Blue Collar (film)

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Blue Collar

Directed by	Paul Schrader
Produced by	Allan Ekelund
Written by	Paul Schrader Leonard Schrader
Starring	Richard Pryor Harvey Keitel Yaphet Kotto
Cinematography	Bobby Byrne
Release date(s)	February 10, 1978
Running time	114 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

Blue Collar is the 1978 directorial debut of screenwriter Paul Schrader. This drama (with minimal comic elements) stars Harvey Keitel, Richard Pryor and Yaphet Kotto.

Both a critique of union practices and an examination of life in a working-class Rust Belt enclave, the film concerns a trio of Detroit auto workers: Zeke Brown (Pryor), Jerry Bartowski (Keitel), and Smokey James (Kotto). Fed up with mistreatment at the hands of both management and union brass, and coupled with financial hardships on each man's end, the trio hatch a plan to rob a safe at union headquarters. They commit the caper, but find a few scant bills in the union safe. More importantly, they also come away with a ledger, evidence of the union's illegal loan-lending operation and ties to organised crime syndicates. They soon find themselves wrestling with what to do with this newfound knowledge amidst both a union investigation of the crime and a federal agent's attempts to coerce Jerry into informing on union corruption.

The film is notable for its language, which mimics the street-level profanity found in Schrader's Taxi Driver screenplay and exceeds it in both frequency and rhythm. It is also notable for the performances of its three leads. As Schrader observes in the commentary on the film's DVD, none of the three got along with each other during the production, and fistfights between takes were not uncommon. Film scholars and fans of the film cite Pryor's performance as one of the best of his career^{[citation needed]}, his dressing down of a union rep and a later exchange with an IRS agent considered masterstrokes.^{[citation needed]}

The film was shot on location at the Checker plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and at numerous locales around Detroit, including the Ford Rouge plant on the city's southwest side and the Belle Isle Bridge.