Car Wash (1976) Queer Film C+

“I’M MORE OF A MAN THAN YOU’LL EVER BE AND MORE OF A WOMAN THAN YOU’LL EVER GET”

LINDY (ANTONIO VARGAS IN CAR WASH)

You come to “Car Wash” for Antonio Vargas’ Lindy, who delivers razor-sharp shade to his homophobic coworker Duane (Bill Duke). You stay because a day at the Dee-Luxe Car Wash in Los Angeles is, despite the slurs, occasionally fun.

It’s 1976, and Joel Schumacher—then a white, gay costume designer—was cutting his teeth on barely serviceable Black scripts (“Sparkle” and “The Wiz”). Before directing a dozen films of wildly variable quality, Schumacher had worked for Halston and film producer Julia Phillips (“The Sting” and “Taxi Driver”)

The film unfolds over a single day at a car wash in Los Angeles, where a multiracial crew of car washers—comprising Black, Latino, and Native American workers—seems to do everything except wash cars. Their world is a kaleidoscope of personal dramas, romantic entanglements, and eccentric customers, all woven into the rhythm of everyday life. Director Michael Schultzkeeps the energy shifting so you never get bored, and the funky score by Norman Whitfield lifts the movie to another level: remember the excellent title track by Rose Royce?

Seventy-six was the year of Antonio Vargas. His Lindy is witty and an unapologetically camp character who is the comic spark of the ensemble, delivering shade with precision and turning the car wash into a stage for his personality. Lindy’s presence in a mainstream comedy in 1976 was quietly radical. Amid slurs and stereotypes, he carved out space for queer-coded energy in a film otherwise focused on working-class, multiracial camaraderie. What’s more, Fargas himself is not gay, but his brother is. That family connection may have helped him capture the vibe authentically, giving Lindy’s flamboyance a lived-in credibility rather than a caricature.

Then, contrast Lindy with Vargas’s gay character in our next queer film, Paul Mazursky’s “Nest Stop Greenwich”. What you get is a beautiful shift in tone!

Known LGBTQ+ actor Richard Pryor has a small part – a cameo, really – as Daddy Rich, a flamboyant, prosperity‑gospel style preacher who arrives at the car wash in a gleaming Cadillac, accompanied by the Wilson Sisters (a gospel trio played by The Pointer Sisters) who perform gospel-infused numbers alongside him.

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