50 years later, Petaluma’s connection to ‘American Graffiti’ is still strong

The guy who owned the bar in San Rafael had a bone to pick. The nocturnal shooting schedule of the movie being filmed on the street outside his tavern was hurting business. He threatened to sue.

“City Hall wanted to kick them out,” recounts Terry Park, a Petaluman and crack researcher who has become an expert on the making of “American Graffiti,” which turns 50 this year.

And so, after just two nights of filming in San Rafael in the summer of 1972, the movie’s then-28-year-old director, George Lucas, moved production 20 miles up the highway.

That serendipitous switch was good for both Lucas and Petaluma, where most of the movie was shot. His critically acclaimed coming-of-age comedy-drama, which cost $775,000 to make, has since earned an estimated $200 million.

In addition to serving as a springboard for the director’s next project, a “space opera” called “Star Wars,” “American Graffiti” has become a fair-sized — make that a Ford Fairlane-sized — piece of Petaluma’s identity.

Nostalgia sells

Released in 1973, the movie was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of nostalgia. “No sociological treatise,” raved the film critic Roger Ebert, “could duplicate the movie’s success in remembering exactly how it was to be alive at that cultural instant.”

“American Graffiti” was nominated for five Oscars, and helped launch the careers of then-young actors Harrison Ford, Ron Howard and Cindy Williams, among others.

In Petaluma and across the Republic, the film sparked a short-lived revival in “cruising,” which had long since faded. Downtowns were once again occluded with old cars driven by rowdy young people. This revival, according to Park, prompted communities to pass anti-cruising ordinances, “and then, over a period of a year or two, that all died away.”

Released a decade after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy — “the seven seconds that broke the back of the American century,” as novelist Don DeLillo once wrote — “American Graffiti” fulfilled a deep, national longing for less complicated times.

As a town, Petaluma has always been a sucker for nostalgia. Last week, the city’s Historical Library and Museum opened its latest exhibit, “Celebrating 50 Years of American Graffiti,” which will run through Sept. 3. Curated by Solange Russell, researched largely by Park, and composed mainly of archival photos and memorabilia from the collection of past museum president Susan Villa, it explores and exalts the making of the movie as well as Petaluma’s robust car culture.

Anyone doubting the city’s deep attachment to antique autos will have changed their mind last Saturday, when much of the downtown vibrated along with the engines of the 550 vintage vehicles registered for this year’s “Salute to American Graffiti,” the annual car show put on by the nonprofit Cruisin’ The Boulevard.

Durable appeal

That loving, slightly wistful backward gaze — the appeal of going back to the way things were — resonated powerfully in Petaluma, a city that’s done a splendid job presiding over its own preservation.

“You walk downtown Petaluma, it’s like taking a step back in time,” says John Furrer, a founding board member of Cruisin’ The Boulevard, which has donated over $200,000 to various local causes. “And right now, a lot of people need that.”

The movie’s appeal has proved highly durable. It was screened in April by the Petaluma Film Alliance. Before the lights were dimmed that evening, a lecture was delivered by Isaac Holiday, a 22-year-old teacher’s assistant at Santa Rosa Junior College.

The world depicted in “American Graffiti,” he said in an interview, “seems like a nicer, simpler time” that “really resonated” with him and many of his peers in class, “even though we didn’t experience (it), we don’t know it firsthand.”

They enjoyed the movie, even as they acknowledged its homogeneity. Those classmates of Holiday’s who were minorities and women, he said, “could enjoy and appreciate the nostalgia and the fun” of “American Graffiti,” “while at the same time kind of recognizing that it doesn’t really represent them. Or only partly represents them.”

Furrer still makes the rounds of downtown businesses a couple weeks before the event, to remind them that streets will be shut down, and let them know what to expect.

This year he got pushback from just one business owner, said Furrer. “She said, ‘You take a weekend, Butter and Egg takes a weekend.’ It was nothing against ‘American Graffiti.’ She’s just not happy we block off the street.”

Strong car culture

Better known for its agricultural heritage, Petaluma also has a colorful history of car clubs, cruising and drag racing, legal and otherwise, as depicted in the book “Third Street Petaluma,” a vibrant history of the city’s robust car culture written by native son George Baur.

“I was cruising around doing all that stuff” depicted in the movie, says Baur, who got his driver’s license in 1962 — the year in which Lucas’ coming-of-age film was set.

“I was there for it. It was a fun time.”

Those clubs came together after World War II, he recounted. Men came home “with all these new mechanical abilities. Cars were inexpensive, everybody wanted to go fast and it just all came together.”

Among the trove of photos in his book is one of a 1958 Press Democrat story warning readers of teens “who test their speed in a deadly competition known as ‘dragging’” in “’hot rods’ with lowered front ends.”

Such cars “are meant for race tracks, yet they are licensed as highway transportation,” a CHP captain told the reporter. (That reporter, by the way, was Gaye Notley, who would go on to become a beloved Press Democrat columnist and local historian, better known by her married name of Gaye LeBaron.)

“These kids are organized,” the CHP captain lamented further. “They have CHP radios in their cars, and now we have to use code … They use flag signals, lookouts and all forms of law-avoiding devices.”

That tracks with Baur’s memories of the Flying Stockers, one of the first car clubs to come to Petaluma. “They were for loud exhaust and racing on the street and drinking beer and just teasing the police.”

The cops, he recalled, “were just about ready to arrest all of ’em,” when the Stockers themselves “just shut the club down completely.”

In its place sprung up the Petaluma Pacers, a more law-abiding outfit whose approach, said Baur, was, “We wanna be friendly with the police, and race on legal drag strips, not on the street.”

Pacers raced, yes, but also hosted dances and other charitable endeavors. They’re featured prominently in the museum’s current exhibit, and in Baur’s book — not surprising, as he was a member of the club, whose alumni still meet most Tuesdays at the Petaluma Elks Lodge.

The Stockers sound like a real-life version of The Pharoahs, the club in American Graffiti whose slightly sinister members menace, then eventually befriend, college-bound Curt, played by Richard Dreyfuss.

‘A cheerful place’

The theme for this golden anniversary Cruisin’ The Boulevard celebration, as depicted on the cover of the program painted by local artist Elise Durenburger, is “Take a Ride with the Pharoahs.”

It’s dedicated to Bo Hopkins, who died last May at the age of 80. (Cindy Williams, who played Ron Howard’s girlfriend Laurie, then co-starred in the hit sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” died in January.) In “American Graffiti,” Hopkins played Pharoahs ultracool alpha Joe Young, who persuades Curt to attach a hook to the rear axle of a police car that is subsequently and spectacularly vandalized.

Piloting his baby blue Citroen, Dreyfuss spends the movie in search of a mysterious blonde (Suzanne Somers), who is driving a white Thunderbird. In this quest he ventures to the edge of town, seeking the counsel of iconic DJ Wolfman Jack, who lays down the movie’s stellar soundtrack.

For years, one man owned both those cars, the Citroen and the T-Bird.

Jerry Causbrook graduated from Rancho Cotate High School in 1979. “But I’ve always loved ’50s cars.”

He recalls the Petaluma of his youth as “a hay town, a dairy town, somewhat remote. Fairs were a big deal. Cruising was a big deal.

“It’s still very historic and special. There’s just a hell of a lot more people there now, which is why I live in Philo, up in Mendocino County.

“I miss Cattlemens, I miss Old Chicago (Pizza). I miss the water, I miss the soil. But the rest of it I don’t miss.”

The number of times he’s seen “American Graffiti,” he estimates, is approaching 1,000.

“I probably know more about that movie than — I know too much, put it that way,” said Causbrook. “When I’m in a bad mood or depressed, which is rare, I’ll flip that movie on and watch it, and it puts me in a whole different mood.

“It takes people to a cheerful place.”

The real deal

When Furrer informed him in 2012 that the Citroen driven by Dreyfuss was owned by a woman in St. Helena, and that she was looking to sell, Causbrook quickly went to see her.

Elevating the car on a floor jack, he began inspecting it, searching telltale dents and marks that would confirm its authenticity. “I was finding everything I was looking for” — the round dent on the fender, the rearview mirror repaired with Bondo, the rust spot visible “when Richard Dreyfuss is talking to Wolfman Jack.”

But the Hard Rock Café had heard the Citroen was for sale, and drove up the bidding. Causbrook prevailed.

He was also obsessed, it’s fair to say, with the T-Bird, then owned by a couple from Southern California. Causbrook rented it from them each year, from 2007 through 2014, to drive in Cruisin’ The Boulevard’s annual car show. In 2014, he finally bought it, becoming the only person in the world, as far as he knew, to own a pair of original cars that appeared in his favorite movie.

Causbrook has since sold both vehicles. But was there Saturday, sitting by the Citroen, answering questions about the movie, watching his fellow aficionados pilot their classic cars down the main drag one more time.

So they will cruise on — to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald — cars against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com.