Featured photo: This photo from Pamela Folts’ personal collection shows Wendell B. Harris, Jr. filming. Folts is seated on the left. This scene was shot inside the Harris Art Gallery, which was owned by Charles Harris, brother of Wendell. It is now a parking lot for the new Hilton hotel in downtown Flint.
Written by Lisa M. Land
The 1989 film, Chameleon Street, has been restored and will be shown at NY Film Festival, in the Revival category, on October 22 and streamed via Amazon, in unrestored form. This film was written by, directed and starred Wendell B. Harris, Jr. It was independently funded, produced and filmed here in Flint.
Chameleon Street won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival. Yet Harris found it impossible to navigate the film industry to make a second film from within the industry, which is frequently interpreted as an issue of being outside the Hollywood elite system and being a Black man.
The film is written as satire, fantasy and real life, dealing with what Black men still face today.
Harris was inspired by the real-life man William Douglas Street, Jr., a Detroit con man who impersonated many people, most notably a reporter, a lawyer and doctor. He performed more than 30 hysterectomies without any training. The last record I found for Street is a 2015 federal charge for mail fraud and identity theft.
Much of the filming of Chameleon Street happened in a home on Welch Blvd, still owned today by the same woman who worked on the film, Pamela Folts. She shared some of her memories about the production with me.
Harris wrote the script in the 3rd floor library of the Welch Street house. Folts would transcribe for Harris as he dictated the dialog. Folts’ role during filming was continuity, making sure everyone’s clothes and the set were the same for each take of a scene.
Six rooms of the Welch Blvd. house were used for sets. Filming also took place at Berston Field House, Harris Art Gallery (which is now the new downtown Hilton parking lot), Hurley Hospital and the Northbank Center. One scene was shot at a dormitory in Ann Arbor.
The film crew worked 12 hours a day, starting at 7 a.m. Meals were catered and everyone ate at the same time. Quite often the crew would be exhausted. Folts recalls filming a scene in her living room and falling asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace as everyone worked around her.
Even with the long hours, Folts said “It really was a lot of fun.” During filming, everyone in the house had to be silent and stay out of the way. Her children were in 3rd and 8th grades at the time, and the crew was good with the kids. While not filming, they taught Folts’ youngest child how to carry grip equipment, which involved lighting, properly wrapping cords and moving the equipment for a new scene. Both children are featured in the ballroom scene in the film.
One scene that was scary to film was when the camera man had to climb on the porch roof and shoot through the window into a scene set up in a bedroom. This was a heavy, expensive bundle of equipment to be on a slippery slope with. Digital photography did not yet exist. So the movie was shot with film on reels.
Folts has always been proud to have been involved with this film.
“I did it because there were very few Black films in existence,” she said. “It was important that an intelligent Black film existed, and that is why I put my energy into it.”
She was impressed that Flint pulled together and cooperated to produce this film. She also really enjoyed herself.
