Movie Moments: Speaking of Memorials...

...we've got a good one going up on Monday about Smokey and the Bandit , a classic car movie that turns 30 this week. If you're of a certain age group this movie likely left an indelible impression on you when it premiered in 1977. It was the second-highest-grossing film of 1977 after Star Wars (another movie that left a large impact crater on my young psyche). The harsh truth of 1977 is that there wasn't a lot to celebrate in the world of automotive enthusiasm. Cars were weak, gas was no longer cheap, and it looked like we'd all be pedaling front-wheel drive hatchbacks before the end of the decade. Bandit was a total departure from this line of thinking, which is probably why it resonated so well across the fruited planes.

While Bandit has undeniably attained the status of "classic" over the past three decades there are car movies I consider more important, with the penultimate example (at least as far as influencing my early automotive enthusiasm) being American Graffiti (directed by a fresh-out-of-film-school George Lucas a few years before Star Wars ). I could go into a long, metaphysical discussion of American Graffiti , but rather than scaring anyone off I'll just say the film somehow manages to portray the challenges of transitiong from adolescence to adulthood via a night of cruising mainstreet in timeless American iron. I first saw it on T.V. when I was about 12 and that experience, along with my own first "cruising" experience on the mainstreet of my own home town (a story for another post...) pretty much cemented my status as "Lifelong Car Geek."

Posted by

Karl Brauer May 25, 2007, 9:01 AM

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Cars in Entertainment, Muscle Car, Pontiac