For those who remember, the television sketch comedy series In Living Color ran from 1990 to 1994, launching the careers of Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, Rosie Perez, Jamie Foxx and many others. Created by and starring Keenan Ivory Wayans, In Living Color provided American families with an alternative to the very white Saturday Night Live and whitewashed The Cosby Show. In a novel twist for the time, it was a show written by and featuring mainly Black comedians.
Presaging that show’s popularity was Robert Townsend’s 1987 theatrical comedy, Hollywood Shuffle. Produced, directed and starring Townsend (and featuring a script co-written by Wayans), Hollywood Shuffle is part sketch comedy and part incisive commentary on how Black actors are mistreated by Tinseltown. Revolving around a central story where struggling actor Bobby Taylor (Townsend) is trying to land a plum role in a movie, Hollywood Shuffle also features a collection of parodic sketches.
Strong roles were scarce in 1987 for Black men. Townsend, who had a good role in Norman Jewison’s acclaimed A Soldier’s Story (1984), wanted more parts like that one. But his agent laughed at the idea, explaining that only one good movie with good parts for Black actors happens once a year. Unless you were Eddie Murphy, good luck. However, there were plenty of parts available for Black men playing pimps, hustlers, slaves and gangsters.
At one point, Bobby seeks advice from a successful Black actor B. B. Sanders (Brad Sanders) who happens to order food from the hot dog restaurant where Bobby works. Granted, success for Sanders is playing a bat called Batty Boy on a sitcom about a Black bat living with a white family called There’s a Bat in My House! Sanders replies, “Does your character die in the script?” When Bobby answers in the negative, the more famous man replies, “Then it’s a good script.”
In his 1997 review for The Edge, a movie released a full 10 years after Hollywood Shuffle, Roger Ebert writes of his “BADF action movie rule” or “The Brother Always Dies First.” Townsend is fully aware of how Black characters, like Black actors, were seen as fully disposable. Except Eddie Murphy. Hot off his success in Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hrs., Murphy had ascended to a new stratosphere of movie star unlike any of his Black contemporaries. Only Bill Cosby knew this kind of success, but Cosby got there by acting white and inoffensive on his sitcom. Murphy, however, was allowed to embrace being Black; he had permission to be profane and a little dangerous. In one sequence in Hollywood Shuffle, Taylor and his competitors all dress and act like Murphy, down to the mustache, in response to a casting director seeking someone more like the star for a role or “Murphonic.”
Townsend shot Hollywood Shuffle on a shoestring budget, maxing out his credit cards to garner the $100,000 needed to make the movie. Assembled like a Frankenstein from pieces of film stock that Townsend took from other projects, there is a fly-by-night quality here that makes the underdog aspect of the movie something to cheer for. Imagine The Kentucky Fried Movie but made by Black filmmakers rather than Jewish ones. It is this seat-of-the-pants, go-for-broke spirit that makes Hollywood Shuffle so endearing, even if its dagger is trained right on the racist heart of Hollywood.
When we first meet Bobby, he is in the bathroom with his little brother, Stevie (Craigus R. Johnson), rehearsing lines before a big audition. We soon learn that he is auditioning for a film called Jivetime Jimmy’s Revenge, an awful story full of racist tropes that is being directed, written and cast by a trio of white folks. Bobby knows the script is awful but sees it as his break into something bigger and better. But to Bobby’s friends and family, auditioning would be lowering himself and perpetuating the dearth of good roles available to Black actors.
Via the sketches, Townsend and Wayans (who also plays two roles) explore where being Black fits within all aspects of Hollywood. One of the most successful sketches comes early on. Titled “Black Acting School,” this infomercial offers classes such as Jive Talk 101 and Shuffling 200 and promises success in roles such as muggers and pimps. One satisfied former pupil claims in a testimonial that he even got to play a rapist twice=. However, the class isn’t for everyone. “This class is for dark-skinned Blacks only,” Townsend’s character tells us. “Light-skinned or yellow Blacks don’t make good crooks.” Other sketches include a Siskel and Ebert parody and a noir spoof called Death of a Breakdancer (featuring Wayans playing a questionable character named Jheri Curl).
Despite some limitations due to budget, Hollywood Shuffle is an important entry in ‘80s filmmaking. Even though things have improved for Black actors and filmmakers since its release, there is still room for more roles and films that celebrate Black stories, ones that don’t deal with slavery, gangbanging and violence. By the end of the film, Bobby stands up for himself, casts off the shackles of Jivetime Jimmy. In real life, Townsend would go on to direct Murphy in the concert film, Eddie Murphy: Raw (1987). Though he has worked steadily since Hollywood Shuffle, Townsend has never achieved the success of his peers, especially those who sprung from In Living Color. But without Townsend and Hollywood Shuffle, it is very possible that many of our premier Black actors and filmmakers would never have had a chance to tell their stories and practice their craft.
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