Blue Collar (1978)

Manic production line worker Zeke (Richard Pryor), welder Jerry (Harvey Keitel), and grease monkey Smokey (Yaphet Kotto), are working at the Checker Cab car plant in Detroit and drinking their beers together.

Zeke gets a visit from the IRS man, who comes with information about his fraudulent deductions and a bill for more than $2,000 in back taxes. Zeke takes home $210 a week. Jerry learns that his daughter needs expensive braces. His take-home isn’t much more than Zeke’s, and the bill runs to four figures.

One night, when they steal away from their wives to have some fun, they get the idea to rob the local union’s bureau safe. Dressed in five-and-dime disguises, they pull off the job only to find that they have a grand total of only six hundred dollars for their troubles (although the union claims to have lost ten thousand dollars in the robbery).

Then Zeke realises that they have also acquired some “hot” material – a ledger detailing illegal loans made with union funds – and the trio decides to blackmail the union. They soon discover that they are up against an enemy so big, so powerful and so unscrupulous that there is no way to win.

Pryor, Kotto and Keitel argued constantly with fights, verbal abuse, walk-offs, and Mexican stand-offs. Apparently, Pryor punched Keitel, hit Kotto with a chair, and pulled a gun on director Paul Schrader, telling him he was never going to do more than three takes for a scene.

Zeke
Richard Pryor
Jerry
Harvey Keitel
Smokey
Yaphet Kotto
Bobby Joe
Ed Begley Jr.
Eddie Johnson
Harry Bellaver
Jenkins
George Memmoli
Arlene Bartowski
Lucy Saroyan
Clarence Hill
Lane Smith
John Burrows
Cliff De Young
Dogshit Miller
Borah Silver
Caroline Brown
Chip Fields
Hank
Harry Northup
IRS Man
Leonard Gaines
Sumabitch
Milton Selzer
Barney
Sammy Warren
Charlie T. Hernandez
Jimmy Martinez
Superintendent
Jerry Dahlmann
Debby Bartowski
Stacey Baldwin
Bob Bartowski
Steve Butts
Flannigan
Stephen P. Dunn
Slim
Speedy Brown
Frazier Brown
Davone Florence
Ali Brown
Eddie Singleton
Aretha Brown
Ava Singleton
Little Joe
Jaime Carreire
Doris
Victoria McFarland

Director
Paul Schrader