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A Baadasssss! Tribute To Melvin Van Peebles

by NOIRE Online

October 27, 2021 391 views
 

Gordon Jackson

Noire Contributor

There’s an African proverb that says, “When and old man dies, a library burns to the ground.” That’s what happened when legendary and maverick filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles passed away September 22, at the age of 89.

While the physical library is gone, the memories and treasures of that library can now live on forever. Van Peebles’ incredible lifelong achievements is enough to fill up several atheneums.

There’s at least one brick of Van Peebles’ legacy that should stand for the world to see and grasp. He became one of the main cogs in forming the 20th century’s most important Black sub-institutions that accentuated then-Black America’s newfound spirit of liberation and freedom.

Born in Chicago in 1932, Peebles, graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, then quickly joined the Air Force, which took him to other parts of the world.

As a cable car gripman in San Francisco, a passenger suggested that he become a filmmaker. He made several short films and developed important personal and business connections toward getting them distributed by Hollywood producers. That combined with also writing successful stage plays, led to a golden opportunity to making a full-length film, something very few Black men were allowed to do. In fact, Van Peebles had to travel to France for this venture.

In 1968, he made “The Story of a Three-Day Pass,” which won an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It made Hollywood look and he was given the opportunity to make Watermelon Man, a comedy starring Godfrey Cambridge, about a white middle-class man waking up one day and discovering he is Black and proceeds to go through some serious changes.

Van Peebles wanted to go independent with his next film: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, about a Black man fighting the corrupt and abusive police, but he wins many battles along the way. Seeing a Black man win against whites was exceedingly rare to see in movies at the time. The nature of the movie’s plot encouraged the film to contain strong sex scenes and it was rated X, which Van Peebles welcomed because that protected it from strict Hollywood censorship.

But Hollywood stayed totally away from the project, so he made it with his own money.

Van Peebles was running out of funds in the middle of making Sweet Sweetback and approached a friend and companion in the acting business – rising star comedian/actor Bill Cosby. Peebles asked for $50,000. Cosby talked it over with his wife Camille, loaned Van Peebles the money and he went on to finish the film.

Van Peebles did his own editing, stunts, sex scenes and promoting. To musically score the movie, Van Peebles recruited a newly formed rhythm and blues band: Earth Wind and Fire. He shrewdly used EWF’s music to promote the film – instead of the other way around.

With limited funding, Sweet Sweetback opened in only two theaters in the entire county: Atlanta and Detroit. Among those who saw the film was Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party of Self-Defense. Seeing Van Peebles and his character winning over his white enemies, as Van Peebles’ mantra said, "about a brother getting the Man's foot out of his ass!” Newton devoted an entire issue of the Black Panther’s newspaper to the film and promoted the movie word-of-mouth throughout the entire Black Panther regime.

Boom! Sweet Sweetback became the highest grossing independent film of 1971, going on to make a total of $15.2 million, equivalent to $103 million today.

The surprising success of Sweet Sweetback changed the entire complexion of the film industry in the country. Hollywood producers saw that, “yes!,” making movies with Black casts can be profitable.

When novelist Ernest Tidyman and screenwriter John D. F. Black were starting to make the film Shaft, about a tough-guy detective operating between the mob and police in New York City, which was in the same genre at the time of Frank Sinatra’s Tony Rome, Paul Newman’s Harper and eventually Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, the main character was originally White. Inspired by Van Peebles’ success with Sweet Sweetback, the producers hired Black photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks as the director, who cast Richard Roundtree as Shaft. The movie, along with its soundtrack by Isaac Hayes, became an explosive success and ushered in the Black Cinema Film Classics of the 1970s, also known as “blaxploitation” films.

(Note: this writer chooses to NOT use the term “blaxploitation,” since it was never intended to put such Black films in a positive connotation or image.)

Thirty-three years later, Van Peebles’ son, Mario, who was in Sweet Sweetback as a teenager, cemented his father’s legacy by making Baadasssss!, the story behind’s Melvin’s making of Sweet Sweetback, with Mario himself playing his father. Mario would continue to be a noted actor, director and producer in his own right.

When a movement explodes, such as the Black Cinema Films Classics of the ‘70s, little is often told about its origin. In this case, Melvin Van Peebles holds the match. May his name be etched in the sky for the world to see.

Gordon Jackson is Managing Editor of Noire

 
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NOIRE Online
NOIRE is a new online magazine that scopes the Black and multicultural community from a cutting-edge perspective. Our mantra is “Our Lives, Our Stories, Our Voices.” Our vision is to become the leading source of true, high-quality narratives of people of color.
 

 

 

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