Fast Times at Mel's Diner: American Graffiti and Lost Innocence

American Graffiti opens on a still of Mel's Drive-In, the popular hangout spot for the locals. Like a framed novelty picture that would be sitting on the wall of a modern diner, the photograph is a simultaneously celebration of the era but a reminder of how unapproachable it is. Though set in 1962, the first song played with the drive-in still is an anachronism, Bill Haley's “Rock Around the Clock,” a hit from the late 1950s. The song and the image signal that though the film plays like a documentary, it more closely resembles a class reunion where distance and time away have distorted perception to where everything feels just a few years off and everyone reminisces about the good ole days that may not have been so good.

But George Lucas's ode to his high school years seems less a fond remembrance and more of an ironic commentary. The film is permeated by a sense of nostalgia tinged with melancholy. The characters mourn their lives even as they live them, as if they know that in just a few short years Vietnam will start and all of this will be gone. John Milner is the fatalistic, outlaw philosopher akin to James Dean's Jim Stark from Rebel Without A Cause. He has the fastest hot rod in town but spends all of his time visiting the junkyard and wondering if each new race could be his last until his number is up.

The town is experiencing economic, social, and moral decay. Milner complains that the strip use to be so much longer and bigger just a few short years ago. Though Modesto, California had apparently escaped the economic and social contraction that plagued Anarene, Texas in The Last Picture Show a decade earlier, it has now come to pass. The local arcade owners and the Moose Lodge are giving away their first ever scholarship to encourage kids to leave the town because they can better prepare themselves for the future elsewhere. In this town, the film insinuates that one night stands and meaningless sex are common and schoolwork is done by parents for their children. While intimidating, The Pharoahs gang is much older than the rest of the teenagers and spend their time committing petty thievery for quarters from pinball machines and bullying people that sit on their cars. And they show their small-time status further by getting caught up in the awe of Milner's drag racing narrative wondering when and if he'll ever lose. The grown ups are no different. A popular teacher in his late 20s tried to go to college but wasn't the “competitive type” and came back home, the film implies, to violate ethical codes by sleeping with his students.

Even the iconic Wolfman Jack is demystified. Through the use of diegetic radio for ambiance, the film builds Wolfman into a folk hero, a mythical figure that escaped the town to evade the law and travels the world and comes back only to deliver the occasional pirate broadcast. Everyone has a Wolfman Jack story to share that is half collaboration from other urban legends and half confabulation to inflate the storyteller's sense of self-importance. When we meet him on the outskirts of town, Lucas cleverly shrouds him in darkness as a gatekeeper guarding the secrets of music and life. He is The Wizard of Oz, Marshak from A Serious Man, The Oracle from The Matrix – he is film's semblance of inspiration and answers. We can only enter through a backdoor maze, but when we see him the illusion is dropped for reality. Like the malt shop commemorative picture of Mel's Drive In, Wolfman Jack's legend does not match his appearance. He is a middle-aged disc jockey eating popsicles too fast so they don't melt first. Seemingly unable to crush our dreams, he perpetuates the mythos of Wolfman Jack even after we've seen behind the curtain. He is another in a long line of locals who was unable to flee the small town's grasp.

The younger, recent graduates also feel a sense of pessimism about their plight. Though they try to escape, they are unable to avoid reliving the same experiences. Steve, the exiting class president, plans to fly out of town the next morning for college and break up with his girlfriend. After unsuccessfully ending the relationship, he spends his remaining hours at a freshman dance back at school getting back together with his girlfriend and delaying the trip back East. Terry the Toad, the loser of the group, itches to be cooler than he is. He borrows Steve's car for the night driving the strip and tries to adopt a new persona. He changes his nickname, puts on airs to pick up a girl, drinks more than he normally does and gets into a fight he is sure to lose. However, by night's end, he has lost the car twice, had the fight broken up by Milner, and gotten sick from alcohol poisoning. At night's end, though Debbie gives him hope that they can hang out again, Terry is left to beg Milner to let him ride with him during the race against loud-mouthed comic relief Bob Falfa played by Harrison Ford. Even Milner, despite his posturing and existential angst, reprises his role as drag strip king in another race at film's end to reinforce his inability to alter his course.

Curt, the brain, is the film's one exception. Like the others, he “wants to remember all of the good times” as well by going to the dance. He even wanders the halls of the old school and gets back together with his ex-girlfriend for about an hour. However, symbolically, he is unable to reopen his old locker by using the same combination because he has been locked out of his old life and forced to branch outward. He is given multiple avenues of change. He pursues a blonde siren in a white chevy all night. He is forced to hang out with the Pharoahs but wins them over and gets invited to join the gang. He receives the scholarship from the Moose Lodge and also plans to leave town in the morning. But he's also the one that talks to the hedonistic teacher and meets Wolfman Jack. He hears all the tales of misspent youth and wasted opportunities. He has been granted knowledge that Terry lacks, Milner appreciates, and Steve fakes, but none are able to act on other than Curt. He is the only one able to break the destructive cycle of small town life and escape the picturesque Mel's Drive-in.

American Graffiti possesses one of the saddest codas in film history but perhaps the most honest. As Curt boards the plan and flies back East for college, a title scrawl brings us up to date with the characters. Milner, in spite of his prescient wisdom and familiarity with all the fatal car wrecks, is killed by a drunk driver only two years later presumably in a drag race. Steve still lives in Modesto, California as an insurance agent repeating the path of the teacher and Wolfman Jack. Although given a glimmer of hope with Debbie, Terry does not get the comic epilogue that Bluto does in a similar situation in Animal House by marrying the blonde and getting elected to congress. Terry goes to Vietnam and is reported MIA near An Loc just three years later. Curt, like George Lucas himself, becomes a writer and moves to Canada, perhaps to avoid being drafted into Vietnam like his friends.

The film like the nostalgic still of Mel's Drive-In is an artifact of a by-gone time before Kennedy's assassination, before Vietnam, and before Watergate that can never be recreated.