The rock movie in the 1970's was rerouted by American Graffiti, a film whose overarching agenda was the various teenage traumas during a seemingly endless 1962 summer in Northern California. Filmed in evocative Sonoma, the period was recreated to the penny, though much of the music would actually come from the Fifties. The strength of the characterization was no less important than the authenticity of the settings, so that the film succeeded as more than just mere nostalgia.
American Graffiti was very Fifties about the Sixties
Once the hippie dream had at last dissolved, there was a resurgence of interest in the less complicated sounds of early rock'n'roll. Such films as D.A. Pennebaker's Keep On Rockin' (1972) and Levin and Abel's Let the Good Times Roll (1973) attested to this shift in popular taste. In the wake of American Graffiti, such tastes were not simply gratified, they were satiated. There was an America Graffiti-type film for African-Americans in Cooley High (1975) which inspired the popular situational television comedy What's Happening, there was one especially for Jewish audiences in Eskimo Limon (1978). There was also an official followup, More American Graffiti (1979) directed by Bill Norton who had previously made the Kris Kristofferson vehicle Cisco Pike (1972).
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| Oo-ee-oo I look just like that fella they mention in that Weezer tune. |
American Graffiti had included the fondly remembered line, 'Rock'n'roll's been going downhill ever since Buddy Holly died.' The inevitable biopic, 1978's The Buddy Holly Story with Gary Busey in the title-role, succeeded, despite an allegiance to factual accuracy. because what it did was achieve a kind of emotional veracity, and not to mention Busey's haunting depiction of the ill-fated crooner.