D.C. MOVIE GUYS

Bill’s Review
What begins as a docudrama following a little-known chapter of film history becomes most effective as an homage and thank you note to the filmmaker’s father. Director Mario Van Peebles (New Jack City, Posse) looks to father Melvin’s life for the subject matter of Baadasssss! (I had to count the number of s’s on screen to ensure accuracy), a movie about the making of Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song. And although a step backward for proper spelling, the movie is considered the forerunner of blaxploitation. And Van Peebles the younger is almost a good enough actor and director to make you think the original is worth the homage. But much like Ed Wood, you have a very good movie about a well-intentioned filmmaker who produced a very, vvery, vvvery baad movie (see Melvin, two can play at that game—and where does it stoppp?).
In fact, Baadasssss! (and they should have kept the original title “How to Get the Man’s Foot Outta Your Ass”) is such a terrific look at underground filmmaking that one can almost forget just how dull and constrained to the moment the resulting movie turned out to be. Almost.
As Baadasssss! makes plain, Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song was made at a time when black actors could hope for little more than work playing servants or comical stereotypes. Black directors who had even a single Hollywood credit could be counted on one hand. In 1970, with Watermelon Man in theatres, Melvin Van Peebles (son Mario who himself is played by Khleo Thomas of Holes) is a hot item with his agent (Saul Rubinek) on the verge of getting him a three-picture deal with Columbia (coincidentally, this movie is being distributed by Columbia’s art house division, Sony Classics). With the ‘60s over and the prospect of making more compromised comedies, Van Peebles would prefer to make the story of an urban African American everyman who will grow up with a typically impoverished existence, be harassed and brutalized by police, will strike back, be forced to run away into the wilderness, and, most radical of all, not die at the end of the movie.
But Hollywood wants no part of this (you would have thought Easy Rider would have taught them a lesson) and so director Van Peebles decides to go completely independent with a non-union (and unlike the unions integrated) crew, decides to star himself in the lead, and when his independent financing is yanked decides to go ahead on a shoestring risking the small amount of wealth he has been able to amass. But once the movie is completed, Van Peebles troubles are hardly over. The ratings board gives it an X, no newspapers will take advertising, and the only distributor who would handle the film was Jerry Gross whose JGO (Jerry Gross Organization) and its predecessor Cinemation usually handled low-rent exploitation movies for down-on-their-heels urban independent movie houses. Under all the burdens that Van Peebles labored under, we should be amazed he got a movie out at all. And certainly in 1971, Melvin Van Peebles created a film unlike any others that had been seen to that time—an uncompromised work of guerilla politics and rage. And if we graded on intentions rather than the finished product, Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song would be considered a great film.
But though an important moment in the history of independent as well as black filmmaking, Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song seems to work best for people who have not actually seen it. Separated from the time it was made, the story and its telling are dreadfully dull and there is no single moment of technical or artistic expertise that raises it above its time and place.
The same cannot be said of Baadasssss! Right from his feature debut with New Jack City, Mario Van Peebles showed that he was a substantially better filmmaker than the old man. And he has improved as a filmmaker (an especially noteworthy entry in his filmography is the post-modern western Posse), also unlike his father. But one thing about Melvin Van Peebles, his son has done right by him.

Related Reading:

Apple Pro Training Series: Soundtrack Pro

A Century of Movie Posters: From Silent to Art House

Movie Posters: 2009 Wall Calendar

100 Modern Soundtracks (BFI Screen Guides)

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die: 5th Anniversary Edition