A veteran of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York, Michael Schultz behan as a stage director in the '60s, and moved to Broadway in 1969. He broke into movies through television, in the wake of the special To Be Young, Gifted, and Black (1971), and has since established himself as one of the more gifted directors of his generation, with one minor classic (Cooley High [1975]) and two major hits (Car Wash [1976] and Krush Groove [1985]) to his credit, as well as one minor commercial/artistic embarrassment, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), now mercifully forgotten.