Blue Collar (1978) on Netflix
Three auto workers in Michigan, Ezekiel 'Zeke' Brown, Jerry Bartowski and Sam 'Smokey' James, are fed up with management and union bosses. Money troubles push them to rob a union safe.
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- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.5/1012,318 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes98%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ezekiel 'Zeke' Brown, Jerry Bartowski and Sam 'Smokey' James work the assembly line in Wayne County, Michigan. Zeke is in trouble with the IRS. Smokey, an ex-convict from Mississippi, owes money from a numbers game to a loan shark. Jerry works a second job at a gas station and still cannot pay for his daughter's orthodontics. Management and the union bosses mistreat the men. The three decide to break into the safe at United Auto Workers headquarters.
Cast
- Borah Silveras Dogshit Miller
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Blue Collar (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Richard Pryor, supposedly in a drug-fueled rage, pointed a gun at director Paul Schrader during the shoot and told him there was no way he would ever do more than three takes for a scene. The three stars fought continually while filming.
- Harvey Keitel, irritated by Richard Pryor's lengthy improvisations, looked straight into the camera and flung an ashtray's contents into the lens to make the take unusable; Pryor and his bodyguard then pinned Keitel to the floor and pummeled him with their fists.
- Paul Schrader said the shoot was very difficult because of artistic and personal tensions with his actors, and that he suffered an on-set mental breakdown while making the film, which made him seriously reconsider his career.
- Richard Pryor did not get along with Yaphet Kotto either, and at one point tried to attack him with a chair, only to be disarmed by Pryor's own assistant before he could reach him.
- Keitel and Kotto, both classically trained, clashed with Pryor's comedic improvisation and grew irritated when Schrader told them to follow the script instead of improvising, though he had encouraged them to act spontaneously on his directorial debut.
