Chameleon Street

Inspired by the real life exploits of an African American man who impersonated everything from a lawyer to a surgeon to a foreign exchange student in the 1970s, 'Chameleon Street' might sound a lot like 'Catch Me If You Can', but this is a distinctly different sort of film. In the hands of writer-director Wendell B. Harris Jr., the protagonist is a curiously pitied character: one who cannot help but "intuit" the needs and desires of everyone he meets and "become that need" - far closer to the title character in 'Zelig' than Frank Abagnale Jr. There is a lot to like in how his dilemma feels like a hyperbolic metaphor for the way we all function, acting differently in different situations depending on who else we are with. The film's dramatic crunch comes from how his chameleonic nature impacts on his ability to be the father and husband that his family wants, though this area feels a tad undernourished due to a very false performance by the actress playing his daughter as well as the script's constant inflection towards comedy. And yet, while the laughs tend to overshadow the drama, the funny moments work incredibly well. Highlights include the protagonist lecturing a drunk on how to conjugate the F-word, a fake epileptic seizure that gets out of control and him rambling off a whole string of "J'accuse" sentences while trying to speak French.

It's a shame this film didn't get more notice and better distribution at the time it was released, in spite of being championed by indie fave Steven Sorderbergh. I've been waiting for another directorial effort from Wendell B. Harris, but nothing appears to be forthcoming. That's unfortunate but indicative of the realities of contemporary Hollywood, where talented black performers are given short shrift in favor of the bottom line. This usually means that the project that gets made is based on the name recognition of the rising black star who's attached and where they are on the pop music charts.

Even though the film itself suffered a bit on the production value end because of its low budget, the story was original and Mr. Harris' portrayal of the identity shifting protagonist was exhilarating for its boldness. The idea of person of color who unapologetically subverts "the system" is daring in and of itself. The fact that it was done with style and a good bit of humor was both refreshing and encouraging. It says that there are statements to be made through the medium of film without being overtly confrontational or dogmatic.

Chameleon Street is a film about a black con man from Detroit who specializes in being a master of plain-sight disguise. Doug Street can enter a room and upon meeting someone understand what they want to see reflected back, and after cutting through the "emotional baggage" of his own personality, assume the role like an actor taking a part. Throughout the course of the film he becomes a surgeon (going so far as to perform several successful operations), a lawyer for a human rights organization, journalist, and a French exchange student. His greatest role and the one he seems to struggle with the most throughout the film are the roles of husband and father. These he only seems capable of, as long as he has another more exciting identity to supplement his "real life". The film is considered to be far ahead of its time in it's critique of the performative and trans formative nature of identity, race, and class, a sort of spiritual cousin to Samuel R. Delany's short story "Time Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Stones".

Street as a character is a clever anti-hero, similar to, but less psychotically unpredictable than Alec Baldwin is in "Miami Blues", but infinitely more entertaining than Leonardo Dicaprio in "Catch Me If You Can". Street survives by his wits and chance, and has an unconcerned Dandylike air about him. He quotes Oscar Wilde "the divine Wilde" and refers to "Vivaldi, Hendrix, Sly Stone, The Sex Pistols, and Ipso Facto" as "the classics" he listens to on his newly fashionable (at the time the film takes place, in the early 80's) Walkman. Essentially he follows in a long tradition of the charming rouge, only viewed through the mind of a clever black man in the early 90's (hence the po-mo, multi-culti stuff). Several people who knew the real Doug Street as one of his personas, including the Mayor of Detroit, appear in the film playing themselves, adding another layer of identity confusion that Hsiao-hsien Hou's "Puppetmaster" and Jason Rietman's "Up In The Air" would similarly use to greater acclaim. Harris has a voice reminiscent of Orson Wells, especially when he narrates, which is for most of the film, and has matching ambitions for a first time director. Harris wants to include everything he's ever thought or felt into a single film as if it would be his last. In fact this is his first and only film, so better too much, than not enough.

Beyond easy designation of social relevance (race, class, etc.), Street's chameleon like behavior is in microcosm the way everyone behaves at a certain basic level, learning to read the people and situations life brings us to, often playing them to our advantage (maybe more than we are even fully aware of), and only occasionally putting our foot down to announce what we are not, at those times when we either cant or refuse to cut through the "baggage of our personalities". You can't be everything to everyone, and the film asks even if it's possible to be yourself to yourself.

Doug Street's narration throughout the film is the story he recounts to amuse himself, creating a pleasant illusion to stave off his own boredom, impatience, and dissatisfaction with being, on top of intelligent enough to perform surgeries though luck, mimicry, and quick study) poor black, lacking a high school diploma, working in his father's burglary installation company and living in his parents house in Detroit. Why go to school, why get a job, when you can be senator tomorrow, or a police officer, or anyone you can imagine (quite literally) with the right combination of confidence and creativity. "All the world's a stage…And one man in his time plays many parts."…that old chestnut.

"Chameleon Street" is not a perfect film, not the funniest ever, or featuring the best cinematography, no one is going to clamor about the use of soft-focus, shadows, mood, blah, blah, blah, and it will not be praised for it's soundtrack (typical of it's time and unimpressive), but like Hal Hartley, Bill Gunn, David Blair, or Mark Rappaport, Wendell B. Harris Jr. is sui generis in his sense of style, focus, and concerns, and if nothing else deserves praise as a great neglected American auteur. There is more personality in this one movie than in some director's entire oeuvre's. Personally, this is my new favorite film the kind you watch twice back to back because you can't believe what you've seen, and pick up your jaw up off the floor hours later. The kind you rant and rave about to everyone you know, fully aware most wont like/get it/care about it. It's okay if you don't like this as much as me, I can't expect you to. If you don't, tomorrow is always available for you to take on a new personality, perhaps one with better taste.

About half as good as "Catch Me If You Can", this at times funny film is way too one note, that note, of course, being that the white establishment is so stupid that it can even be hoodwinked by a none too clever con artist. I got the point after the first scam involving the title character impersonating a Time Magazine journalist and by the middle of the second, when Street pretends to be a surgeon, I was officially tired of the whole thing. That I didn't bail until the start of the third impersonation (an African exchange student at Yale) was mostly due to writer/director/star Wendell B Harris' comic chops, which are not inconsiderable. Kinda surprised that he didn't get a shot at a second feature, at least as a scenarist and/or actor. Give it a C plus.

Wendell B. Harris -- he also wrote and directed this movie -- is bored with his life with his well-paying job with his father's company and his beautiful wife. So he reinvents himself as an exchange student at Yale, then as various other people. It's all remarkably easy for him.

He's playing William Douglas Street Jr., a real man who did exactly that. It's a remarkable performance, although after a while it becomes apparent that it is a performance; after all, Harris is acting here, and his ability to work in different registers is an actor's meat and potatoes.

Nonetheless, the movie itself is an interesting character study, as the character reveals himself as a very intelligent manic-depressive who grows bored with his successes. That's good scripting combined with good acting. I'm not too sure that the ending, which is probably lose to what happened, is good story-telling; the police come to arrest him and the story ends, like a Tex Avery cartoon.

In real life, Street kept the impersonations going for perhaps 46 years, false identities he assumed included those of a reporter for TIME magazine, a Houston Oilers wide receiver, an all-star football player from the University of Michigan, a physician at Henry Ford Hospital (in 1973), attorneys (1979 and 1980) and as a first-year medical student at Yale University. Staff at the Detroit Human Rights Department where he posed as an attorney volunteer found him skillful enough that "if he ever straightens out, we wouldn't mind having him back." What the movie doesn't mention is that he was caught kiting checks and extortion. He was sentenced in his mid-60s to three years on identity theft.