Blue Collar
![Watch film Blue Collar — Blue Collar (1978) Original Trailer [FHD]](https://www.acmodasi.in/amdb/images/posters/1/48/blue-collar-1978-36EWl.webp)
Short description
Blue Collar is set in Detroit, where three men working an assembly line at an automobile plant find their wages falling short of their bills. Zeke, Jerry and Smokey are frustrated not only by management but by the union that is supposed to represent them. Looking for a way out of their financial troubles, the three coworkers settle on robbing the safe at the union headquarters, expecting a large payout. What they take from the office instead turns out to be far less valuable than they hoped, though it includes documents that point to wrongdoing by the union leadership. The men soon find themselves facing an organization determined to get its property back and willing to use its power against them.
The 1978 crime drama was the first feature directed by Paul Schrader, who wrote the screenplay with his brother Leonard Schrader. Schrader went on to direct Hardcore the following year. Richard Pryor plays Zeke, Harvey Keitel plays Jerry, and Yaphet Kotto plays Smokey, with Ed Begley Jr., Harry Bellaver and George Memmoli among the credited cast of forty-eight. Don Guest produced the film for Universal Pictures and TAT Communications Company. Made for about two million dollars, it returned roughly seven million worldwide. On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 8.2 from 46 reviews, and on TMDB it has a rating of 7.3 from 215 votes.
What's left behind the scenes
- The party scene was filmed last, and by that point, many members of the film's cast had already used drugs, and Pryor had returned to cocaine use.
- Work on the script began after a meeting with a young man who told Paul Schrader about his own father, who worked at an automobile assembly plant and then committed suicide. Schrader told him that it would be much better to write a script in which the workers rob their own union. He then called his brother, telling him that he had given a guy a great idea for a script, and added that the guy was unlikely to turn that idea into a new screenplay. In the end, Paul and Leonard Schrader (1943-2006) wrote the script themselves, and when filming began, that same guy (Sydney A. Glass) showed up, started asserting his rights, and it was decided to mention him in the credits to get him off their backs.
- The translation of the original title is "Blue Collar."
- Filming was difficult because Richard Pryor (1940-2005), Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021), and Harvey Keitel constantly argued with each other. There were fights, verbal insults, walk-offs, and stalemates where none of the disputing parties would yield during filming. According to director Paul Schrader, Pryor once punched Keitel during filming, and Kotto threw a chair.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
