Hollywood Shuffle

Bobby Taylor works at a hot-dog stand while chasing acting jobs, but the auditions he lands keep pushing him toward the same narrow set of roles. His grandmother objects when he reads for a low-budget exploitation picture with an offensive title, and the part he eventually wins at Tinseltown Studios pulls him into a run of dreams in which he imagines himself in very different kinds of movies. Those fantasies send up the racial stereotypes that shape what Hollywood offers Black performers, while Bobby weighs his ambition against the example he wants to set for his younger brother, Stevie.

Hollywood Shuffle is a 1987 comedy directed by Robert Townsend, who also produced, co-wrote the screenplay with Keenen Ivory Wayans, and stars as Bobby. It arrived the same year as Townsend's Eddie Murphy Raw and stands as the second of the five features he directed, ahead of The Meteor Man, Jackie's Back! and Up, Up, and Away. The large credited cast of 31 includes Craigus R. Johnson, Helen Martin, Starletta DuPois, Keenen Ivory Wayans and Anne-Marie Johnson.

Made on a modest scale and released by Samuel Goldwyn Company, the film took in about 5 million dollars worldwide, a solid return for an independent comedy of its kind. On IMDb it holds 6.9/10 from around 7,100 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.5/10 from roughly 103 votes.