L. Norton. Around this time, a May 1978 Village Voice article stated that American Graffiti “is a household word” and “synonymous with youth [and] nostalgia,” and that the film was “the second biggest sleeper after Rocky and the thirteenth largest American money-maker” to that date.
Two successful television series, Happy Days (1974--1984) and its spin-off, Laverne & Shirley (1976—1983), starring Howard and Williams, respectively, were created in the wake of the nostalgia for the 1950s and 1960s prompted by American Graffiti's success. The 1956 white Thunderbird driven by the mysterious blonde and John Milner’s yellow 1932 Ford coupe, which, incidentally, bore the license plate number THX 138, were honored along with the film by the Cruisin' Hall of Fame, according to a Sep 1998 Daily Breeze (San Bernardino) news item.
       At the time of the film's release, the LAHExam review stated that American Graffiti “celebrates a now-vanished lifestyle.” A 29 Mar 1990 LAT news item reported that the Modesto City Council, wishing to lose its reputation as the “Cruising Capitol” in the later era of traffic and gas shortages, approved strict ordinances to put an end to cruising on their streets. A 2 Dec 1973 NYT essay about the film claimed that within the film was “our own past, lost and gone.”