writing

After the commercial failure of his first feature film, THX 1138, George Lucas had given up on screenwritng. So, when he wanted to make his next film he contacted USC classmate, Willard Hyuck and his wife, Gloria Katz. Lucas talked to them about the various characters and story elements he had in mind for Graffiti. After their discussions, Huyck and Ms. Katz worked out a 15-page story treatment that brought out the humor and pathos in the initial design. Lucas' agent, Jeff Berg took it to various studios to see if he could get them to finance a script. It took about a year to get the money together. Eventually, Lucas got the president of United Artists (UA) to give him $10,000 to write the Graffiti script.

By the time he had money to pay the writing duo to start the Graffiti script, they were no longer available. Huyck was busy directing the low-budget horror film, The Second Coming that he and Ms. Katz had written together. So, Lucas paid a friend from school, Richard Walters to write the script. But when he read it, he was disappointed. The screenplay was completely different from the story treatment. According to Lucas, It looked like a Hot Rods from Hell picture. "It was very fantasy-like" he recalled, "with playing chicken and things kids didn't really do. I wanted something that was more like the way I grew up." Although Lucas rejected his first drafts for the film and he did not receive writer's credit, Walters was not bitter about the situation. Now a professor and chairman of UCLA's renowned Film and Television writing program, he says, "The truth of the matter is that I feel good about Graffiti. I was well paid to do the work that I did, and the scripts that I wrote won me assignments in that genre." "Suddenly," Walters recalls, "everyone was doing coming-of-age stories and I was doing assignments for good money at major studios."

Because he had no money left to pay for another writer, but had to turn something in to UA, Lucas felt he had no choice but to write the script himself. Using the original story treatment, Lucas sat down and forced himself to rewrite the entire screenplay. Working from eight in the morning untill eight at night, the whole process took him about three weeks. However, after reading Lucas' new script UA turned it down and refused to make the film. They didn't seem to understand Lucas' homage to the simple joys of cars, rock-and-roll, and small town romance.

(c.) 2004-2006, Kip Pullman.

Graffiti script writers, Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz (looking especially nerdy).

Story cont. on next page.