THE SCREEN
Westerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
WHERE IT'S AT THE Si Man, I'm tellin' ya, this dude Smokey in the flick Blue Collar—the cat that's played by this here Yaphet Kotto—this dude is what I mean BAA A AD. He's...
...And in the second place, Smokey says, Zeke oughtn't to be "talking about what you're gonna do to somebody else...
...And 'cause they got over it, the honkies got 'em to believin' they was gonna be taken up into the middle class instead, whioh was supposed to be as good as heaven anyway...
...It's on account o' hassles like this that these dudes decide to rob a safe...
...Think about what you can do for yourself...
...Stead o' the elevator ride, he gets the shaft...
...They both tryin' to bridge that same gap that Smokey fell down in...
...It ain't just that he spends his bread on coke parties for Zeke and Jerry, neither...
...How's everybody gonna stick together, like he says they ought, if it's each man for himself and dog-eat-dog and all like that, like he also says...
...As soon as some dude figures out what it really means to be a worker, like Smokey does, he wants to be a capitalist instead...
...The hip thing here is that you can't really put these dudes down for the mess they in...
...At the end Zeke and Jerry is at each other's throats, and suddenly here comes the voice o' Smokey out o' nowhere tellin' us again how "they" pit black against white and all...
...But Smokey, who's a little hipper than his brothers, since he's been in slam, unloads on Zeke's idea with both barrels...
...I mean, what is the American Dream...
...But then in the next breath Smokey talkin' *bout becomin some kind o' entrepreneur or something: He thinks he's gonna get out o' his financial "place" he's bein' kept in by usin' that account book as a little nest egg that's gonna pay him interest...
...But it ain't because Smokey goes around hittin' on union gorillas that Knuckles gets him wasted...
...Comes a time in this flick when we find each o' them stranded out in the middle of his very own bridge somewhere...
...Knuckles looks real relieved at that, the way people usually does when they gets a suspended sentence...
...It's when Zeke goes in to see Knuckles with a grievance before anybody's even thought o' robbin' no safe or nothin...
...So now that's the American Dream, ain't it...
...It's in your little in-between scene, like when Jerry's kid needs braces on her teeth, or the man from the Interminable Retinue zaps Zeke for deductin' more kids than he's got...
...It ain't wages," Zeke blurts out there at one point, "It's the prices"—and Knuckles begins to look kind o' worried...
...These two is played, respectfully, by Richard Pryor and Harvey Keitel...
...Both is caught in the middle half way between the rock and the hard place...
...Really Zeke and Jerry's on the same bridge, though...
...But give ol' Smokey fair dues...
...This jive dream o' becomin' some middle-class fat cat is what the workin' class always gets hung up on in this country...
...The bridge Zeke's on is the overpass type that's got cyclone fencin' from one side right over the top to the other...
...Bit later Jerry's on his bridge, which is the one connectin' Detroit city with Canada, to talk to a dude from the F.B.I...
...He gets 'em out in the yard and teaches 'em how to jitterbug layin' down...
...Now, if that ain't the American Dream in a nutshell, I don't know what is...
...Leastways, that's one thing it's doin' gonna get it in trouble, 'cause capitalism don't work out too good for Smokey...
...But before he can lay that on Knuckles, Zeke gets all haired off in general 'bout what a drag it is tryin' to get by workin' on a assembly line...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...When these clowns sneak into Jerry's house, who do they find but Smokey, with a baseball bat...
...It's like bein' in a cage, which is 'bout right since Zeke's out there tryin' to make a deal with Knuckles...
...In the first place, he says, "Everything they do—the way they pit the lifers against die new boys, the old against die young, the black against die white—is meant to keep us in our place...
...Workin'-class folks in this country used to dream that they was gonna be taken up into heaven, but they got over that...
...To hear Smokey tell it, die thing to use that account book for ain't reform: it's blackmail...
...There's another little scene like this that may be the most laid-back thing in this flick...
...When him, Zeke and Jerry robs the safe down to their union hall, they gets an account book instead o' the ready cash they's after...
...It's about what happens when you stumble on the truth, and then don't know what to do with it...
...It's heavier than that...
...But this boy Smokey still a true believer anyhow, even though he ain't hardly the type dude the honkies had in mind for this sainthood...
...Zeke is all over usin' die book to expose corruption in die union, so's "Knuckles" Johnson, the head of their local, will get throwed out...
...He puts them two sayin's together like it was the most natural thing in the world, when truth is they's a gap between 'em the size o' a elevator shaft...
...I mean, when he starts in on how "they" pit black against white, he's into what the Reuther brothers, and all of them old Lefties, used to call "workin'-class solidarity...
...This is why this flick turns you every which-a-way but loose...
...So this flick is goin' around given capitalism a bad rap...
...And they gets their ass in grass, too, 'cause die union doo-dahs want that book back the worst way there is...
...The killer 'bout this dude Smokey, though, is that he comes on real heavy with the so-called "American Dream...
...I want you to get my locker fixed, Zeke says, 'cause he can't think o' nothin' else to say...
...The message writ real small here is the same as is writ large when Smokey gets iced...
...First the dude talks about how all us blue-collar brothers got to stick together...
...It's for damn sure Zeke and Jerry ain't no sweat...
...Look-adhere now what I'm tellin' ya 'bout this boy...
...Heavy, heavy...
...It's 'cause Knuckles figures Smokey to be the only one o' the three who'll really stick it to him with that account book, and at loan shark prices...
...Whiles he may be the one full o' this crap about only just lookin' out for yourself, he's also the only one don't take his own advice...
...The problem is that Zeke's locker don't work...
...So what do you want me to do...
...Truth to tell, though, what's goin' down right this minute with Knuckles and Zeke—that's what this whole flick turns out to be about when Zeke, Jerry and Smokey gets ahold o' that account book...
...Smokey may not know it, but whaf with that Pimpmobile of his and his get-rich-quick blackmail scheme, he's capitalism's main man...
...It's that capitalism don't work, plain and simple...
...Only trouble with this here dream is, like the grunts in Nam used to say most ever time they was given an order, "Ain't never gonna happen, Sir...
...He's a ex-con-razor-totin'-mother-grabber who's workin' out in Motown now, drivin' around in the biggest Pimpmobile you ever saw, throwin' coke parties and gettin' broads for his married friends Zeke and Jerry...
...Like the night he finds out two union funkies is plannin' to terrorize Jerry's wife while Jerry's off workin...
...Knuckles asks Zeke real friendly like, but like he's afraid Zeke'll tell him, too...
...He gets blowed away by it...
...All the same, the best stuff in the flick don't come in no big scene like that...
Vol. 105 • April 1978 • No. 8
