Hollywood Shuffle was one of those movies that seemed to run on HBO on a near loop in the late eighties/early nineties. It's political/moral purpose--that Hollywood treats black actors like shit--was not lost on teenage me, but I watched it every time I came across it because its acidic fantasy sequences, barrage of one liners, heightened performances, and weirdest TV-show-within-a-movie of the eighties ("Batty, Batty, Batty!") made me laugh. A lot of eighties comedies have not aged well, often because of the kinds of offhand racism Hollywood Shuffle skewers but mostly because they're just not that funny, and I really didn't expect Robert Townsend's movie to still make me laugh some thirty years after the last time I watched it. I was happily surprised that it still does. I was less surprised to see how ahead-of-its-time Hollywood Shuffle was. There just weren't movies that addressed Hollywood's bigotry in the eighties, and it would be a good thirty years that topic became a more discussed one and Hollywood began rethinking its system for the better.
So Hollywood Shuffle is kind of incredible because it's the rare eighties movie that is still funny and because it was so forward thinking. It's also incredible that the film got made at all, as Townsend had to scramble to raise money to film a script that predictably got little love in the system it takes to task. He partially funded the movie on credit cards, collected film stock from other filmmakers' leftovers, and made the whole thing for about $100,000, a figure that makes The Blair Witch Project's budget look like Avatar's.
The consequences of such filming on the cheap are only occasionally apparent on the screen. There are some takes that probably would have been replaced with stronger ones if Townsend had the film stock to shoot more. A black-and-white sequence looks like it was shot on VHS. Volume levels sometimes fuzz into the red, and some scenes that could have benefited from tighter editing seem to go on too long just to bring the film up to its barely-feature length of 81 minutes. The talent behind Hollywood Shuffle helps it to transcend those issues. Writer/director/star Townsend is the most audacious one, of course, but there's also a phenomenal supporting cast of familiar actors (co-writer Keenan Wayans and siblings Damon and Kim, Anne-Marie Johnson, Helen Martin, Dom Irrera, John Witherspoon, Lisa "You gotta see the baby" Mende) and some less well-known ones who really get to show off their improv skills during a casting sequence that is easily the movie's funniest.
The Criterion Collection's new 4K digital transfer of Hollywood Shuffle mostly transcends the picture's limitations too. That black and white fantasy sequence looks extra rough on Blu-ray, but that's largely because the rest of the movie looks saw fabulous, warm and filmic yet crisp. Extras are a bit skimpy for a Criterion release, but they're all worthwhile. Townsend provides a new feature commentary in which he discusses the lengths he had to go to make his film without studio assistance (including personally scrubbing scads of pigeon shit out of the detective agency set) and the talent of his coworkers. Three of those coworkers (Johnson, Rusty Cundieff, and Bobby McGee) get to discuss their experiences making Hollywood Shuffle and how it reflects their own experiences in the system in a half-hour featurette. Another half-hour audio only extra features Townsend's appearance on critic Elvis Mitchell's radio show.
