Shadow Puppet Storyteller

Where's my copy of Skywalking?

Caught a showing of American Graffiti on television last night -- It's one that must look better on a movie theater screen. I have actually never seen it on the big screen. Due to the "last night of Summer" activities, lighting is dim in most scenes. Particularly the amount of car interior shots that are filmed from the vantage of another car -- that's where a television reproduction just doesn't do.

I found it interesting that my pre-teen daughter was asking me questions like how old Mackenzie Phillips' character Carol is supposed to be. I did not know. But I told her twelve...her own age. She also thought the result of the gang initiation prank on the cops was hilarious. It's one of those whiplash moments as a parent -- you quietly eye their reaction, and inwardly wonder if polite society will suffer the generation you and your partner have unleashed from your loins upon it.

That just goes to show that I have turned out more like the Cindy Williams and Ronny Howard characters that live out their days in the Valley, joining the Moose, than I am Richard Dreyfus' Curt escaping ... writing in Canada.

How old will my children be before the irony of American Graffiti's coming of age messages deepen? You see, I am impressed that I could tell my daughter that American Graffiti was written by George Lucas, who grew up in Modesto, and that she could then ask, so which character is him? I can pick out who he was... but I wonder if who he is now is even reflected in this story anymore. (I doubt he had any hand in the almost laughable blocking of cuss words from this broadcast of his film baby, his special effects revisionism coming to mind nonetheless.) Even the cast credits blurred out the character name, Badass #1 -- [Mwahahah!]

George Lucas. Over a majority of my life, I was overly influenced by the marketing of himself, naive about idolizing him in his film making. All along, I really knew it was collaboration and remarkable people he brought to his projects. At some point I owned his biography, Skywalking, feel like revisiting that.