Posted by Larry Gleeson
The TCM Classic Film Festival, April 24-27, 2025, in Hollywood California, has selected Michael Schultz as this year’s honoree
Michael Schultz’s work has consistently drawn praise for its humane qualities, humor, warmth, and life-affirming optimism.
Mr. Schultz achieved a distinguished career in the New York theater in the late 1960s early ‘70s. He began directing regional theater at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, with critically acclaimed productions of Waiting for Godot and The Emperor Jones. His off-Broadway debut in 1968 was in the world-famous Negro Ensemble Company’s inaugural season. A founding member of the company, he directed Kongi’s Harvest by renowned Nigerian author Wole Soyinka and Song of the Lusitanian Bogey by Peter Weiss (for which he won the Obie Award for Best Director).
Mr. Schultz also directed plays at New York Shakespeare Festival, Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and the World Theatre Festival in London and Rome. One such production had a command performance in Munich during the Olympic Games in 1972.
In 1991, he directed Mule Bone for Lincoln Center on Broadway, the world premiere of a 60-year-old literary treasure written by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes.
He made the transition from theater to film in 1972, adapting and directing the off-Broadway play To Be Young, Gifted, and Black for PBS television.
His first feature, Together for Days (1972), was followed quickly by a romantic adventure filmed in Beirut, Lebanon: Honeybaby, Honeybaby (1974). He also directed Ceremonies in Dark Old Men (1975) for ABC Theater, which won him the Christopher Award.
His Hollywood career began in 1975 with Cooley High for American International Pictures, which became a cultural classic and a landmark film in Black cinema. It was also the hit of the 1976 Dakar Film Festival and the 1978 Telluride Film Festival. The critical and box-office success of Cooley High firmly launched Mr. Schultz’s film career.
CAR WASH, another classic for Universal Pictures, followed in 1976. It, too, was a critical and box-office success. In 1977, it was the first film directed by an African American to be accepted to compete at the Cannes Film Festival. The film won the Best Music award for Norman Whitfield and a Technical Grand Prize for Mr. Schultz, as well as competing for the Palme d’Or.
In 1977, he directed Greased Lightning for Warner Bros. and another box-office hit for Universal, Which Way Is Up? Both of these films were star vehicles for Richard Pryor.
He then directed Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978); Scavenger Hunt (1979); Carbon Copy (1981), the film debut of Denzel Washington; and Bustin’ Loose (1981), another Richard Pryor vehicle. In 1985, he directed THE LAST DRAGON for Tri-Star Pictures and the Warner Bros. rap musical film Krush Groove, which introduced LL Cool J and Blair Underwood. In 1987, Mr. Schultz produced and directed the Warner Bros. comedy Disorderlies.
The Last DragonMr. Schultz and his wife Gloria formed Crystalite Productions, Inc., to develop film and television properties. Through this company, he financed, produced, and directed Earth, Wind & Fire in Concert (1982). His latest feature film, Woman Thou Art Loosed (2004), won the Panavision Spirit Award for Independent Cinema at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
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