Blue Collar

Last night I was half watching a film called Blue Collar, it's a 1977 film directed by Paul Schrader. The film stars Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto and Richard Pryor as three auto-factory workers in Detroit. They are constantly being messed around by their employers, and messed around even worse by their corrupt union, they also are all suffering severe financial problems. They decide to rob the union offices, but don't end up with any cash. Instead they take a ledger disclosing the details of all the union's various scams, bribes and kickbacks. Soon they find themselves being pursued by vicious thugs hired by the union, as well as by the police and FBI, while at the same time their friendship starts to fall apart under the pressure. I'd seen it before, and it is a pretty good film. Apparently it was very tough behind the scenes. Schrader had major problems finding a factory in Detroit that would let them film there, and the three lead actors were very difficult to work with. Apparently, Richard Pryor was completely paranoid and quite unstable due to his intake of drugs, he was also very insecure and unhappy about the fact that this was his first dramatic film role, and kept trying to improvise scenes to make them funny, which was not what was wanted, while Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto were both quite classically trained actors, and got sick of Pryor, while also fighting constantly with Schrader. Apparently there were full-blown fistfights almost every day on the set, and one day the tension got so much that Schrader broke down in tears.

Today was a fairly quiet day at work, and I was still being trained. However due to the fact that one of the systems go down at four o'clock on the last working day of every month, I was stuck with notihng to do for about an hour. Usually I'm able to work around the monthly shut-down, but I couldn't really today because of the training. Also most people leave work early anyway on Fridays.