The People's Choice: Chameleon Street

Dir. Wendell B. Harris Jr., 1989, 95 min.

Chameleon Street tells the story of a social chameleon who impersonates reporters, doctors and lawyers in order to make money. The film is a satire based on the life of Detroit con artist and high school drop-out William Douglas Street, Jr., who successfully impersonated professional reporters, lawyers, athletes, extortionists, and surgeons, going so far as to perform more than 36 successful hysterectomies. A Sundance Film Festival press release in 2008 described it as "one of the first films to examine how mellifluously race, class, and role-playing morph into the social fabric of America." Chameleon Street won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival.