Author: CPRM

Alright, on to the second installment of As Seen On TV, and as I said in the first one I might deviate from TV shows. I’ll go ahead and do that now, but it’s OK because when I saw this movie it was on a TV, so close enough.

We all know the genre of blaxploitation, but did ever wonder where it came from? How did it start? Well, the film that is generally agreed as the originator of the genre is Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, a 1971 film written and directed by and starring Melvin Van Peebles (you might have heard of his son Mario, but more on that later).

Sweetback (as I will henceforth refer to it) is the story of a, well I’ll just wikipedia tell it:

A young African-American orphan…taken in by the proprietor of a Los Angeles brothel in the 1940s. …he is raped by one of the prostitutes at a young age. The women name him “Sweet Sweetback” in honor of his sexual prowess and large penis. As an adult, Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) works as a performer in the whorehouse, entertaining customers by performing in a sex show.

From there it’s a story of corrupt cops trying to frame him for murder because they want to pin it on a black guy (they plan to release him afterwards, they just want a fall guy to the pressure off). But the cops also a catch a Black Panther, and when they start beating him Sweetback attacks the cops and flees. From there it’s all trying evade the police while exchanging his sexual talents for help from lady folk.

Sounds like a perfect Glibs movie, but I don’t remember any blackjack. The movie itself may not be that great, but it had an interesting impact on movies that came later.

The film’s focus on urban black culture and themes of black revolution are the easiest way to see the influence, which was Van Peebles’ goal. He gained some influence for his past work in Hollywood, but movies exploring this culture were still seen as too out of the norm. He had been offered a deal from Paramount to make movies, but not this movie. The late 60s-early 70s is when the old Hollywood Studio System started to crumble. Independent films were becoming what was groovy. Going through the studios was no longer the only way films could get made. To this end, Van Peebles financed the film himself (after he ran out of money he got Super Predator Bill Cosby to invest) and worked with a ragtag crew of people within his network. Like when he needed to score the film he hired this little group a friend of a friend knew named Earth Wind and Fire.

On top of writing, directing and starring Van Peebles also edited the film, the style he used influenced films that came later. Even though I work in editing, I’m too technical of a guy, hell I’ll just let wikipedia say it:

The film’s fast-paced montages and jump cuts were novel features for an American movie at the time. Stephen Holden from The New York Times commented that the film’s editing had “a jazzy, improvisational quality, and the screen is often streaked with jarring psychedelic effects that illustrate Sweetback’s alienation.”[8] In The 50 Most Influential Black Films: A Celebration of African-American Talent, Determination, and Creativity, author S. Torriano Berry writes that the film’s “odd camera angles, superimpositions, reverse-key effects, box and matting effects, rack-focus shots, extreme zooms, stop-motion and step-printing, and an abundance of jittery handheld camera work all helped to express the paranoid nightmare that [Sweetback’s] life had become.”[9]

When the movie was released it got an X rating and one of the few theaters that would even show it cut some stuff out. Working to secure that release was another showing of Van Peeble’s hustling to make this movie happen, he had to go convince theaters himself to even show it, at first he only convinced two. But once audiences saw the film and word of mouth spread it ended up making $4.1 million.

Oh, I said I talk more about Melvin’s son Mario. For those of you don’t recognize the name Mario Van Peebles is a B or C list action star but has also appeared in mainstream films with the likes of Clint Eastwood and Wesley Snipes, he even just happened to guest star on an episode of The Cosby Show. Mario’s first role was playing young Sweetback in this film, you know when the character was raped. Yeah, his dad directed him in a rape scene. But once Mario got all growed up he made a movie about his dad making the movie based on a book his dad had written about making the movie. That’s a lot of basing. That movie is called Bad Asssss and relates some of the experiences from making Sweetback and is generally enjoyable, containing re-enactments of anecdotes like these:

Van Peebles and several key crew members were armed because it was dangerous to attempt to create a film without the support of the union. One day, Van Peebles looked for his gun, and failed to find it. Van Peebles found out that someone had put it in the prop box. When they filmed the scene in which Beetle is interrogated by police, who fire a gun next to both of his ears, it was feared that the real gun would be picked up instead of the prop.

While shooting a sequence with members of the Hells Angels, one of the bikers told Van Peebles they wanted to leave; Van Peebles responded by telling them they were paid to shoot until the scene was over. The biker took out a knife and started cleaning his fingernails with it. In response, Van Peebles snapped his fingers, and his crewmembers were standing there with rifles. The bikers stayed to shoot the scene.[6]

Van Peebles had received a permit to set a car on fire, but had done so on a Friday; as a result, there was no time to have it filed before shooting the scene. When the scene was shot, a fire truck showed up. This ended up in the final cut of the film.[6]