American Graffiti | Buchanan Field, Concord — The Last Shot of the Night

Everything in the film has been a loop, and then somebody breaks it. The final scene was shot at Buchanan Field in Concord, out past the Berkeley hills on the east side of the bay: a small propeller airliner on the apron in the early morning, Curt saying goodbye on the tarmac, and then the town seen from the air, shrinking, with the wing in the corner of the frame. That last aerial is the whole point of the two hours before it. You cannot see how small a place is until you leave it.

Buchanan Field is a real working general-aviation airport, opened in 1942 and still busy with light aircraft, flight schools and business traffic. It is not the sort of airport where a boy from a valley town would plausibly board an eastbound flight to college — but in 1972 it had what the production needed, which was a stretch of apron, a set of stairs, and permission to put a camera at the bottom of them at dawn.

Come here and the pilgrimage genuinely ends. Petaluma keeps its 1962 for you; Concord does the opposite. The terminal is modest, the parking is easy, and from the public viewing area you can stand and watch a Cessna line up and go, which is close enough. Then read the freeze-frame epilogue back in your head — who died, who stayed, who never came home — and notice that the film gives Curt the flight and takes almost everything else away.

Airport identified from production location records for the film. Photograph is an illustrative small-airfield propeller aircraft via Pexels.