A discussion of Robert Townsend's 1987 film Hollywood Shuffle and how it both articulates and addresses a sense of crisis in making films with and about Black people. I am particularly concerned with how Townsend engages two senses of crisis. One, registering a sense of enduring violence against Black bodies, people, and life in the history of American cinema. Two, understanding crisis as the intersection of limit and possibility, in which historical violence meets closure in Hollywood Shuffle and, inside the film, through irony and hyperbole, opens up new senses of cinematic possibility.