Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

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Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

Theatrical release poster.
Directed by Melvin Van Peebles
Produced by Melvin Van Peebles
Jerry Gross
Written by Melvin Van Peebles
Starring The Black Community
Brer Soul
Music by Melvin Van Peebles
Cinematography Bob Maxwell
Editing by Melvin Van Peebles
Distributed by Cinemation Industries
Release date(s) April 23, 1971
Running time 97 minutes
Language English
Budget $500,000[1]
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a 1971 American independent film written, produced, scored, directed by, and starring Melvin Van Peebles. It tells the picaresque story of a deprived black man on his flight from the white authority.

The film, funded and distributed outside of the Hollywood system, broke conventions with its visual style, as well as its content. It was a major success, and was credited by Variety magazine with inventing the blaxploitation genre, although it is more accurate to say that it demonstrated to Hollywood that films portraying "militant" blacks could be highly profitable, leading to the creation of the genre.[2] The movie itself does not easily fit into the genre.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The film opens with the dedication, "Dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the Man," followed by the credit, "Starring: The Black Community." Then, the story begins:

A young orphan boy (played by Melvin's son, Mario Van Peebles) is taken in by the proprietor of a Los Angeles whorehouse in the 1940s. While working there as a towel boy, he loses his virginity (at a startlingly young age) to one of the prostitutes; the women name him "Sweet Sweetback" in honor of his sexual prowess and gigantic penis.

The movie flashes forward to the 1970s, where Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles), now an adult, works as a performer in the whorehouse, entertaining customers by having sex on stage. One night, a pair of police officers come in to speak to Sweetback's boss, Beetle. A black man had been murdered, and there is pressure from blacks to bring in a suspect. The police ask permission to arrest Sweetback, blame him for the crime, and then release him a few days later for lack of evidence, in order to appease the black community. Beetle agrees, and the officers arrest Sweetback.

On the way to the police station, the officers arrest a young Black Panther. They handcuff him to Sweetback, but when the Panther mouths off to the officers, they un-handcuff him, take him out of the car, and beat him; in response, Sweetback gets out of the car and beats the officers into unconsciousness with the unlocked handcuff.

The remainder of the film chronicles Sweetback's flight through South Central L.A. (now South L.A.) towards the Mexican border. Highlights of his odyssey include:

  • Sweetback is captured by the police for the murders of the cops, but escapes when a riot breaks out.
  • A white man sympathetic to his cause agrees to switch clothes with him, allowing the usually velour clad Sweetback to blend in.
  • The police find Sweetback's foster-father, a blind, illiterate old man who reveals that Sweetback's birth name is Leroy.
  • Sweetback goes to a woman he knows who can cut his handcuffs off; she makes him pay her with sex. With his handcuffs off, Sweetback continues onward, only to be captured by an all-white chapter of the Hells Angels. The female members are impressed by the size of Sweetback's penis, and after he gives one of them multiple orgasms during sex, they help him get to the desert.

The film concludes in the desert, where the L.A. police send several hunting dogs after Sweetback. He makes it into the Rio Grande, where he kills the dogs and escapes into Mexico. Afterwards, Sweetback delivers a warning (via on-screen text) to white viewers: "Watch out - a baad assss nigger is coming to collect some dues."

The end of the film actually shocked black audiences as well, who had expected that Sweetback would, sooner or later, perish at the hands of the police. This was a common, even inevitable, fate of black men "on the run" in prior films and this is in large part the reason that film critics such as Roger Ebert state that this isn't an exploitation film.[2]

[edit] Pre-production

After Melvin Van Peebles had completed Watermelon Man for Columbia Pictures, he was offered a three-picture contract. While the deal was still up in the air, Van Peebles developed the story for Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.

The initial idea for the film did not come clearly to him at first. One day, Van Peebles drove into the Mojave desert, turned off the highway, and drove over the rise of a hill. He parked the car, got out, and squatted down facing the sun. He decided that the film was going to be "about a brother getting the Man's foot out of his ass."[3][4]

Van Peebles states that "story-wise, I came up with an idea, why not the direct approach. [...] To avoid putting myself into a corner and writing something I wouldn't be able to shoot, I made a list of the givens in the situation and tried to take those givens and juggle them into the final scenario."[5] These included:

  1. "No Cop Out" — Van Peebles wanted "a victorious film [...] where niggers could walk out standing tall instead of avoiding each other's eyes, looking once again like they'd had it."[5]
  2. "Must Look As Good As Anything Chuck Ever Did" — "One of the problems faced by a black filmmaker (in fact any American independent filmmaker who wants to produce his own feature, just more so for a brother) is that Hollywood polishes its product with such a great deal of slickness and expensive production that it ups the ante. [...] I was determined that the film was going to look as good as anything one of the major studios could turn out."[5]
  3. "Entertainment-Wise, a Mother Fucker" — Van Peebles knew that his film had to have three things in order to spread his message:
    1. "The film simply couldn't be a didactic discourse which would end up playing (if I could find a distributor) to an empty theater except for ten or twenty aware brothers who would pat me on the back and say it tells it like it is."[5]
    2. "One of the problems we must face squarely is that to attract the mass we have to produce work that not only instructs but entertains."[5]
    3. "It must be able to sustain itself as a viable commercial product or there is no power base. [...] [The Man] ain't about to go carrying no messages for you, especially a relevant one, for free."[5]
  4. "A Living Workshop" — "I wanted 50% of my shooting crew to be third world people. [...] So at best a staggering amount of my crew would be relatively inexperienced. [...] Any type of film requiring an enormous technical sophistication at the shooting stage should not be attempted."[5]
  5. "Bread" — "Normal financing channels probably closed."[5]
  6. "Monkey Wrenching" — "I would have to expect a great deal of animosity from the film media (white in the first place and right wing in the second) at all levels of filmmaking."[5]
  7. "Unknowns and Variables" — "I would have to write a flexible script where emphasis could be shifted. In short, stay loose."[5]

Because no studio would finance the film, Van Peebles put his own money into the production, and shot it independently. Van Peebles wound up controlling ownership of the film.[4]

Several actors auditioned for the lead role of Sweetback, but told Van Peebles that they wouldn't do the film unless they were given more dialogue (the character of Sweetback only has six lines during the entire film), and Van Peebles ended up playing the part himself.[4]

[edit] Production

According to Van Peebles, on the first day of shooting, director of photography and head cameraman Bob Maxwell told him that he couldn't mix two different lights because he thought that the results wouldn't look good on film. Van Peebles told him to do it anyhow. When he saw the rushes, Maxwell was overjoyed, and Van Peebles didn't have that problem again during the shoot.[4]

The film was shot in 19 days because all of the actors were amateurs, and otherwise, Van Peebles would risk the castmembers coming back the next day with different haircuts or clothes. He shot the film in what he called "globs," where he would shoot entire sequences at a time.[4]

Because Van Peebles couldn't afford a stunt man, he performed all of the stunts himself, which also included appearing in several unsimulated sex scenes. At one point in the shoot, Van Peebles had to jump off a bridge. Bob Maxwell told him "Well, that's great, Mel, but let's do it again." Van Peebles ended up performing the stunt nine times.[4]

Van Peebles contracted gonorrhea when filming one of the many sex scenes, and successfully applied to the director's guild in order to get workers' compensation because he got "hurt on the job." Van Peebles used the money to buy more film.[4]

Since it was dangerous to try to make a film without the support of the Union, Van Peebles and several key crew members were armed. One day, Van Peebles went to look for his gun, and couldn't find it. Van Peebles found out that someone had put it in the prop box.[4]

While shooting a sequence with members of the Hells Angels, one of the bikers told Van Peebles that they wanted to leave. Van Peebles told them that 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.[4]

Van Peebles had gotten a permit to set a car on fire, but had gotten it on a Friday, and because of this, there wasn't time to have it filed on time before shooting the scene. When the scene was shot, a fire truck showed up. This ended up in the final cut of the film.[4]

Van Peebles was given a $50,000 loan from Bill Cosby to complete the film. "Cosby didn't want an equity part," according to Van Peebles. "He just wanted his money back."[4]

[edit] Directing

Van Peebles states that he approached directing the film "like you do the cupboard when you're broke and hungry: throw in everything eatable and hope to come out on top with the seasoning, i.e., by editing."[5]

[edit] Music

Main article: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (soundtrack)

Since Van Peebles didn't have the money to hire a composer, Van Peebles wrote the music himself. However, he didn't know how to read or write music. Van Peebles numbered all of the keys on a piano so he could remember the melodies.[4] Van Peebles states that "Most filmmakers look at a feature in terms of image and story or vice versa. Effects and music [...] are strictly secondary considerations. Very few look at film with sound considered as a creative third dimension. So I calculate the scenario in such a way that sound can be used as an integral part of the film."[5] The film's music was performed by the then-unknown group Earth, Wind & Fire. At the time, the entire band was living in a single apartment with hardly any food. Van Peebles' secretary was dating one of the bandmembers, and convinced him to contact them about performing the music for the film. Van Peebles projected scenes from the film as the band performed the music.[4] Van Peebles recalls that "music was not used as a selling tool in movies at the time. Even musicals, it would take three months after the release of the movie before they would bring out an album." Because Van Peebles did not have any money for traditional advertising methods, he decided that by releasing a soundtrack album in anticipation of the film's release, he could help build awareness for the film with its music.[6]

[edit] Editing

Sweetback on the run.
Sweetback on the run.

The film's fast-paced montages and jump-cuts were novel features for an American movie at the time, although it is likely that Van Peebles was influenced by the avant-garde films of Jean-Luc Godard, since he was living in Paris and studying to be a director during the mid-1960s. Louis Parks in the Houston Chronicle 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."[1] 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."[1]

[edit] Release

Melvin Van Peebles states that "at first, only two theaters in the United States would show the picture: one in Detroit, and one in Atlanta. The first night in Detroit, it broke all the theater's records, and that was only on the strength of the title alone, since nobody had seen it yet. By the second day, people would take their lunch and sit through it three times. I knew that I was finally talking to my audience. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song made thousands of dollars in its first day."[7] The film grossed $4,100,000 at the box office.[3]

[edit] Response

Critical response was mixed. Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times described the film as "a series of earthy vignettes, where Van Peebles evokes the vitality, humor, pain, despair and omnipresent fear that is life for so many African Americans."[1] The film was criticized for perceived elements such as poor lighting, negative women's roles, a limited performance by Van Peebles, and the exploitation of black cultural stereotypes. Stephen Holden in the New York Times called it "an innovative, yet politically inflammatory film."[1] The film website Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews from a wide range of critics, gives the film a score of 67%.[8]

Huey P. Newton, devoting an entire issue of The Black Panther to the film's revolutionary implications,[3][9] celebrated and welcomed the film as "the first truly revolutionary Black film made [...] presented to us by a Black man."[10] Among the arguments that Newton made for Sweetback were that it "presents the need for unity among all members and institutions within the community of victims," contending that this is evidenced by the opening credits which state the film stars "The Black Community," a collective protagonist engaged in various acts of community solidarity that aid Sweetback in escaping. Newton further argues that "the film demonstrates the importance of unity and love between Black men and women," as demonstrated "in the scene where the woman makes love to the young boy but in fact baptizes him into his true manhood."[10] For anyone who wished to become a Black Panther, the film was required viewing for all Panther initiates.

A few months later, Lerone Bennett responded with an essay on the film in Ebony, titled "The Emancipation Orgasm: Sweetback in Wonderland," in which he discussed the film's "black aesthetic" and concluded that the film is "neither revolutionary nor black." Bennett argued that the film romanticized the poverty and misery of the ghetto and that "some men foolishly identify the black aesthetic with empty bellies and big bottomed prostitutes." Bennett concluded that the film is "neither revolutionary nor black because it presents the spectator with sterile daydreams and a superhero who is ahistorical, selfishly individualist with no revolutionary program, who acts out of panic and desperation." Bennett described Sweetback's sexual initiation at ten years old as the "rape of a child by a 40-year-old prostitute." Bennett described instances when Sweetback saved himself through the use of his sexual prowess as "emancipation orgasms" and states that "it is necessary to say frankly that nobody ever fucked his way to freedom. And it is mischievous and reactionary finally for anyone to suggest to black people in 1971 that they are going to be able to screw their way across the Red Sea. Fucking will not set you free. If fucking freed, black people would have celebrated the millennium 400 years ago."[11]

Black nationalist poet and author Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee) agreed with Bennett's assessment of the film, stating that it was "a limited, money-making, auto-biographical fantasy of the odyssey of one Melvin Van Peebles through what he considered to be the Black community."[12] The New York Times critic Clayton Riley viewed the film more favorably, commenting on its aesthetic innovation, but stated of the character of Sweetback that he "is the ultimate sexualist in whose seemingly vacant eyes and unrevealing mouth are written the protocols of American domestic colonialism." In another review, Riley explained that "Sweetback, the profane sexual athlete and fugitive, is based on a reality that is Black. We may not want him to exist but he does." Critic Donald Bogle states in a New York Times interiew that the film in some ways met the black audience's compensatory needs after years of desexed Poitier characters and that they wanted a "viable, sexual, assertive, arrogant black male hero."[9]

[edit] Censorship

After Sweetback received an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America and a theater in Boston cut nine minutes out of the film, Van Peebles stated, "Should 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."[13]

The Region 2 DVD release from BFI Video has the opening sex sequences altered. A notice at the beginning of the DVD states "In order to comply with UK law (the Protection of Children Act 1978), a number of images in the opening sequence of this film have been obscured."[14]

[edit] Legacy

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is considered to be an important film in the history of African American cinema. Hollywood studios were led to attempt to replicate the film's success by producing Black-oriented films such as Shaft and Super Fly, leading to the creation of what is now referred to as the blaxploitation genre, largely consisting of exploitation films made by white directors. As Spike Lee states, "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song gave us all the answers we needed. This was an example of how to make a film (a real movie), distribute it yourself, and most important, get paid. Without Sweetback who knows if there could have been a Shaft or Super Fly? Or looking down the road a little further, would there have been a She's Gotta Have It, Hollywood Shuffle, or House Party?"[15] In 2004, Mario Van Peebles directed and starred as his father in BAADASSSSS!, a biopic about the making of Sweet Sweetback. The film was a critical and commercial success.[16][17]

[edit] References

  • Van Peebles, Melvin (1996). The Making of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Edinburgh: Payback Press. ISBN 0862416531. 
  1. ^ a b c d e Berry, S. Torriano (2001). "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song", The 50 Most Influential Black Films: A Celebration of African-American Talent, Determination, and Creativity. Citadel Press, pages 116—117; 119. ISBN 0806521333. 
  2. ^ a b Ebert, Roger (June 11, 2004). Review of Baadasssss!. Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved on 2007-01-04.
  3. ^ a b c James, Darius (1995). That's Blaxploitation!: Roots of the Baadasssss 'Tude (Rated X by an All-Whyte Jury. ISBN 0312131925. 
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Van Peebles, Melvin. The Real Deal: What It Was...Is!. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song DVD, Xenon Entertainment Group, 2003. ISBN 1578297508
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Van Peebles, Melvin (2004). "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song", in Kaufman, Alan; Ortenberg, Neil; Rosset, Barney: The Outlaw Bible of American Literature. Thunder's Mouth Press, pages 286—289. ISBN 1560255501. 
  6. ^ Thompson, Dave (2001). "Blaxploitation: Funk Goes to the Movies", Funk. Backbeat Books, pages 207—208. ISBN 0879306297. 
  7. ^ Rausch, Andrew J. (2004). Turning Points in Film History. Citadel Press, page 187. ISBN 0806525924. 
  8. ^ Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2007-01-04.
  9. ^ a b Guerrero, Ed (1993). "The Rise of Blaxploitation", Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Temple University Press, 86—90. ISBN 1566391261. 
  10. ^ a b Newton, Huey P.. "He Won't Bleed Me: A Revolutionary Analysis of 'Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.'", The Black Panther #6, June 19, 1971. Retrieved on 2007-10-14. 
  11. ^ Bennett, Lerone. "The Emancipation Orgasm: Sweetback in Wonderland", Ebony #26, September 1971, p. pages 106—118. Retrieved on 2007-10-14. 
  12. ^ Lee, Don L.. "The Bittersweet of Sweetback; or, Shake Yo Money Maker", Black World #21, November 1971, p. pages 43-48. Retrieved on 2007-10-14. 
  13. ^ George, Nelson (2001). Buppies, B-boys, Baps & Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul Black Culture. Da Capo Press, page 3. ISBN 0306810271. 
  14. ^ Tooze, Gary W.. Review. DVD Beaver. Retrieved on 2007-01-04.
  15. ^ Massood, Paula J.. "Welcome to Crooklyn: Spike Lee and the Black Urbanscape", Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film. Temple University Press. ISBN 1592130038. 
  16. ^ Tomatometer for Baadasssss!. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2008-05-29.
  17. ^ Box office and business for Baadasssss! (2004). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2008-05-29.

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Films directed by Melvin Van Peebles
Films: The Story of a Three-Day Pass •Watermelon Man •Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song •Don't Play Us Cheap •Bellyful
Shorts: Pickup Men for Herrick •Sunlight •Cinq cent balles •Vroom Vroom Vroooom
With Mario Van Peebles: Identity Crisis •Panther •Gang in Blue
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