In its erratic narrative, random assortment of characters, and omnipresent soundtrack, Car Wash captures something perfectly: the rhythms of a working-class work day.
Beginning as the ragtag crew of Los Angeles car-wash attendants arrive before opening to change into their orange jumpsuits, rolling along with them through rushes of customers, lunch, and lulls, then concluding with the last manager to turn out the light, the movie makes us feel what it means to be on the clock. During such times, cents are measured in minutes and your time is not your own, yet freedom and individuality still manage to poke their heads out of the commerce wherever they can.
As such, in Car Wash, all sorts of hijinks ensue. Two of the attendants (Pepe Serna and Henry Kingi) engage in an escalating series of pranks. Another (Franklyn Ajaye) ducks out whenever he can to either call in from a pay phone to enter a radio contest or woo the waitress in the diner across the street (Tracy Reed). A transgender employee named Lindy (Antonio Fargas) taunts the disapproving Abdullah (Bill Duke), who is a recent Black Muslim convert. Marsha (Melanie Mayron), the cashier, fends off flirtations from the staff while half-heartedly carrying on with the car wash’s owner (Sully Boyar). The owner’s son Irwin (Richard Brestoff) shows up to work on the line wearing a Mao Tse Tung t-shirt and reading from Mao’s communist manifesto. Needless to say, he’s also the subject of a few pranks.
So what perspective does Car Wash ultimately have? The movie’s script is by Joel Schumacher, a white filmmaker who would go on to direct the likes of St. Elmo’s Fire and Batman & Robin. Car Wash has a Black director, Michael Schultz, who also made the very good Cooley High. And undoubtedly, given those hijinks and a cameo from Richard Pryor as a prosperity-gospel preacher, some level of improv was at play, allowing the diverse cast to insert their own inflections. And so this is a combination of white liberal imagination, uncomfortable contemporary minstrelsy, and 1970s Black pride. If it works as well as it does, it’s because those elements always seem to be held in self-aware comedic tension. Save for one showy single take following a young skateboarder as he sails past a line of cheering attendants, Schultz takes a fairly practical approach to the filmmaking. What he excels at is mastering the movie’s complicated tone.
Of course, Car Wash also works as well as it does because of the music, from the title track on down (nearly all the songs are written by Norman Whitfield and performed by the R&B group Rose Royce). In a conceit Spike Lee would borrow for Do the Right Thing, this particular 9 to 5 is “narrated” by the local radio DJs being blasted on the wash’s outdoor speakers. (One amusing bit involves Boyar’s owner trying to change the station, which nearly results in a mutiny from the crew.) Two of my favorite moments involve characters lip syncing to a song being played on the radio: Ajaye’s T.C. “serenading” Reed’s waitress with “I Wanna Get Next to You” and Lauren Jones, as a prostitute who’s been stranded at the car wash, accompanying “I’m Going Down” while making a fruitless call in the phone booth. These moments, plus The Pointer Sisters’ cameo as Pryor’s entourage singing “You Gotta Believe,” nearly turn the movie into a full-on musical.
A stabilizing presence amidst all the fun and games is Lonnie (Ivan Dixon), a parolee whose job at the car wash is a lifeline (even if it doesn’t pay enough to support his two young kids). A voice of reason when the pranks get too heated and tempers rise, Lonnie consoles Abdullah in the movie’s final moments, when he’s having a breakdown over the socioeconomic corner he’s found himself in. “It’s all falling apart,” Abdullah whimpers, going on to say he can’t go on watching the car wash’s “clown show.” That’s the trick Car Wash pulls: it is a clown show, and far smarter than you might think about being one.
