A delightful film. With help from 'visual consultant' Haskell Wexler, the film looks as hard and sharp and glossy as one of those incredible cars - the DPs are Jan D'Alquen and Ron Eveslage, neither of whom really did anything else - Lucas was planning to light it himself. In fact he was having real trouble filming the night scenes, i.e. most of the movie, finding it so hard to get a depth of field - if the actors moved at all, he joked, they'd go out of focus - and after a week, Wexler came up every night for five weeks to help him (after spending the day making commercials for American Airlines and the like).
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| That's Lucas hanging off the side of the car |
Because, like Halloween, it's a film that takes place over a single evening and night in the early sixties, and charts the adventures of friends before two of them leave for college.
They are Richard Dreyfuss, having doubts about leaving, Ron Howard, fighting with girlfriend Cindy Williams, hot rod racer Paul le Mat, having to entertain young Mackenzie Phillips, and nerdish Charles Martin Smith, who ends up with an unlikely girlfriend in Candy Clark.
It was written by Lucas and Gloria Katz & Willard Huyck, edited by Verna Fields and Marcia Lucas. And the stunning sound design throughout is the work of Walter Murch.
Particularly funny are the scenes in which Martin attempts to buy booze, and the scene with the Pharaohs and the cop car.
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| Note film being shown: Coppola was the producer |
It was a huge hit, but I suspect it may not have been made at all had not Bogdanovich brought out the earlier nostalgia pic hit The Last Picture Show (1971).
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