LOS ANGELES—

Back in the good old days, when I was a hipster kid living in New York City, I was friends with a well-known character actor named Sully Boyar. Sully appeared in numerous movies, among them Fort Apache the Bronx, with Paul Newman and Pam Grier; The Jazz Singer, with Neil Diamond and Laurence Olivier; In the Soup, with Steve Buscemi and Seymour Cassel (who, I don’t mind stating publicly, is a world-class asshole); and Car Wash, with George Carlin and Richard Pryor. The last movie on that list was 1970s Afro-cinema, and Sully played the car-wash owner, so that sometimes, when he was walking around New York, black guys would come up to say, “Didn’t I used to work for your ass?” They really thought they’d worked for Sully, who can be seen in this clip from Car Wash at the 2:19 mark, getting wary looks from his employees, and again at 3:05 in a better shot.
(more…)