Melvin Van Peebles, the groundbreaking filmmaker behind \u201cSweet Sweetback\u2019s Baadassss Song,\u201d and father of director and actor\u00a0Mario Van Peebles, has died. He was 89.<\/p>\n
\u201cSweet Sweetback\u201d was a groundbreaking film a few times over. Van Peebles financed and released the film independently, paving the way for an entire ecosystem of indie cinema. Because he couldn\u2019t afford a traditional marketing campaign, he used the film\u2019s soundtrack album to build awareness for the movie. And most crucially, he proved that films by Black filmmakers about Black life in America could be a profitable endeavor, presaging the explosion in Blaxploitation cinema of the 1970s.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad knew that Black images matter,\u201d Mario Van Peebles said in a statement from the Criterion Collection. \u201cIf a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth? We want to be the success we see, thus we need to see ourselves being free. True liberation did not mean imitating the colonizer\u2019s mentality. It meant appreciating the power, beauty and interconnectivity of all people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSweet Sweetback\u201d will be screened at the New York Film Festival this week for a 50th anniversary tribute. \u201cIn an unparalleled career distinguished by relentless innovation, boundless curiosity and spiritual empathy, Melvin Van Peebles made an indelible mark on the international cultural landscape through his films, novels, plays and music,\u201d the Criterion Collection said.<\/p>\n
Among those who paid tribute to him were director Barry Jenkins, who wrote, \u201cHe made the most of every second, of EVERY single damn frame and admittedly, while the last time I spent any time with him was MANY years ago, it was a night in which he absolutely danced his face off. The man just absolutely LIVED.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warrington Hudlin, founder of the Black Filmmaker Foundation, said,\u201d As the Godfather of Black Cinema, he left us with both the inspiration and challenge to continue his artistic and racial disruption of the society we were born into. And he likely continues that provocation in the next life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melvin and Mario Van Peebles teamed on the 1989 film \u201cIdentity Crisis,\u201d with Melvin directing and Mario scripting and starring as a rapper possessed by the soul of a dead fashion designer. Melvin appeared in the 1993 Mario Van Peebles-directed \u201cPosse,\u201d in which Mario also starred, as well as in Mario\u2019s Black Panther drama \u201cPanther\u201d (1995), with Melvin adapting the script from his own novel, the Mario Van Peebles-directed \u201cLove Kills (1998) and the Mario-directed \u201cRedemption Road\u201d (2010).<\/p>\n
Melvin Van Peebles also acted in the work of others, appearing in the 1991 feature comedy \u201cTrue Identity\u201d; Reginald Hudlin\u2019s Eddie Murphy vehicle \u201cBoomerang\u201d (1992); big-budget Arnold Schwarzenegger action film \u201cLast Action Hero\u201d (1993); Charlie Sheen action film \u201cTerminal Velocity\u201d (1994); 2003 comedy \u201cThe Hebrew Hammer,\u201d in which Melvin reprised the role of Sweetback and Mario also appeared; and Tina Gordon Chism\u2019s 2013 romantic comedy \u201cPeeples,\u201d in which he played Grandpa Peeples.<\/p>\n
In 1988 Mario Van Peebles starred in the brief NBC sitcom \u201cSonny Spoon,\u201d about a private detective, in which his father was also a series regular as the private eye\u2019s bar-owning father. On TV he also made guest appearances on series including \u201cIn the Heat of the Night,\u201d \u201cDream On,\u201d \u201cLiving Single\u201d and \u201cHomicide: Life on the Street.\u201d<\/p>\n
In \u201cSweet Sweetback\u2019s Baadasssss Song,\u201d which Van Peebles wrote and directed, dedicating the film to \u201call of the Black brothers and sisters who have had enough of the Man,\u201d Van Peebles starred as the title character, an orphan (portrayed as a child by Van Peebles\u2019 son Mario) raised in a California bordello, where he does menial tasks and grows up to appear in live shows there; one day he\u2019s told to ride along with two crooked detectives (who collect protection money from the whorehouse and elsewhere), and they end up beating a Black militant. Sweetback finally decides he\u2019s had enough and attacks the cops, saving the Black militant; from that point the film focuses on Sweetback\u2019s flight to the Mexican border.<\/p>\n
Van Peebles employed a variety of interesting effects, including a great deal of hand-held work \u201cto help express the paranoid nightmare that the fugitive\u2019s life had become,\u201d according to the book \u201cThe 50 Most Influential Black Films: A Celebration of African-American Talent, Determination, and Creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Produced on a total budget of $500,000, \u201cSweetback\u201d saw box office of $10 million, according to \u201cThe 50 Most Influential Black Films\u201d; a few months after, the studio-made, Gordon Parks-directed \u201cShaft,\u201d starring Richard Roundtree, was released and became a significant success.<\/p>\n
\u201cSweetback\u201d and \u201cShaft,\u201d together with the following year\u2019s \u201cSuperfly,\u201d directed by Gordon Parks Jr., are generally regarded as having together given birth to the Blaxploitation genre.<\/p>\n
Van Peebles, however, was critical of many Blaxploitation films for being devoid of political content.<\/p>\n
Columbia had offered Van Peebles a three-picture contract on the strength of his previous film \u201cWatermelon Man,\u201d but neither Columbia nor any other other studio would finance the film project that would become \u201cSweet Sweetback\u2019s Baadassss Song,\u201d so he did so himself; Bill Cosby loaned him $50,000 to complete the project.<\/p>\n
The soundtrack to the film, featuring Earth, Wind & Fire, was released prior to the film itself in order to generate publicity and word of mouth.<\/p>\n
When \u201cSweetback\u201d drew an X rating from the MPAA, Van Peebles cleverly transformed this significant hindrance to any film\u2019s box office prospects into an advertising tagline that played well with his target audience \u2014 \u201cRated X by an all white jury\u201d \u2014 and declared, \u201cShould the rest of the community submit to your censorship that is its business, but White standards shall no longer be imposed on the Black community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSweetback\u201d drew a mixed critical response. The New York Times wrote a devastating review upon its release, but in a 1995 reappraisal, Stephen Holden wrote, \u201cThis sulphurous nightmare of racial paranoia and revenge eclipses even \u2018Reservoir Dogs\u2019 in evoking a world of infinite seaminess, injustice and cruelty. Mr. Van Peebles\u2019s film was not only the granddaddy of (Blaxploitation films) but also the most innovative and politically inflammatory.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2003 Mario Van Peebles directed the film \u201cBaadassss!,\u201d which was both a documentary and an homage to his father\u2019s \u201cSweetback.\u201d<\/p>\n
The multitalented Melvin Van Peebles had four shows on Broadway, the first of which was \u201cAin\u2019t Suppose to Die a Natural Death,\u201d for which he wrote the book, music and lyrics; it started Off Broadway and ran for a total of 325 performances in 1971-72. The musical, which contained material from his three albums \u201cBrer Soul,\u201d \u201cAin\u2019t Supposed to Die a Natural Death\u201d and \u201cAs Serious as a Heart-Attack,\u201d was Tony nominated for best musical, and Van Peebles was nominated for best book of a musical and best original score, while the musical also received nominations for direction, scenic design and set design. It is set for a Broadway revival in 2022.<\/p>\n
For his next musical the following year, Van Peebles took more control, not only penning the book, music and lyrics but also producing and directing. \u201cDon\u2019t Play Us Cheap!\u201d earned him another Tony nomination, for book of a musical, and in 1973 he adapted it into a film.<\/p>\n
For 1980\u2019s \u201cReggae: A Musical Revelation,\u201d Van Peebles contributed only the book, but two years later, the original comedy with music \u201cWaltz of the Stork,\u201d with book, music and lyrics by Van Peebles, produced and directed by Van Peebles and starring Van Peebles, ran for 156 performances.\u00a0 (Mario contributed background vocals and appeared in drag in some scenes.) Van Peebles turned \u201cWaltz of the Stork\u201d into the 2008 film \u201cConfessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha,\u201d which screened at the Tribeca Film Festival.<\/p>\n
For the \u201cCBS Schoolbreak Special\u201d episode \u201cThe Day They Came to Arrest the Books,\u201d Van Peebles won a Daytime Emmy in 1987\u00a0 for outstanding writing in a children\u2019s special and also won a Humanitas Prize.<\/p>\n
Melvin Van Peebles was born in Chicago and\u00a0attended West Virginia State College and then Ohio Wesleyan University, where he earned a B.A. in English literature.\u00a0He\u00a0served in the Air Force as a navigator-bombardier for\u00a0three years.<\/p>\n
Van Peebles experimented with career as a painter, and, growing appalled by the racist portrayal of African Americans in movies, made some film shorts as an amateur in the late \u201950s and early \u201960s. He did stints as a postal worker and, in San Francisco, a cable-car grip \u2014 about which he wrote his first book, \u201cThe Big Heart,\u201d in 1957. He spent some time in Mexico; in Holland he studied astronomy at the University of Amsterdam and acting at the Dutch National Theater.<\/p>\n
The Cinematheque Francaise invited Van Peebles to screen his shorts at its theater in Paris, where he spent some time as a street entertainer and wrote five novels (in English); the last of these books, \u201cLa Permission,\u201d enabled his admission to the French Cinema Center as a director and led to a grant of \u00a0$70,000. While still in Paris he adapted this novel into his first feature-length film, the Van Peebles-written and -directed \u201cThe Story of a Three-Day Pass\u201d (1968), which concerned an interracial love story and addressed racism \u2014 a Black soldier is involved with a white girl and demoted as a result.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Story of a Three-Day Pass\u201d led to his first directing assignment in the U.S.: \u201cWatermelon Man,\u201d a comedy about a bigoted white man who\u2019s turned into a Black man (played by comedian Godfrey Cambridge) overnight. His wife was played by Estelle Parsons.<\/p>\n
Joe Angio\u2019s 2005 documentary \u201cHow to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)\u201d recounted the roller-coaster life of Van Peebles.<\/p>\n
Van Peebles was married once, to the German-born actress and photographer Maria Marx, in the 1950s, but the marriage ended in divorce after several years.<\/p>\n
In addition to son Mario, he is survived by son Max Van Peebles, an occasional actor and assistant director, daughter Marguerite, and grandchildren. His daughter Megan pre-deceased him.<\/p>\n
Source:variety<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Melvin Van Peebles, the groundbreaking filmmaker behind \u201cSweet Sweetback\u2019s Baadassss Song,\u201d and father of director and actor\u00a0Mario Van Peebles, has died. He was 89. \u201cSweet Sweetback\u201d was a groundbreaking film a few times over. Van Peebles financed and released the film independently, paving the way for an entire ecosystem of indie cinema. Because he couldn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7036],"tags":[7608,7606,7607,7605,7604],"class_list":["post-12623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-actor-and","tag-actor-and-writer","tag-dies-at-89","tag-influential-director","tag-melvin-van-peebles"],"yoast_head":"\n