Apocalypse Now, the acclaimed Vietnam War film directed
by Francis Ford Coppola, opened in theaters around the
United States on August 15, 1979.

The film was inspired in part by Joseph Conrad’s 1899
novella Heart of Darkness, among other sources.

The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards,
including Best Picture, Best Director (Coppola), and
Best Supporting Actor (Duvall); it went on to win Best
Cinematography and Best Sound.

Apocalypse Now is today considered one of the greatest
films ever made.

Francis Ford Coppola

‘I love the smell Of Napalm in The Morning’… Robert
Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore.

Harrison Ford

Dennis Hopper

Laurence Fishburne

On August 11, 1973, the nostalgic teenage coming-of-age
movie American Graffiti, directed and co-written by George
Lucas, opened in theaters across the United States. Set in
California in the summer of 1962, the film was nominated 
for five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best
Picture, and helped launch the big-screen careers of Richard 
Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford, as well as the former child actor
and future Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard.

Wolfman-Jack

Harrison Ford

National Lampoon’s Vacation, sometimes referred to as
simply Vacation, is a 1983 road trip comedy film directed
by Harold Ramis starring Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo,
Imogene Coca, Randy Quaid, John Candy, and Christie
Brinkley in her acting debut with special appearances by
Eddie Bracken, Brian Doyle-Murray, Miriam Flynn, James
Keach, Eugene Levy and Frank McRae.

Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase will be 80
on October 8th.

On July 28, 1978, National Lampoon’s Animal House, a movie
spoof about 1960s college fraternities starring John Belushi,
(above) opened in theaters. Produced with an estimated budget
of $3 million, Animal House became a huge, multi-million-dollar
box-office hit, spawned a slew of cinematic imitations and
became part of pop-culture history with such memorable lines
as “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

Set at the fictional Faber College (the University of Oregon
served as a stand-in during filming).

On July 15, 1988, Die Hard, an action film starring Bruce
Willis as wisecracking New York City cop John McClane,
opened in theaters across the country. A huge box-office
hit, the film established Willis as a movie star and spawned
three sequels. Die Hard also became Hollywood shorthand
for describing the plot of other actions films, as in “Speed
is Die Hard on a bus.”