Film funded with credit cards became classic
Commentary from Townsend featured in restored version of ‘Hollywood Shuffle’
“Hollywood Shuffle” — Robert Townsend’s 1987 debut feature film as director, producer, co-writer and star — was released on disc earlier this year by the Criterion Collection, in a newly restored 4K transfer with a new commentary track by Townsend, interviews with actors Rusty Cundieff, Bobby McGee and Anne-Marie Johnson, an essay by Aisha Harris and a 2022 radio interview with Townsend by Elvis Mitchell.
In the film, co-written with Keenan Ivory Wayans, who also appears on screen, Townsend plays Bobby Taylor, an aspiring actor in Los Angeles. To make ends meet, he works at small hot dog stand, Winky Dinky Dog, while suffering the indignities of auditioning for roles well below his talent and his dignity.
The film was a relative hit when it was first released, especially in relation to its minuscule $100,000 budget. Shot in 12 days over two-and-a-half years, Townsend financed the film with $60,000 he had saved from acting jobs in the movies “A Soldier’s Story” — director Norman Jewison and producer Ronald Schwary also gave him unused film from the production — “Streets of Fire” and “American Flyers.” In what became a key part of the film’s legend, he also filled the gap with credit cards.
Among the films Townsend subsequently directed are the concert documentary “Eddie Murphy Raw,” the dramatic musical “The Five Heartbeats” and the superhero
origin story “Meteor Man.” He has also worked extensively in television, directing episodes of Netflix’s “Kaleidoscope” and Peacock’s “The Best Man: The Final Chapters.” He also teaches at the University of Southern California film school.
As Townsend put it, “You know, I have the best life. I get to shoot, create, pitch, teach. It’s like when a little kid says, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a movie director and a writer and a producer and a professor.’ And I’m like that little kid. I really am.”
This interview with Townsend has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: “Hollywood Shuffle” came out of your frustration as an actor. Did you intend for it to launch a directing career? A:
When I did “A Soldier’s Story,” that changed my life because it was a film about people of color, and it was well-written (by) Charles Fuller — it wasn’t stereotypical, and it had layers.
… So when that film came out, and we got nominated for three Academy Awards, I was like, “Oh my God, this is movies. This is what I want to do.” And I just remember my agent says, “Robert, just be happy. You did a great movie. They only do one Black movie a year.” And I was like, “No, I want to do more of this.” And I started auditioning for a lot of stereotypical stuff. And I just remember going to Keenan’s house, we would talk about our auditions. And we had the same auditions. And one day, I got so mad because it was just degrading. It’s kind of like in “Hollywood Shuffle.” Someone was telling me to stick my butt out and jive talk and walk around and stick your lip out and bug your eyes. And I was doing it, and I felt like, “Oh my God, this is going to be my life.” And so in that moment, I said to Keenan, we need to make our own movies. And then he was like, “Rob, you didn’t go to film school. You never directed anything.” And
I was like, “I don’t care.” I grew up in the theater. I saw Black writers, directors, producers, I know I can do this. And he was like, “We’re just two boys from the projects. That means we can do anything.” And we started to make “Hollywood Shuffle.”
Q: Looking at your career moving forward from “Hollywood Shuffle,” you were often a little too ahead of the curve. You made a Black superhero movie, sort of too early. You started your own studio, but sort of too early. What do you think about that when you look back? A:
It’s kind of like when you’re the first soldier. I’m an explorer and whoever cuts the path, you’re the first one to say, “Hey, there’s a path over here,” and everyone goes, “There’s no path.” So yes, I had my own studio in Hollywood. It was a Hollywood professional school where all these actors like Debbie Reynolds went to school, and the neighborhood had turned into an Armenian neighborhood, and I bought it, and it became a 16,000-square-foot studio. I filmed “Five Heartbeats” in there, pieces of “Meteor Man” in there. I was going to do my sitcom in there, and then I lost it in an earthquake. I’m kind of a Rubik’s Cube. And I’m an artist, that I never want to be in a box. So when you look at my body of work, it’s comedy, it’s drama, it’s musicals. Sometimes some people say Robert Townsend will take on any genre. And I think that’s what real filmmakers and real artists do.
Q: You started making “Hollywood Shuffle” with $60,000 you saved from acting jobs. But you finished the movie on credit cards, which became not only part of the lore of the film but also a foundational idea for a lot of independent films in the 1990s. That was a big risk. What would you have done if the movie hadn’t sold?
A: We would be doing this interview from a jail cell (laughs). So the film is done over two-and-a-half years. When we first start shooting, I don’t know what I’m doing. So I go through my money like that, the 60 is gone, but we’re looking at dailies at FotoKem in Burbank, and Keenan and I are looking at each other like, “This is really good. Oh man, this is coming together.” And I had ran out of money. So then I went on the road and did stand-up comedy, and I made more money. When I got back, it was a stack of mail in the house. And I was going through the mail, and it was applications for credit cards — Visa, Preferred Visa, MasterCard, Chevron, Shell. And that’s when I said, “I’ll finish it with credit cards.” It’s just the entrepreneurial spirit where you just go, “OK, I can charge this, I can charge that, everybody takes credit cards.” I think I got about $40,000 in credit cards.
Q: The timing of when this disc of “Hollywood Shuffle” is coming out, you can’t help but ask: Have things gotten better? A:
I think things have gotten better because there was a time that we didn’t have any people of color as leads or we just had one token here, one token there. There’s a lot of production going on, and Black folks are working a lot. It is totally different than “Hollywood Shuffle” because we were talking about balancing the playing field, where we could see characters with dignity that weren’t just one type of person of color. So I think things have gotten better. There’s always room for more. And I just think that’s always going to be the conversation. There’s always room for more.
And we have a lot of Black creatives that are doing a lot of amazing work out there.