Michael Schultz

Schultz was born in Milwaukee Wisconsin the son of Katherine Frances née Leslie a factory worker and German American Leo Schultz an insurance salesman After his undergraduate work at the University of WisconsinMadison and Marquette University he attended Princeton University where in 1966 he directed his first play a production of Waiting for Godot He joined the Negro Ensemble Company in 1968 which brought him to Broadway in 1969 His breakthrough was directing Lorraine Hansberrys To Be Young Gifted and Black which he restaged for television in 1972 Schultz earliest film projects combined low comedy with profound social comment Honeybaby Honeybaby and Cooley High reaching a peak with the ensemble comedy Car Wash 1976 and Which Way Is Up 1977 starring Richard Pryor In 1978 Schultz took the reins of the musical Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band with the largest budget ever entrusted to an AfricanAmerican film director to that date However upon its release the project was a commercial and critical failure Schultz would go on to make prominent films such as Scavenger Hunt 1979 Carbon Copy 1981 and Disorderlies 1987 More recently Schultz has worked in television piloting episodes of such styleconscious series as The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Picket Fences as well as an abundance of madeforTV movies In 1991 Schultz was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame