Watkins, S. Craig (Samuel Craig)2016-12-072018-01-222016-12-072018-01-222007-05http://hdl.handle.net/2152/43927The following thesis explores the career of director Michael Schultz (Cooley High, Car Wash, The Last Dragon, et al); the lone African American to consistently find work as a director in Hollywood during the years separating the fall of the blaxploitation era in 1976 and the arrival of Spike Lee, Robert Townsend, and a host of young black filmmakers in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. In large part centered on an extensive interview I conducted with Schultz in October of 2006, I hope to accomplish a unique blend of oral history and academic analysis; allowing Schultz to tell his own story without denying my own sense of perspective and analysis. Schultz’s vantage point and recollections will be counter-balanced by my own analytical and historical framework. My goal is to use Schultz’s career to illuminate a problematic era in Hollywood (and American society as a whole), in which African American images were virtually erased from the cinematic landscape. Schultz’s career illustrates various trends in the film industry as well as African American arts.electronicengCopyright © is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works.Michael Schultz (film director)African-American film directorsAfrican-Americans in HollywoodAfrican-American filmsThesisRestricted