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Fresh off of the success of Cooley High, Michael Schultz was tentative about signing on to a project with a first time producer 1st time producers. But when he learned that Norman Whitfield had already been signed on Schultz no longer hesitated.
He first tackled the script, significantly rewriting it. Of utmost importance was amping up the interaction between the young, militant car wash employee Duane/Abdullah, Bill Duke’s debut film role, and Lonnie, the older, ex-con employee, whom the late Ivan Dixon—known for the provocative film Nothing but a Man—came out of retirement to play.
Schultz was so committed to the storyline, he fervently fought Universal brass to keep it. Duke’s commentary on what that storyline meant to him and the King-less/Malcolm X-less society at the time underscores Schultz’s decision.
Schultz was able to stitch everything together in was very coherent and enjoyable way. He innovated a playing the music at full volume while on set so that the actors and extras all moved to the same beat. I some shots, you can notice that some of the people that were not extras in the background were also walking to the rhythm.
Bio
Michael Schultz was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of an African-American mother Katherine Frances Leslie (1917–1995), and Leo Albert Schultz (1913–2001), an insurance salesman of German descent. Shortly before his birth his parents married in Iowa, where both were listed as black on their marriage license. Mr. Schultz’s occupation was listed as “Musician” at the time of his marriage.
After his undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Marquette University, he attended Princeton University, where in 1966 he directed his first play, a production of Waiting for Godot. He joined the Negro Ensemble Company in 1968, which brought him to Broadway in 1969. His breakthrough was directing Lorraine Hansberry’s To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which he restaged for television in 1972.
Schultz’ earlier film projects combined low comedy with profound social comment (Honeybaby and Cooley High), reaching a peak with the ensemble comedy Car Wash (1976) and Which Way Is Up? (1977), starring Richard Pryor.
Schultz married Gloria Jones in Brooklyn, New York in 1965.[8] As an actress his wife is known professionally as Lauren Jones. In non-acting capacities, she is known as Gloria Schultz. The couple have two children.
Notable Michael Schultz films:
Cooley HighThe Last Dragon
Car WashKrush Groove
Joel T. Schumacher
Joel T. Schumacher was an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Raised in New York City by his mother, Schumacher graduated from Parsons School of Design and originally became a fashion designer. He first entered filmmaking as a production and costume designer before gaining writing credits on Car Wash, Sparkle, and The Wiz.
Having written for sparkle that was released that same year, Joel was hired to write the dialogue in the film.
Bio
Joel T. Schumacher was born on August 29, 1939, in New York City. His parents were Francis Schumacher, a Baptist from Knoxville, Tennessee, who died from pneumonia when Joel was four, and Marian (Kantor), a Swedish Jew. He was raised by his mother in Long Island City. During his youth, he used LSD and methamphetamine and started drinking alcohol by age nine. In 1965, he graduated from Parsons School of Design, after having studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and later became a designer for Revlon in 1966
In 1974, Schumacher wrote a script for an eponymous biographic made-for-television movie based on the life of Virginia Hill. He was selected to serve as the movie’s director.
In 1974, he and Howard Rosenman wrote the script for Sparkle which later went into production in 1975, and was released in 1976. His original plan for the film was for the film to be a “black Gone with the Wind”, but had to be modest due to the limited budget given to the production by Warner Bros. According to Schumacher the film represented his “personal fascination” with Jesse Jackson, Angela Davis, Tammi Terrell, and Diana Ross. He was later selected to write the screenplays for Car Wash and The Wiz.
He is responsible for more memorable movies than I can count.
1. Sparkle 2. Car Wash 3. The Wiz 4. The Incredible Shrinking Woman 5. D.C. Cab (a.k.a. Street Fleet) 6. St. Elmo’s Fire 7. The Lost Boys 8. Cousins 9. Flatliners 10. Dying Young 11. Falling Down 12. The Client 13. Batman Forever 14. A Time to Kill 15. Batman & Robin 16. 8mm 17. Flawless 18. Tigerland 19. Bad Company 20. Phone Booth 21. Veronica Guerin 22. The Phantom of the Opera 23. The Number 23 24. Blood Creek 25. Twelve 26. Trespass 27. Man in the Mirror
Gary Stromberg
Car Wash was the brain child of this man. the story as he tells it is;
On a loaded evening one night, after recently seeing the movie Nashville, he wanted to make a movie fully driven by music, and came up with the concept for the movie “car wash”. He pitched it to universal as a Broadway play, because he wanted nothing but music and dancing. Universal offered him the movie rights instead. He says what ended up convincing the studio to fund his film, was that he would partially fund it with a soundtrack he would release before the film. When the studio said yes his very first hire for the film was the music composer.
Bio
This man is the epidemy of the definition of right time right place. After dropping out of college and being discharged from the US army. He started spending a whole lot of time in Los Angeles bars and clubs listening to music and socializing with the musicians and the club folk. He was offered a jobs as an assistant to PR company, he worked for that PR firm for a couple of months and then the company opened a music division. This division started with 2 clients. Nancy Wilson and Ray Charles.
So at 19 years old he would go on the road with these 2 clients. At the end of Ray Charles’ tour, 10 months later, he quit and opened his own PR firm. “Gibson & Stromberg Public Relations” first 3 “walk in” clients were • 3 dog night • StephenWolf • The Doors
He would go on tour with them and party hard – this he says helped him gather clients. His company became the largest PR company in music at the time.His company represented such luminaries as The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Muhammad Ali, Barbra Streisand, Boyz II Men, Neil Diamond, Ray Charles, The Doors, Earth, Wind & Fire, Elton John, Three Dog Night, and Crosby, Stills, & Nash.
Stromberg also spent time in the film business where he not only co-produced the motion picture Car Wash but also The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh. He spent some time in the restaurant business, where he was a founder/owner of the legendary Rainbow Bar & Grill. He’s also co-written three books, The Harder They Fall and Feeding the Fame and a third book for McGraw-Hill Publishing, entitled Second Chances, which was published in October, 2009. He is currently writing his fourth book, She’s Come Undone for HCI Publishing, which will come out in spring 2021.
Daddy Rich
Daddy Rich Church of Divine Economic Spirituality was based on Reverend Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II or also known as Reverent Ike.
The Reverend was the original person picked for the part. Gary Stromberg convinced the reverend to do the movie. on the day he was supposed to shoot he arrived with fleet of Rolls Royce’s. He started directing Michael Schultz on how to do his job and how he should be filmed. When he realized that he didn’t have control, he left, never to return. A crew member called him up to see if he would come back to continue shooting. He responded with “God told me that it wouldn’t be a good idea to do the film. That’s when the Schultz and Stromberg contacted a still relatively unknown young and up in coming comedian named Richard Pryor. The Daddy Rich character is the most memorable character from the film, and became a reference in his on right.
Reverend Ike’s Bio
Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II (June 1, 1935 – July 28, 2009), better known as Reverend Ike, was an American minister and evangelist based in New York City. He was known for the slogan “You can’t lose with the stuff I use!”[1] Though his preaching is considered a form of prosperity theology, Rev. Ike diverged from traditional Christian theology and taught what he called “Science of Living.”
Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II was born in Ridgeland, South Carolina to parents from the Netherlands Antilles, and was of African and Indo (Dutch-Indonesian) descent. He began his career as a teenage preacher and became assistant pastor at Bible Way Church in Ridgeland, South Carolina. After serving a stint in the Air Force as a Chaplain Service Specialist (a non-commissioned officer assigned to assist commissioned Air Force chaplains), he founded, successively, the United Church of Jesus Christ for All People in Beaufort, South Carolina, the United Christian Evangelistic Association in Boston, Massachusetts, his main corporate entity, and the Christ Community United Church in New York City.
He was known for making up a ton of slogans, like; “Papa’s got a brand new bag” which got used in a James Brown song. “The best way to help the poor is not to be one of them” “Get out of the ghetto and get into the get mo” “I used to be black myself until I turned green” “…close your eyes and see green…”
At his height, he was allegedly making up to 2 million a year in cash donations.
As an exploitative entrepreneurial endeavor he was known to sell prayer cloths. It was a 2″x2″ red or green felt cloth that you would put in places you wanted abundance. so if your fridge was empty you would place one in the fridge and pray for more food, or if you wanted more money you would place one in your wallet or purse and pray for more money. they were sold for 25$ per 2 squares.
Norman Whitfield
Norman Whitfield was a primordial piece to getting this movie made. Gary Stromberg convinced Universal that he could fund the movie by releasing the soundtrack before the film. when the studio green lit the project Stromberg immediatly knew who to reach out to.
“Working at the Car Wash“ became the #1 chart-topping hit for Rose Royce. It sold of 2 million copies that year making it the biggest-selling single of the 1970s. The full album won a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album. “I wanna get next to you” by Rose Royce also charted as #10 on billboard for 3 weeks.
Through the use of payola, radio stations played “Working at the Car Wash“ 3 to 4 times a day in target markets so that by the time the movie came out people had already been familiar with the song. On the night of the premiere, Stromberg hired the hired soul train dancers to dance in the street. Because of this movies success Whitfield went ahead and worked with Michael Shultz on which way is up and the last dragon.
Bio
Norman Jesse Whitfield (May 12, 1940 – September 16, 2008) was an American songwriter and producer, who worked with Berry Gordy’s Motown labels during the 1960s. He has been credited as one of the creators of the Motown Sound and of the late-1960s subgenre of psychedelic soul.
Whitfield was born and raised in Harlem, New York, and spent much of his teen years in local pool halls. In his late teens, he and his family moved to Detroit, Michigan, so that his father could join his sister and work in her husband’s chain of drug stores, Barthwell Drugs. He attended Northwestern High School.
At 19, Whitfield began frequenting Motown’s Hitsville USA offices for a chance to work for the growing label. Founder Berry Gordy Jr. recognized Whitfield’s persistence and hired him for the quality control department, which determined which songs would or would not be released. Whitfield joined Motown’s in-house songwriting staff, co-writing the Marvin Gaye hit “Pride & Joy”, the Marvelettes’s “Too Many Fish in the Sea” and the Velvelettes’s “Needle in a Haystack”. He took over Smokey Robinson’s role as the main producer for the Temptations in 1966, after his “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” performed better than Robinson’s “Get Ready” on the pop charts.
Selected to be the official US entry in the Cannes film festival won for music and technical excellence. there would be another until Spike Lee’s 1989 film do the right thing.
The judges there liked it because they thought that the film was a political film. with the post war communist sentiment rejecting a lot of the top down oligarchical themes from previous decades. They sympathized with the working class rising story line and not what it was supposed to be, a music driven comedy. this might also be because a lot of the films coming out of Europe at the time explored those exact themes.
It could have one an official Palme d’Or but 2 American judges didn’t want the award this film. To the misfortune of this writer I was not able to find out what the reason was. The board of judges was so disappointed by the 2 American judges that the created a new award called the Vulcan Award in Technical Excellence to ensure that Car Wash would go back home with something.
Michael Schultz
Joel T. Schumacher
Gary Stromberg
Daddy Rich
Selected to be the official US entry in the Cannes film festival won for music and technical excellence. there would be another until Spike Lee’s 1989 film do the right thing.