This criminally overlooked comic masterpiece finally gets a 4k restoration and the deluxe treatment it deserves!
Wendell B. Harris wrote, directed and starred in this edgy, hilarious deep-dive into the mind of a brilliant African-American, William Douglas Street, a man who seeks to adopt any identity – baseball player, journalist, Harvard grad student, even surgeon – other than his own. Harris fully embodies Street, a riveting cinematic character, as he ascends (and descends) through the social order, where he is briefly accepted, then harshly rejected, at each turn.
Harris tells the story in a creatively shambolic fashion, with flashbacks, flash-forwards and voiceovers all combined to dizzying effect. Chameleon Street won the Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award in 1990, then dropped from sight for 30 years. Harris never made another film, which, once you’ve seen this, will feel like a true loss to American cinema.