American Graffiti
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American Graffiti
''American Graffiti'' is a 1973 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by George Lucas, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, written by Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz and Lucas, and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Harrison Ford, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Bo Hopkins, and Wolfman Jack. Set in Modesto, California, in 1962, the film is a study of the cruising and early rock 'n' roll cultures popular among Lucas's age group at that time. Through a series of vignettes, it tells the story of a group of teenagers and their adventures throughout a single night. While Lucas was working on his first film, ''THX 1138'', Coppola asked him to write a coming-of-age film. The genesis of ''American Graffiti'' took place in Modesto in the early 1960s, during Lucas's teenage years. He was unsuccessful in pitching the concept to financiers and distributors but found favor at Universal Pictures after every other major fi ...
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Mort Drucker
Morris "Mort" Drucker (March 22, 1929 – April 9, 2020) was an American caricaturist and comics artist best known as a contributor for over five decades in '' Mad'', where he specialized in satires on the leading feature films and television series. Personal life Drucker was born in Brooklyn, New York City, with some sources listing his birth date as March 22, 1929, and others as March 29. He was the son of Sarah (Spielvogel), a homemaker, and Edward Drucker, a businessman. His family was Jewish. He attended Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School. There he met his future wife Barbara, whom he married shortly after her graduation. The couple moved to Long Island, living in Syosset, where they brought up two daughters, Laurie and Melanie; their family eventually expanded with three grandchildren."Man Behind the Drawing Board", ''The Adventures of Bob Hope'' 87, 1963. Career Drucker entered the comics field by assisting Bert Whitman on the Publishers-Hall newspaper comic strip ...
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Marcia Lucas
Marcia Lou Lucas (née Griffin; born October 4, 1945) * * is an American film editor and film producer. She is best known for her work editing Martin Scorsese's ''Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore'' (1973), ''Taxi Driver'' (1976), and ''New York, New York'' (1977) and her then-husband George Lucas's '' THX-1138'' (1971), ''American Graffiti'' (1973), and the ''Star Wars'' trilogy (1977–1983). She won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing in 1977 for ''Star Wars'' (1977). She was previously nominated for an Academy Award for her film editing on ''American Graffiti'' and for a BAFTA Award for Best Editing for her work on ''Taxi Driver''. After a career gap while raising her family, Lucas produced two films in the 1990s. Early life Lucas was born in Modesto, California. Her father was an Air Force officer stationed in Stockton, California, during World War II. Her parents divorced when she was two. Her mother, Mae Griffin, relocated the family to North Hollywood, California, to ...
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Vignette (literature)
A vignette (, also ) is a French loanword expressing a short and descriptive piece of writing that captures a brief period in time. Vignettes are more focused on vivid imagery and meaning rather than plot. Vignettes can be stand-alone, but they are more commonly part of a larger narrative, such as vignettes found in novels or collections of short stories. Examples of vignettes include Ernest Hemingway’s ''In Our Time'', Margaret Atwood’s ''The Female Body'', Sandra Cisneros’ ''The House on Mango Street'', and Alice Walker’s ''The Flowers.'' Vignettes have been particularly influential in the development of the contemporary notions of a scene as shown in postmodern theater, film and television, where less emphasis is placed on adhering to the conventions of traditional structure and story development. Etymology The word ''vignette'' means "little vine" in French, and was derived from Old French ''vigne'', meaning “vineyard”. In English, the word was first docume ...
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Rock And Roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African-American music such as jazz, rhythm and blues, boogie woogie, gospel music, gospel, as well as country music. While rock and roll's formative elements can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s,Peterson, Richard A. ''Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity'' (1999), p. 9, . the genre did not acquire its name until 1954. According to journalist Greg Kot, "rock and roll" refers to a style of popular music originating in the United States in the 1950s. By the mid-1960s, rock and roll had developed into "the more encompassing international style known as rock music, though the latter also continued to be known in many circles as rock and roll."Kot, Greg"Rock and roll", in the ''Encyclopædia Bri ...
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Cruising (driving)
Cruising is a social activity that primarily consists of driving a car. Cruising can be an expression of the freedom of possessing a driver's license. Cruising is distinguished from regular driving by the social and recreational nature of the activity, which is characterized by an impulsively random, often aimless course. A popular route (or " strip") is often the focus of cruising. "Cruise nights" are evenings during which cars drive slowly. A cruise can be a meeting of car enthusiasts at a predetermined location, organised predominantly through the internet (in recent times) but also largely through mobile phone, word of mouth or simply by a cruise being established enough that it becomes a regular event. Some ethnic groups identify with lifestyles related to cruising, such as the Hispanos of New Mexico, Chicanos, and Mexican-Americans of the Southwestern United States along U.S. Route 66. Meets, like those at lowrider and auto shows, are popular across the United States and wo ...
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Modesto, California
Modesto () is the county seat and largest city of Stanislaus County, California, United States. With a population of 218,464 at the 2020 census, it is the 19th largest city in the state of California and forms part of the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto Combined Statistical Area. Modesto is located in the Central Valley, south of Sacramento and north of Fresno. Distances from other places include: north of Merced, California, east of San Francisco, west of Yosemite National Park, and south of Stockton. The city is surrounded by rich farmland. Stanislaus County ranks sixth among California counties in farm production. It is home to Gallo Family Winery, the largest family-owned winery in the United States. Led by milk, almonds, chickens, walnuts, and corn silage, the county grossed nearly $3.1 billion in agricultural production in 2011. The farm-to-table movement plays a central role in Modesto living as in the Central Valley. Modesto has been honored as a Tree Ci ...
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Bo Hopkins
William Mauldin "Bo" Hopkins (February 2, 1938 – May 28, 2022) Issucover/ref> was an American actor. He was known for playing supporting roles in a number of major studio films between 1969 and 1979, and appeared in many television shows and TV movies. Career Hopkins appeared in more than 100 film and television roles in a career of more than 40 years, including the major studio films ''The Wild Bunch'' (1969), ''The Bridge at Remagen'' (1969), '' The Getaway'' (1972), ''American Graffiti'' (1973), ''The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing'' (1973), ''The Killer Elite'' (1975), ''Posse'' (1975), ''A Small Town in Texas'' (1976), '' Midnight Express'' (1978), and ''More American Graffiti'' (1979). His final film, Hillbilly Elegy, was directed by his long time friend Ron Howard and released in 2020. After Hopkins' first roles in major films in the early 1970s he appeared in '' White Lightning'' (1973). Hopkins played Roy Boone. Jerry Reed and Hopkins played brothers Joe Hawkins and Tom ...
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Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American actor. His films have grossed more than $5.4billion in North America and more than $9.3billion worldwide, making him the seventh-highest-grossing actor in North America. He is the recipient of various accolades, including the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Cecil B. DeMille Award, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and four Golden Globe Awards. He has been a leading man in films of several genres and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Following the initial phase of his career in bit parts and supporting roles, Ford gained worldwide fame for his starring role as Han Solo in the epic space opera film '' Star Wars'' (1977), reprising the role in four sequels over the course of the next 42 years. He is also widely known for his portrayal of Indiana Jones in the titular film franchise, beginning with the action-adventure film '' Raiders of the Lost Ark'' (1981), and for playing other characters in differ ...
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Comedy Drama
Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and Drama (film and television), drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical hour-long legal or medical drama, but exhibit far fewer jokes-per-minute as in a typical half-hour sitcom. In the United States Examples from United States television include: ''M*A*S*H (TV series), M*A*S*H'', ''Moonlighting (TV series), Moonlighting'', ''The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd'', ''Northern Exposure'', ''Ally McBeal'', ''Sex and the City'', ''Desperate Housewives'' and ''Scrubs (TV series), Scrubs''. The term "dramedy" was coined to describe the late 1980s wave of shows, including ''The Wonder Years'', ''Hooperman'', ''Doogie Howser, M.D.'' and ''Frank's Place''. See also *List of comedy drama television series *Black comedy *Dramatic structure *Melodrama *Seriousness *Tragicomedy *Psychological ...
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Coming-of-age Story
In genre studies, a coming-of-age story is a genre of literature, theatre, film, and video game that focuses on the growth of a protagonist from childhood to adulthood, or "coming of age". Coming-of-age stories tend to emphasize dialogue or internal monologue over action, and are often set in the past. The subjects of coming-of-age stories are typically teenagers. The ''Bildungsroman'' is a specific subgenre of coming-of-age story. The plot points of coming of age stories are usually emotional changes within the character(s) in question. ''Bildungsroman'' In literary criticism, coming-of-age novels and ''Bildungsroman'' are sometimes interchangeable, but the former is usually a wider genre. The ''Bildungsroman'' (from the German words ''Bildung'', "education", alternatively "forming" and ''Roman'', "novel") is further characterized by a number of formal, topical, and thematic features. It focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood ...
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The Numbers (website)
The Numbers is a film industry data website that tracks box office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The company also conducts research services and forecasts incomes of film projects. History The site was launched in 1997 by Bruce Nash. On March 21, 2020, the Numbers released a statement that because of movie theater closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, "We don’t expect much box office reporting in the short term" and did not report the usual daily box office estimates due to lack of box office data from film studios. See also * Box Office Mojo Box Office Mojo is an American website that tracks box-office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The site was founded in 1998 by Brandon Gray, and was bought in 2008 by IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is ... * Lumiere References External links * ''The Numbers'' Bankability Index 1997 establishments in California Companies based in Beverly Hills, California Film ...
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Locarno International Film Festival
The Locarno Film Festival is an annual film festival, held every August in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative, documentary, short, avant-garde, and retrospective programs. The Piazza Grande section is held in an open-air venue that seats 8,000 spectators. The top prize of the festival is the Golden Leopard, awarded to the best film in the International Competition. Other awards include the Leopard of Honour for career achievement, and the Prix du Public, the public choice award. History The Festival del film Locarno kicked off on 23 August 1946, at the Grand Hotel of Locarno with the screening of the movie ''O sole mio'' by Giacomo Gentilomo. The first edition was organized in less than three months with a line-up of fifteen movies, mainly American and Italian, among which was ''Rome, Open City'' directed by Roberto Rossellini, ''And Then There Were None'' dire ...
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