AMERICAN CONFETTI

AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)
dir: George Lucas

MAD #166, April 1974
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

MAD figured since one of their regular artists did the poster for the movie, they should have him do their parody of the movie as well. (Additional Mort Drucker art is also in the trailer).

American Graffiti also inspired Happy Days as a series. Even though the pilot had been made a year earlier and was used as an episode of Love, American Style, the fact that American Graffiti was a hit, this also starred Ron Howard and took place in the fifties (the fifties ended in 1964 as far as I'm concerned), was reason to bring it back as a regular series.

I'm always thinking about how the time between when this movie took place and when it came out is only eleven years. It would be like if they made a movie about 2009 and considered it a long time ago. Maybe this pandemic is the equivalent to the Kennedy assassination in terms of everything blurring the line beyond recognition before and after.

MAD seemed mystified by the nostalgia boom. They even made fun of it in 1970 with an article called Those Wonderful Sixties. They didn't realize nostalgia for the sixties would eventually be taken seriously. Come to think of it, I never thought I'd meet people in their twenties and thirties who told me they grew up on my comics as kids in the nineties.

But I digress...

We open with the cast in front of Mel's Drive-In the night before Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) goes away to college, explaining the multiple plotlines of the movie. Curt is sort of a stand-in for director George Lucas and the many nights he and his friends spent on typical nights as teenagers.

First the movie takes place in a typical small town (Chula Vista, to be exact), then in Los Angeles. Which one is it?

Steve (Ron Howard) and his girlfriend Lori (Cindy Williams) keep breaking up and getting back together throughout the movie before he goes off to college and then changes his mind.

In the usual fit of boredom, the teenagers go cruising up and down the main street.

Another thing MAD seemed mystified by was this new rock and roll thing. While the general public too initially thought it was just a passing fad exclusively for youth that wouldn't last any more than a year or two, MAD was condescending towards it well until the mid-eighties. They did song parodies in almost every issue, but hardly any songs any twelve-year-old would know.

Picking up chicks is part of the male teenage ritual. John (Paul LeMat) invites anyone in the next car over who wants to ride with him to come in when they stop and gets stuck with a pre-teen (MacKenzie Phillips) and has to entertain her for the night.

Terry (Charles Martin Smith) meets a girl named Debbie (Candy Clark) while cruising up and down the boulevard.

Steve and Lori go to the school dance

Debbie agrees to continue cruising with Terry if he buys her booze.

John takes the girl back home. Funny how MAD was prudish in a lot on their articles (a Midnight Cowboy parody they did doesn't even mention prostitution) but rape jokes were a-OK. Such was humor from an all-male middle-age staff in the seventies.

In addition to being condescending about rock and roll, MAD often made jokes about how being high meant a person literally flew like a bird.

In the storyline throughout about Curt obsessed with a woman he sees in a T-Bird (Suzanne Somers). He finds the radio station where DJ Wolfman Jack (called Werewolf Wally here) is and gets him to dedicate a song to her. Instead of him flying off to college and saying goodbye to his family and friends, they do this punchline.


This is how it really went.

AMERICAN CAR-DAFFY
Cracked #121, November 1974
a: Sururi Gumen

Cracked didn't bother mocking the characters' names.

Missing from the MAD parody is a plotline where Curt is kidnapped by a gang of delinquents but earns their respect when he helps them pull a prank.

A reference here is made to disc jockeys taking payola, a practice common in the fifties and sixties.

Also not used in the MAD parody is John drag racing Bob Falfa (Harrison Ford), who challenged him earlier, after taking the underage girl home.
Fabian was never in any movies with Frankie and Annette together but they all did youth films so same difference.


Crazy didn't do a parody of the actual movie, but did a twist on the Drucker poster satirizing the Watergate scandal that was also occurring that year in #6 in August 1974.

Has nothing to do with any parody, but I remember when the commercial was on TV and they said their tagline my father would always say “Where were thee in '63?”