Free Movie on Fancast: Hollywood Shuffle

Watch Hollywood Shuffle in its entirety for free right here, right now on Fancast.

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan [watch the trailer] opens this weekend, which features Adam Sandler continuing his newfound mission in life - making broad comedies to draw dumb-comedy frat boy fans in to see movies that might actually help them let go of some stupid stereotypes. On Letterman last night, he jokingly claimed it worked with I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, resulting in California’s recent ruling to allow gay marriage, so maybe it’ll work with Zohan to try and help stop prejudice against Arabs and Jews.

Robert Townsend did something groundbreaking along those lines back in 1987, when “liberal Hollywood” still would scarcely cast black men in anything other than pimps and criminals. As writer/director/producer/star of Hollywood Shuffle, Townsend created a wacky comedy about Bobby Taylor, a struggling young actor who dreams of playing action heroes and leading men, but he only ever gets to read for parts in which the central debate is whether or not he’s “black enough.” When he finally gets offered one of these roles, he has to decide whether or not to advance his career by swallowing the stereotype bullet and selling out, or to keep on struggling and hold on to his principles. It’s a morality tale in sketch comedy format.

Co-starring and co-written by Keenen Ivory Wayans pre-In Living Color, back when the name Wayans used to mean fresh, new and interesting comedy rather than awful movies, it remains a sign of how far things have come since then. It took 15 years after Hollywood Shuffle for a black man and a black woman to win Best Actor and Actress at the Oscars, but now the playing field is a little more even. Before, black men could only get stereotypical and demeaning parts in crappy movies made by white people. Now they can suck just as bad making movies like Wayans’ Scary Movie 2 as white guys do making Meet the Spartans. Nobody said equality was easy.

As a bonus, here are some fun clips from In Living Color:

Homey D. Clown
The Homeboy Shopping Network
The Brothers Brothers
The Head Detective
Oswald Bates for the United Negro Scholarship Fund
The First Black Man on the Moon
The Hardest Working Family in America
Calhoun Tubbs
Spike Lee’s Joint
Ridin’ Miss Daisy
Oppression