Hollywood Shuffle
- Bill Robinson - tap danced or watch others shuffle and tap? Some of this moves might have been created...
Submitted by jmlst81 on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: History Other
- Words: 1381
- Pages: 6
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Hollywood Shuffle
Historical circumstances and literature have been used and/or implied in films over and over. More often then not, these uses of culture are in the past tense; for example, films such as Three Kings (Russell, 1999) , Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998) and Braveheart (Gibson, 1995) are a classic example of blockbusters that are based on wars of the past. War based movies are the most popular genre of film to use historical situations. Although usually films use moments or feelings of the past, there are the few that try hard to capture the moments of the present and successfully put them on the sliver screen: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Godfather, and Traffic. Using what is going on around you in the present day to make a movie before that event has past is a difficult task. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956) is the best example of a movie that got across its underlying point (McCarthyism and/or Communism) well, but did it through the means of a truly "B" grade movie that today, would be played only on "USA Up All Night." On the other hand, The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) and Traffic (Soderbergh, 2000) were box office sensations that had huge budgets.
So how do you quickly and successfully make a non-cheesy movie, dealing with a current situation, and having almost no budget? Credit Cards and a good script would be the likely answer of Robert Townsend. Using his Credit card, Townsend funded the film Hollywood Shuffle (Townsend, 1987). This film, which seems to be semi-autobiographical, focuses directly on the problem black actors had in the 80s with the Hollywood film industry. Hollywood Shuffle deals directly with the stereotyping of blacks in American film, the moral decisions black actors needed to make in choosing a role and the lack of good roles for black actors in general during the 1980s; furthermore, Townsend not only uses this film to extend his message of oppression that was going on in film industry, but also uses...
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