Fun and frivolous ‘Car Wash‘ is a ‘day in the life’ working at the Dee-Luxe Car Wash in downtown Los Angeles in 1976. There’s an ensemble cast that includes Garrett Morris (SNL), Bill Duke (Predator) and Franklyn Ajaye (Starsky & Hutch). But all the movie posters focused on the two comedy heavyweights who made cameos in the movie; George Carlin and Richard Pryor.
The plot is more a series of episodes that drive the film along without any real direction. One character is trying to get the girl, another is trying to get high, but its mixed in with vignettes about race and religion while the coolest mid-70s cars roll through the car wash.
There’s gross out humour bookended by real human drama about one character’s economic struggle. Unlike a puzzle, none of the pieces interconnect except that all these people revolve around the car wash. There’s stock characters like the fat white boss, the big-boob cashier he’s cheating with, and the car wash staff made up of blacks and Latinos who work hard but also enjoy goofing around and playing pranks on each other.
There are some interesting glimpses into the 70’s like how the character of Lindy, a cross-dresser who works at the car wash, is completely accepted by the other guys. Unlike today, there was no gender-neutral locker room, so Lindy changes with the other guys but faces little homophobia.
Interestingly, all of Lindy’s scenes were cut for the TV broadcast of the film. replaced by footage that originally ended up on the cutting room floor. Danny DeVito was actually in the film as the guy running the sandwich shop next to the car wash, but all his scenes were cut after filming. When someone at the network decided that scenes with a cross-dresser were too much for TV, DeVito’s scenes were re-cut into the TV version of the film.
From a technical standpoint, ‘Car Wash‘ is an interesting picture. Fimling on location created problems, as the noise of the equipment drown out the actors voices. This required every line of dialog to be audio-dubbed in afterwards. The filmmakers were smart enough to take the opportunity to record a different audio track that replaced every ‘N-word’ with ‘brother’ so it could be shown on TV. Despite being a goofy little blaxploitation film ‘Car Wash‘ won the Technical Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and was even nominated for the Palme d’Or.
For gearheads, the movie is all about the mid-70s cars that are displayed throughout. Cars that go through the wash include the brand new 1975 AMC Pacer and a 1973 Buick Estate Wagon. Even in the background there are cool cars like a brown 1971 Porsche 911, and a green 1972 Jensen Interceptor. Rare stuff today!
But the truth is that the high point of the movie is the soundtrack by soul / R&B group Rose Royce who’s titular hit single made working at the car wash seem great!
I remember when the movie came out, and the theme song was so overplayed on the radio that I came to hate it. I didn’t see the movie because I hated the song.
Not gonna say I’d never heard the song before last week. I must have heard it in 1980 when I was little kid and the local TV station would play the movie. But I barely remember.
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Thanks for giving some context.
When I was in the car with friends and that song would come on, everyone reached for the radio at the same time to change stations.
Wow…that bad? Like totally overplayed, or y’all just didn’t like disco?
We didn’t care much for disco, but there was a lot of disco that was good. Carwash was so annoying.
OK…so there’s an underground car meet tonight just north of the city. I’m heading to the full-serve (inside out) car wash after work. I will blast ‘Car Wash’ and see if it still has the same effect on people today.
Let me know the results of your retrograde social experiment. I don’t put bumper stickers on my cars, but I made an exception in the late 70s. I worked at a music store and one of our venders gave us “Disco Sucks” bumper stickers. I stuck it on the rear window of my ’69 VW Beetle.
OK, ok, I saw that one coming from a mile away. I had a feeling you might be not be a disco guy. I was raised on that crap!
There was some very good disco, but little of it made it to the commercial airwaves.
This is a classic movie that not only had cool cars but showed the harmony that was happening at the time.
100% agreed!
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I’m sure that Plymouth paid for their cars (and an extreme close-up of their script logo) into the actual car was scenes. Makes sense for everyone involved.
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But I just loved all the background cars. Chevy Vegas, Beetles, a Jenson Interceptor parked on the street, big fat Cadillacs…so much good stuff that just kinda happened.
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I would have expected the ruff and gruff working men to make fun of the guy in the dress. Nope. They just let him be whoever he wants to be. A very accepting and enlightened attitude.