I thought More American Graffiti was very inventive in its use of split screens. I have never seen that done in a feature film at that point. It was a very intriguing experiment in form. The film itself wasn't great, but I thought it had some interesting elements in it that at least made it worth watching.

As for the film, it was made by Universal. They were going to make it with or without Lucas, so he reluctantly signed on to try to steer it somewhere. The problem is that the original was such a masterpiece the way it ended that nothing could be added without being superfluous. Toad's Vietnam storyline is sort of neat in itself, though--it's basically Lucas' version of Apocalypse Now. 16mm with a sort of comic-book like satire.