Blue Collar

Blue Collar (1978)

Timing: 1:54 (114 min)

7.392/10
157

All about film

Video 2

Photo 12

Actors and characters

Release date

1978-02-10

Country

United States

Production

Universal Pictures, TAT Communications Company

Genre

Drama, Crime

Budget

$1 700 000

Revenue

$6 521 083

Website

Director

Paul Schrader

Actors

Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto, Ed Begley Jr., Harry Bellaver, George Memmoli, Lucy Saroyan, Lane Smith, Cliff DeYoung, Borah Silver
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Don Guest, Robin French

Operator

Bobby Byrne

Composer

Jack Nitzsche

Artist

Audition

Editing

Tom Rolf
All team (18)

• The translation of the original title is "Blue Collar."
• Filming was difficult because Richard Pryor (1940-2005), Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021), and Harvey Keitel constantly argued with each other. There were fights, verbal insults, walk-offs, and stalemates where none of the disputing parties would yield during filming. According to director Paul Schrader, Pryor once punched Keitel during filming, and Kotto threw a chair.
• Work on the script began after a meeting with a young man who told Paul Schrader about his own father, who worked at an automobile assembly plant and then committed suicide. Schrader told him that it would be much better to write a script in which the workers rob their own union. He then called his brother, telling him that he had given a guy a great idea for a script, and added that the guy was unlikely to turn that idea into a new screenplay. In the end, Paul and Leonard Schrader (1943-2006) wrote the script themselves, and when filming began, that same guy (Sydney A. Glass) showed up, started asserting his rights, and it was decided to mention him in the credits to get him off their backs.
• The party scene was filmed last, and by that point, many members of the film's cast had already used drugs, and Pryor had returned to cocaine use.