Original subtitles

♪♪ (patriotic)

♪♪ (man singing in French)

♪♪ (continues)

♪♪ (ends)

(man speaking French)

(speaking French)

Sweetback set a tone where people are really considering,

"Well, maybe you can beat the man."

MAN: For Melvin to come when he did and show a film where we were the victor

and came out heroic and dignified at the same time,

you know, that's monumental.

There was a fear of blackness,

and Melvin saw blackness emerging as a commodity,

as a commercial aspect of popular culture.

His career's been built around that--

knowing how to make noise and making controversy work to his advantage.

Melvin had guts.

He wouldn't have cared what anyone else thought.

MAN: At some point in life, my dad threw the rule book out.

He said, "I'm gonna do what I wanna do."

MELVIN: What happened with me is if I don't see it,

then I do it myself.

That's what happened with film. That's what happened with music.

That's what happened with writing.

I didn't see the type of things I wanted to see,

so I did it myself.

(speaking French)

I started, um, I guess you call life

as a-- as a painter and sculptor.

What I discovered as time went on

was that I didn't feel that painting allowed me

to talk to the people I wanted to talk to.

So I said, "Shit. I'll go into movies."

I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about film.

Most short films-- most independent films at that time-- were squiggles.

You know, squigg, squigg, squiggle. (speaking gibberish)

Nobody wanted to go near anything that smacked of Hollywood.

Um-- But me, all I ever wanted to do was tell stories.

MAN: The filmmaking business for him is not an end in itself.

It's a way to get where he wants to get.

If he could reach a wider audience for what he wants to say

by being the world champion of the hundred meters,

he'd probably be the world champion of the hundred meters.

Cut!

♪♪ (fanfare)

NARRATOR: Chicago. The Windy City.

The metropolis of America's middle west.

There's where Melvin Van Peebles is born in 1932,

on the city's rough-and-tumble South Side.

Young Melvin excels in school and stands out among his classmates.

Melvin's daughter recalls an outfit he was forced to wear.

It was lemon yellow and lime green,

satin little shorts, with a beanie.

Now, the South Side of Chicago,

you put this on not a very attractive, knobby-kneed little black boy,

they stick out like-- (whistles)

No wonder he spent his time in the library.

NARRATOR: As a teenager, Melvin attends a large suburban high school,

one of Thornton High's few black students.

Tennis, anyone?

Mary McCall, describe your former classmate.

He wore glasses, and he looked kind of geeky, really.

He had orange shoes, and they were squeaky.

And he'd get up and he'd walk down the aisle(shoes squeaking)

and across the front of the room to sharpen his pencil,

and then he'd squeak on his way back.

And it was real amusing to everybody.

NARRATOR: College is next.

Melvin takes advantage of an ROTC scholarship

to study art at Ohio Wesleyan University.

He graduates at the tender age of 20,

an officer in the United States Air Force.

Congratulations, Lieutenant.

Are you ready for your first assignment?

And what an assignment it is.

The young navigator immediately sees action on a B-47,

circling the globe hauling one precious piece of cargo:

the atom bomb.

Let me just say this. It's a good thing he wasn't the pilot.

'Cause these days, you know, Mississippi and Alabama would be rubble.

NARRATOR: His air force commitment behind him,

Melvin takes flight to the city by the bay-- San Francisco.

There we find him driving a cable car.

Hop on board. Let's go for a ride.

Melvin writes a popular story, The Big Heart,

about his life on the cable cars.

One admiring passenger, a Hollywood producer,

encourages Melvin to make movies.

Yet, despite the book's success, Melvin receives some bad news.

MELVIN: The director of the cable car

was someone who didn't think blacks should read, let alone write.

So I was fired. Why was I being fired?

He said because I fit the psychological profile

of someone who's probably going to have an accident.

NARRATOR: Undaunted, the budding director shoots a few short films,

with the hope of breaking into Hollywood.

When the studios show no interest,

the former navigator sets a course for Holland.

There, he studies astronomy at the University of Amsterdam.

But something else is in the stars for Melvin.

His movies have found some fans in France,

where he's invited to the world-famous Cinémathèque.

So it's au revoir, Amsterdam, and bienvenue, Paris,

where Melvin Van Peebles would soon make his mark on the City of Light.

MELVIN: This is Henri Langlois.

Why all film museums all called cinematheque

is in honor of Henri Langlois, who started the first cinematheque.

And this guy and his significant other, Mary Meerson,

that's-- these are the ones who looked me up when I was in Holland

and invited me to France.

(honking)

I had no money and-- but my little cans of film,

and they swept me up and drove me to a big car in the Champs-Élysées.

Took me to a private screening room, and they showed my films there.

And everybody ooh'd and aah'd, and we came downstairs

and they kissed me on both cheeks

and got in their car and drove away.

And there I was in the middle of the Champs-Élysées, couldn't speak of work of French,

two wet cheeks, three cans of film and not a penny in my pocket.

But I had been given that glimmer of possibility,

and I decided that, okay, I'm gonna make it in film

or-- or die on the route.

I was a beggar for a while,

and, um, then I became a street singer.

And little by little, I learned a little French.

I discovered there was a law

that said a French writer could have a temporary director's card

to bring his own creation to the screen.

So as I was learning French,

I always had this in the back of my mind,

and I turned myself into a French writer.

(typing)

(man speaking French)

(man speaking French)

(Gébé, French)

(TV announcer speaking French)

(Melvin speaking French)

GÉBÉ:

WOLINSKI:

I must have met Melvin--

must have been '63, '64.

I-- Melvin was a big fan of the Montparnasse cafés.

Somehow I had never noticed that he was around before,

which is kind of unforgivable because you notice Melvin.

And I was sitting at the Dôme one night with friends,

and this guy came rushing in, stopped at the table,

said, "Bonjour," in his good French, and said, "Who are you?"

Stopped in front of me, and said, "Who are you?"

And I said, you know, "I'm me. I'm Janine."

He said, "Oh. We're going to see each other again, but not now."

We lived together for four years,

which was a fabulous, exhausting, heartbreaking experience from time to time.

Paris fitted him like a well-fit suit.

Paris was made for him, but the Paris of the little people,

the Paris of the bistros, the Paris of the street.

The '60s were marvelous.

There were a lot of expatriates in Paris.

And the black musicians--

the Art Ensemble of Chicago was in Paris,

Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp--

all the great jazz musicians were in Paris.

BOURNE: There's a history in the black intellectual community

of artists leaving the shores to clear their heads

and to get opportunities they couldn't get in America.

MAN: Paris said, "Come to us."

You just got this sense of--

that there was freedom of thought and freedom of action there.

He did in France a lot of the things that he could not do in the States.

Although things were very hard for him at the beginning.

(fingers snap) They didn't come like that. I mean, he had to learn French.

I mean, you don't become a writer or journalist,

a film director if you don't fight for it.

WOLINSKI:

GÉBÉ:

JANINE: I used to say, "You can't say that.

Verb comes and adjective and pronoun and--

I mean, there are laws." "Forget about the laws."

I said, "You know, you can't. It's impossible."

Well--

Obviously, it was possible because it's been published.

TV HOST (speaking French):

(speaking French)

MELVIN: I started writing these novels.

Eventually, after I had published four novels,

I go to the Centre du Cinema,

and I say to the guy,

"It says that a French writer can have a temporary director's card

to bring his own work to the screen.

I write in French, so I'm a French writer, right?"

And the guy looked at me and said, "Yes."

And that's how...

I got to make my first film.

Monsieur?

Un bier? Oui, monsieur.

MAN (speaking French):

(man speaking French)

Action!

THIVAT:

MELVIN: The first time I was on the set of La Permission,

I'd never been inside a studio before.

No one knew that except the director of photography

who said, "I got your back.

You tell me what you want and then I'll be able to do it."

And then after a while,

I was able to take what he would say to me

and be able to say it myself.

(laughing)

Turner, hi. Hi.

What are you guys doing here?

Oh, nothing much. Just a little Sunday sightseeing.

WOMAN (speaking French):

(chattering) Ooh-la-la.

TURNER: You guys, this is a friend. Miriam.

Miriam, uh, these are some of the guys from the base.

Hello.

MARTINEAU:

We'll let you get back to your thing.

But we'll tell everybody we saw you.

I guess I just lost my promotion.

THIVAT:

GÉBÉ:

(Turner laughing)

THIVAT:

MELVIN: When I get to San Francisco,

nobody knew I was an American, let alone black.

I get off the plane. I hear this voice call,

"Melvin Van Peebles, délégation Français.

Melvin Van Peebles,délégation Français."

And there's this little old lady, blue-hair type.

And I go up to her and I say, "Ma'am."

She says, "Don't bother me, son. I'm busy.

Melvin Van Peebles,délégation Français."

I said, "Hey, lady.

I'm Melvin Van Peebles."

The eyes rolled back in her head.

And of course she checks me out."Parlez-vous Français?"

And I spoke French.

And she said, "Well, your limo's waiting for you."

I went on to win the festival.

Hollywood began to swarm around and said,

"Well, why you over there with those frogs?

Why aren't you here making films here with us?"

Eventually, I got the script of Watermelon Man.

The guy who sent it to me named some actors that they've been looking for--

Alan Arkin, Jack Lemmon.

But I said, "The guy's black."

He says, "Yes, but he starts off white."

I said, "He's only white maybe four minutes of the film, just during the credits.

Why don't you get a black guy to play it in whiteface

instead of a white guy to play it in blackface?"

He says, "Is that possible?"

Not even understanding the inherent racism-- any black--

The king can play a valet, but the valet couldn't play the king.

Oh, man.

The things they put me through to do that.

(screaming)

The story is this obnoxious white guy

one day gets up to go to the toilet, and he's turned black.

How now

brown cow.

MELVIN: In the original script,

toward the end of the movie, he's turned white again.

I thought that implied that being black was just a bad dream,

and I wanted him to have to live with it and stay black.

But we came to a compromise. We'd shoot it both ways.

Well, I was born at night but not last night.

So I agree.

"Sure, guys, okay. We'll do it that way."

Ha!

ALL: Ha!

Meantime, I got a call from the editor.

He says, "Melvin, I can't locate the other ending where he turns white again."

I said, "Oh, Lawda mercy, you know, I gwan forgot dat.

I forgots to shoot it."

ALL: HA!

That's how we ended up with the way I wanted it.

The thing I'm probably most comfortable with is the unknown,

because everything I had usually gone into, I didn't know anything about.

So it's not as frightening to me as it may be to someone else.

♪♪ (singing in French)

I wasn't deeply into music at that time.

It came out of just necessity.

The films that I did,

I couldn't afford to pay anyone to do the music and the soundtrack.

And that's how I got into music, literally.

Um, I first started off by humming on a comb and, uh, you know, the kazoo.

- ♪ Zzzzz ♪ - ♪♪ (kazoo)

JANINE: Melvin's favorite songs--

he can sing all the repertoire of-of all the great singers of the '30s.

He adores it.

♪♪ (singing in French)

♪♪ (man singing in French on recording)

WOLINSKI:

♪♪ (continues)

When I came back to the States,

I was shocked by the fact that the political movement--

There were no black songs.

I mean, there was "We Shall Overcome,"

but there weren't songs describing the condition--

There was Dylan, what he was doing.

There was Baez, and there were the other people.

But there were not what I felt things that mirrored the black experience.

A-one, two, three.

♪ Lum di lum di lie ♪

♪ Lum di lum di lie ♪

I felt that the black experience had been hijacked musically

to simply being rhythm, beat and melody,

and the words were getting lost.

♪ This cat named Mickey came from out of town, yeah ♪

♪ He was spreading a new dance all around ♪

And so that's when I sort of invented this style

that used words to carry the message and the melody,

and I wanted to give voice to those voiceless people.

I think that Melvin brought storytelling back into fashion.

And anybody who wanted to tell a story

and make a strong narrative point--

all your early rap people, like The Last Poets or Gil Scott-Heron--

they had to be aware of Melvin.

SCOTT-HERON: You will not be able to stay home, brother.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Whoo!

You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.

WOMAN: Yeah!

The revolution will not be televised.

SCOTT-HERON: With folks calling me the godfather of rap,

I've had to, like, uh, try to indicate the fact

that there were influences that I picked up on before I started,

uh, in particular, Melvin and Oscar Brown Jr. and people of that nature

who made sure there was a story inside the things that they were talking about.

MELVIN (on recording): Don't jump, folks.

Take them looks off your face.

I ain't one of them dope addicts.

That's a teenybopper bag.

Whoever seen a junkie as old as me?

I just want my taste, you see?

My story's sad, ain't it?

Believe you me.

How about a little something to show your sympathy?

Have a little pity.

What you say, folks? You got a little booze for me?

MAN: One of my favorite albums of all time was the Brer Soul record,

which was released September 26, 1968 by A&M Records.

It took the idea of someone on the margins of society

and people's, you know, um, conventional notions of who that person might be.

And Melvin was trying to do something with narrative

that would fire people's imaginations.

Why does a play have to be on a stage?

Why does a record have to be listened to instead of read?

There's no real reason.

A record like Brer Soul, when you close your eyes it's still in your head.

You know? I mean--

That record is probably best listened to in the dark, in a way.

Uh, because, um,

it's so visual, in a sense, you almost don't need pictures.

(bell ringing) MELVIN (on recording): I got five bad beans

looking for trouble.

Five first presidents backing a brother.

Looking for five more backing the other.

Five uppity beans just waitin'

for somebody to try and put 'em in their place.

I got the blood. Who got whitey?

I got the soul. Who got whitey?

I say brother gonna whip some behind.

The other stud got 11 pounds on him.

But Brer gonna stomp him limb from limb.

Don't be shy. Come on. Make me a lie.

Who got those five beans gonna make a fib out of me?

I'm takin' the blood. Who got whitey?

I got the soul. Who got whitey?

Black ain't only beautiful.

It's bad too.

It's fast, classy,

name-taking and ass-kicking too.

I'm lookin' for five beans that sayin' it ain't true.

When he said he was going to write his own music, I thought, the man is crazy.

Have you ever heard Melvin sing?

I mean, it is monstrous.

I adore music. Melvin adores music.

But to listen to him sing is a punishment.

When I first heard him, I said, "Geez, the guy got a unique voice."

It's something like--

Hmm. Uh--

A frog on crack.

(rapping) ♪ Now, once upon a time ♪

♪ If your mouth slipped up ♪

♪ And said what Mother Nature herself ♪

♪ Had put on your mind ♪

♪ Quick as a wink, you'd be dead meat ♪♪

The quality of his voice you can really argue about.

You know what I mean? You really can.

I mean, it's not like bad. It's just unique.

So you got to say, "All right." You've got to deal with it.

The next thing to to-- The real next thing to do

is for you to come in here with the headsets on and act your foolish self

and so then we have the damn thing done.

All right, okay. I'm going-- I'm going--

I'm going in to "play" and "record." Okay? Got it.

♪♪ (rap beat)

MELVIN: ♪ Everybody ♪

♪ Get down, chillins Get down ♪

You see that thing in front of you there? Yeah.

That's called a mic.

If you don't do it into the motherfuckin' mic, it does not record.

Because we've got the gate and everything else on,

you've got to do "Mm-hmm," "Oh, yeah" and so forth.

It's too loud to come to the gate.

But not only that, you turn your head half the time.

Listen to the music. Don't try to read.

You know you motherfuckin' can't read. I'm tryin' to count.

Well, okay, but you got to bob--

Who you think you are, Stevie Wonder? Shit, motherfucker.

(chuckling)

I go into loc 1, right?

Loc-- The bottom two.

Loc 1, yeah.

You stink, Mel.

MAN: He was showing me some music.

And I said, "Have you ever studied any real composition?"

He said, "No, I have never studied composition."

He said, "I just got my own little way of doing it."

He writes by numbers,

and then I'll take it and put it into notes.

He'll sit at the piano and go--

♪ Da-da-dum ♪

♪ De-dum ♪

Which is-- ♪ 1-2-3 ♪

♪ 6-5 ♪

So he'll write like that. He'll write 1-2-3.

♪ 6-5 ♪

♪ 7-6-5 ♪

♪ 4-3-2-1-5 ♪

This is the Sweetback theme.

6-- This is 6.

And this will be 6 1/2.

So it goes--

♪♪ (playing notes)

CHORUS: They bled your mama!

They bled your papa!

SWEETBACK: They won't bleed me.

Niggas scared and pretend they don't see.

Just like you, Sweetback!

Just like I used to be.

Work your black behind to the gums.

And you supposed to Thomas till he done.

You got to Thomas, Sweetback!

They bled your brother!

They bled your sister!

BOURNE: With Sweetback, Melvin's role as provocateur

had succeeded beyond all reasonable means

because everybody had something to say about it.

Everybody had something to disagree about it.

And--

But nobody could deny its power.

(siren blaring)

Black films or, that is,

films they called "black films,"

were never shown first-run.

I said, "Why is that?"

"Because a black film has never made money."

"Well, how would you know? You've never made a black film.

You've made white fantasies of what you hoped black people would take."

♪♪ (funk)

It's just one of those films that really hits.

It was the timing, you know. It was the turbulence.

We were still dealing with what happened in the '60s,

with the whole shift, socially, in this country.

We were-- We were no longer Negroes.

We were discovering who we are and celebrating this.

MAN: We were just coming from the era of nonviolence.

And so, as the movie depicts,

a brother standing up for justice, you know--

because in the movie, what sets Sweetback off

is the fact that the police is brutalizing this young Afro-American brother,

and he couldn't turn his back on it, so he stood up for him.

OFFICER: You drunk? OFFICER #2: He looks like a sniper to me.

WOMAN: It was something that I had never ever seen.

I had never seen in film a black man go up against authority.

He just fought the system and went up against the citadel

and just kept going back and kept going back.

And he was just full of rage.

And the system was just against him, no matter what.

(screams)

BOURNE: He is challenging,

engaging core issues in American life--

issues that people don't even wanna talk about.

And then he does it in a way that's not simplistic.

Here's a guy who kills a cop with his own handcuffs

and says he's right to do it.

It was the embodiment of what the Party was about.

So finally we'd seen somebody capture our thoughts,

our gestures, our ideology.

So the concept is this, basically:

The whole black nation has to be put together as a black army.

And we gonna walk on this nation.

We gonna walk on this racist power structure.

And we gonna say to the whole damn government, "Stick 'em up, motherfucker.

This is a holdup. We come for what's ours."

JENNINGS: Huey Newton made everybody in the Black Panther Party

go see the movie.

And he put a revolutionary analysis to this movie in our paper.

And I don't think Van Peebles knew and told how powerful this movie was

until Huey put the analysis to it.

When I see this photo, it reminds me of Nat Turner

or someone, like, from the slavery days, running for their freedom.

And when he talks about "feet don't fail me now," he's talking about--

That's the only thing black people had at that time--

their feet and their ability to survive.

Fuck.

(barking)

At the very end, you don't know if Sweet Sweetback is dead or not

when they sic the dogs on him.

When you put dogs on black people,

black people will react in a very hostile manner

because of what's been happening historical to black people.

So everybody was, like, angry,

and they was cussing at the screen

because everybody thought it was going to be the end for Sweetback.

So when we seen that projected on the screen,

all it did was help to empower us even more.

"Yeah, this has finally got it right."

I thought there were probably a lot of people out there like myself

who just got tired of us always going to the lynch mob with a Bible and a hymn.

And, um, I wanted a movie

that black people could walk out of standing tall,

and, uh--

at least street black folk.

Now, there are a whole lot of people who, um, decided-- elitists-- that, um,

they had the key to our salvation,

and if you went any other way you were--

you were a dirty, rotten traitor.

Um, I won't deal with that.

Either you loved it or you hated it. There was no in between.

My parents, you know, hated it. They wouldn't even talk about it.

They'd just read things about it. "Oh, it's terrible. It's terrible."

And then some people just said it was disgusting.

Yeah, baby. (farts)

You gonna have to be awful cool,

'cause what you do reflects on all the rest of our little employees.

We can't have that 'cause we got a good operation going here.

BOURNE: The black middle class tends to

project itself and the race as a positive image.

The idea was to show that we weren't degenerates. We weren't weirdos.

Well, Melvin running around, getting down with white women on motorcycles,

that's not a positive image, you see, so they freaked out on that.

Woman: Oh! Sweetback!

MAN: There's a fear of blackness.

And Melvin saw blackness emerging as a commodity,

as a commercial aspect of popular culture.

He's playing on black sexual stereotyping

and using that to his advantage.

I read an article about how blacks could move into the mainstream

if they could only remember their manners, et cetera.

And I wrote an article-- the guy wouldn't publish it--

but I sent it back to the magazine.

It was entitled "How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company and Enjoy It."

Well, if I like watermelon, I'm gonna eat watermelon.

Why should I not eat it because of this-- Hey, forget it already.

In fact, that sort of judo

was one of the major elements of Sweetback.

I took every stereotype and stood it on its head.

The consummate huckster,

I mean, sort of the African-American P.T. Barnum--

and I don't mean that in a bad sense.

I remember seeing the ad in the paper as a kid.

If Melvin were this black, you wouldn't be able to see him.

Nothing but the mustache. It was in silhouette.

It just sort of popped off the paper.

And then the line, "Rated X by an all-white jury."

He made himself Bobby Seale, Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver all in one.

All my life I had seen X-rated movies,

if X-rated means damaging to young minds.

Well, there was Tarzan.

There was King Kong. There was Mantan Moreland,

There were all these Stepin Fetchits, et cetera, et cetera.

And I can't find, in my mind, anything more devastating to the psyche

of a young African-American or minority than those things.

You don't call those X?

I think you've lost your credibility to judge.

And so, I wouldn't go to them.

And then when I wouldn't go to them, that meant I had an automatic X.

That's when I made these T-shirts and the slogan--

"Rated X by an all-white jury."

Valenti, he went ballistic. "You can't say that. Race has nothing to do with it."

I said, "You're all white, right?" "Yeah." "So what's your problem?"

And it was partially because of that stance

that the ratings board now is more diversified.

Melvin's a great marketer. (chuckles)

That was a marketing tool.

They-- They did him a favor by giving him an X rating.

Whatever they did to him, he turned it into a positive.

BOURNE: He is bullheaded,

and he has a clear vision of what he wants to do.

And if you get in his way, you're gonna get knocked over.

I was on a panel with Melvin in Ohio,

sponsored by a black-studies department.

And we were all holding forth about, you know, theory and cinema

and positive images and, you know, the need for a revolutionary cinema.

And the night before, they had shown Sweetback,

and a community brother in the audience, he says,

"Look, Melvin, I saw your stuff last night, and it was all dark, man.

You really messed up on the coloring. It's too dark."

So Melvin, he says to him,

"Look, these are artistic decisions that I made.

I'd like to hear how you react to 'em, but they were not mistakes.

Everything in that film was thought out. There's a reason for it."

And the guy says, "Man, as far as I'm concerned, I thought it was fucked up."

Melvin leaps off the stage,

wades through the audience and punches the cat out.

Oh, that's it, motherfucker. Bap!

And this is academia, you know. This is not supposed to happen.

What I used to have in my office was so funny.

And I regret to this day I didn't buy 12 canisters of it.

Somebody came along selling watermelon spray.

And sometimes when I had people come into my office, I would spray the office.

And they would come in and say, "Gee, Mel, what's that odor?

It smells like, uh, uh, uh, uh, cantaloupe," or something.

No white folk wants to say-- (laughing)

(French)

MELVIN: When Sweetback came out,

only two theaters in the entire United States would show the thing.

But it went on to become the highest grossing independent film up to its time.

I owned everything. I owned the music. I owned the publishing.

I owned the whole damn thing.

That's-- You think, "Oh, that's smart." I was some financial wizard.

No.

Nobody would come in with me.

BOURNE: When Melvin made Sweetback, nobody could deny the power.

But what happened was the classic American process.

What Hollywood said, "Wow. A lot of people like this stuff.

Let's take the formula for it,

take out the politics

and give 'em a wave of these films."

And essentially, blaxploitation is the bastard child of Sweetback.

My name's Coffy.

MAN: They made Shaft. They made Superfly.

There was a chance for black actors

to get some work in leading-man roles.

But there was also something else going on.

What they did was they perverted the message.

Bobby Rush, ex-Panther, Congressman Bobby Rush, said to me,

"One of the things that your father's film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song did

was it made being a revolutionary hip.

And the Panthers made being a revolutionary hip.

But Superfly made being a drug dealer hip."

Big difference.

That impact of Superfly and a lot of these movies did a lot of damage.

And eventually, if you make enough shark movies or enough Vietnam movies,

people will get tired of going to them.

And what they did was they shut the economic doors in Hollywood, and they said--

They didn't say "Those action-y movies aren't making money anymore."

They said, "Those movies with those black people aren't making money anymore,"

and they shut the economic doors.

My dad said to me later on, he learned from that process of doing Sweetback

that it was very important that the big boys win when you win.

If they don't win when you win, they have no interest in you winning.

In fact, they have an interest in you not winning, and they'll resent your winning.

He didn't get another job.

Here's a man that produced and directed an independent hit-- acted in it--

and didn't get other acting offers, and didn't get other directing offers.

Twenty years later, kids that grew up on that stuff,

kids like Spike Lee, kids like Mario Van Peebles,

kids like the Hudlin brothers, kids like John Singleton, uh,

who grew up seeing those movies.

"Hey, I want to do that."

Because they were shown it was possible.

My dad, he didn't open doors. He blew them off the hinges.

Uh, what are your interests for the future as far as music and film is concerned?

Well, my interest for the future is just like my interest for the past, man.

Whatever I think can further the consciousness

of the disenfranchised third-world folk.

If cinema no longer becomes relevant to the struggle, I ain't gonna make another film.

Um, if music, for some unforeseeable reason,

no longer is the message, or one of the methods

of reaching the folks, then I'll have to put it down.

Um, it does not-- The media does not dictate the message, man.

The need dictates the media.

♪ Just don't make no sense ♪

♪ The way my corns are hurting me ♪

♪ When a man runs his game ♪

♪ Lord knows he sure runs it mean ♪

♪ Four buses gone by for them ♪

♪ And not one gone by for me ♪

♪ Hey, cruise on in your bad ride, brother ♪

♪ Let the world know you is somebody, yeah ♪

♪ No, no ♪

♪ Just don't make no sense ♪

♪ The way these corns are hurting me ♪♪

You've had, uh, tremendous public--

and it's irrelevant what kind of financial success you've had from Sweet Sweetback and--

Well, it's not irrelevant. It's very important. I mean--

- Well, it's personal also. - No, it's not personal.

You know, Ellis, you're very kind

because the money aspect is usually a thing not to be discussed

because people who've made money usually get very uptight.

I have no qualms about the money I made because the money is power.

The money has allowed Ain't Supposed to Die to stand there.

MAN: The first-- Probably the first hard-nosed

black scream ever done on Broadway.

Black theater was-- There was Raisin in the Sun,

and the musical Raisin, and Purlie Victorious--

but there was nothing that came from the stomach,

no visceral black theater.

Melvin wrote something

using jazz riffs

about various people

living in a ghetto and their pain.

The postman who goes crazy,

the guy that's being executed,

the bag lady, the black cop on the street,

the kid that's running away from the cop.

Come on, feet. Do this for me.

AZENBERG: He thinks that because he can run fast he can outrun a bullet.

As the bullet hits him and he dies,

the feet never stop running.

Those were people that had no voices in the society,

and Melvin gave them a voice.

What I'm trying to do is train,

or make opportunities for other blacks, um,

to-- to explore wherever their heads lie, so there is a broader thing.

One of the complaints leveled against Sweetback--

It was, um, all blacks weren't like that.

Well, absolutely not.

Just like any of the 19 segments in Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death

is not blackness in itself.

Even the ensemble of all those things do not represent the mirrored facets.

Uh, the only thing to do about that is get more brothers and sisters up there

where they can express where they're coming from and what they know.

WOMAN: When the show started, the house lights are on.

And the set is visible. There's no curtain.

And the band plays "The Star-Spangled Banner."

And this is the early 1970s,

and people are having to define themselves

by hearing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in a theater

like they hear it in a baseball game, and they don't know what to do.

Did it mean if they stood up were they with Reagan or Nixon?

And if they sat, did it mean they were aligning themselves with the militants?

It was a very, very profound statement.

AZENBERG: We just thought, this is what you do.

You're supposed to produce plays that are meaningful,

that have something to say, it's about something.

So we did it. We didn't know, nor did we think--

There weren't even the terms marketing in those days. We just did it.

What turned out is that an audience

that had heretofore never gone to the theater started to show up.

MELVIN: The audience did not know what a hard ticket sale was,

and people would buy their ticket, they'd come early, sit down and wait an hour.

Then somebody would say, "You're sitting in my seat."

"What do you mean, I'm sitting in your seat? I've been here an hour."

They didn't realize each seat had a number on it.

(shouting)

AZENBERG: Some numbers were devastating.

The last number in the show was Minnie Gentry, who plays a bag lady.

She'd been wandering around for the entire evening on the street,

and then she turns to the audience and says, "Put a curse on you."

Put a curse on you!

May all of your children end up junkies too.

Your mind been tricked by the power to buy that ounce.

Your young daughters give rich old dudes

head in limousines too.

Put a curse on you.

AZENBERG: The audience went crazy.

I-It spoke such pain that people screamed and yelled.

People were weeping. It was a killer.

Ain't got nothing else to do.

BONUS: When the lady at the end says, "I put a curse on you.

May all your children end up junkies too"--

And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking,

I had an interracial marriage.

When my daughter's father left and my marriage fell apart, um,

everything I believed in fell apart

because people divided in my life on a racial basis.

And, um--

And when I went to see Ain't Supposed to Die that night

and heard these voices

saying what I felt and what I was experiencing

and what I knew my daughter was gonna experience, um,

I was really shaken to my core

that the truth could be said in such a way that--

You know, the people that got uncomfortable

when they sawAin't Supposed to Die, they were shamed

because it told the truth about America.

(shouting)

WOMAN: There was no reconciliation.

It's so Melvinesque, not to have a reconciliation

where everybody comes together very happily,

and the addict goes to rehab and this goes to that.

No. It was it's going to continue.

AZENBERG: The New York Times roasted it.

Clive Barnes found it offensive,

and he wrote this awful notice

and then apologized on the radio the next day.

And he said, "I missed it. I missed its pain."

It helped for a while when we got the seven nominations.

But for the most part, the white audience was afraid of it.

They don't want to be yelled it. White people wanted to come to the theater for entertainment.

ANNOUNCER: Tonight, from the stage of the Broadway Theatre in New York City,

the League of New York Theatres presents

the 26th annual celebration of the American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards.

With scenes from Jesus Christ, Superstar,

No, No Nanette,

Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death,

and the musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein.

(applause)

Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death

is a series of songs and musical sketches

which surround us with the heartbreak and the humor,

the frustrations and the lifestyle of the urban black ghetto.

In the writing, the book-- in other words, the music and the lyrics--

they are all the passionate work of one man, Melvin Van Peebles.

And as the critic of the New York Times said in his review,

"New York and its friendly, neighborhood ghetto

has moved away somewhat from Damon Runyon,

and Mr. Van Peebles is taking note of the transition.

I suspect," the Times continues,

"that this is a fair picture of a 1971 street scene,

not, dear friend, on the street where you live"--

AZENBERG: Did it have lasting impact on some people? Sure.

You just tap the sensibilities of somebody, it stays.

And, uh,

it certainly opened the door for other "black theater."

♪ Oh, yeah, yeah ♪

♪ You cut up the clothes ♪

♪ In the closet of my dreams ♪

♪ You pulled on the sleeves and ripped out the seams ♪

MAN: Here's how I found out about Dont Play Us Cheap.

Melvin asked me to come by the office and pick up a script.

In the office was Manny Azenberg,

and Manny had the same script in his hand.

And Melvin looked at the two of us, first at me, and he said,

"Jerry, is that a film or a play?"

I said, "It's a film." And he looked at Manny,

and he said, "Is that a film or a play?"

And Manny said, "A play."

And Melvin said, "You're both right." (laughing)

He said, "Tell you what we're gonna do, guys.

We're gonna make this as a movie,

and we're gonna rehearse the movie as if it was a play.

We're going to record the soundtrack.

We're going to shoot the movie after it's well rehearsed.

Manny, you will have built a set

and prepared the Broadway production and sell the tickets.

We'll start running the play.

We'll take three or four months to run the play

while I go back and cut the film,

and when the play is beginning to need a boost,

we'll release the film."

MAN: The major impact of Dont Play Us Cheap

and Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death--

Because at one time, both was running at the same time.

It was one of the few times in the history of the American theater

a black writer had-- probably the only time--

had two shows on Broadway at the same time.

But while you may have

more blacks on Broadway than ever before in the seats,

it is not enough to pay the bills that Broadway demands.

We struggled every week to get through.

But we got through each week for a year.

We didn't think hit.

You can't think of doingAin't Supposed to Die a Natural Death and think "hit."

He made no money onAin't Supposed to Die

and no money onDont Play Us Cheap.

BOURNE: He has a saying-- A setback is just an opportunity in work clothes.

He always says that.

So, you know, I think that's what he feels.

He says, "Listen, it can be done if you have a setback.

It just means you're gonna have to find

another opportunity to do what you want to do, 'cause you will do it."

I mean, he's just indomitable. That's the way he thinks.

He talks about the art of the possible. The art of the possible.

And-And-And being bold and direct in attaining it.

He's the same way, you know, sort of coming on to women.

Everybody's always asking me about girls because, um--

And in Cosmopolitan, I was named the bachelor of the month.

- Oh. - And the girl came and asked me. She interviewed me.

She asked me, you know, my philosophy of women, et cetera, et cetera.

And I explained to her I like girls who didn't tell, didn't yell,

didn't swell and were grateful as hell.

And she put, "Articulate."

♪ Come on, feet ♪

♪ Cruise for me ♪

♪ Trouble ain't no place to be ♪

MAN: His morning run consisted of a series of stops that he'd make along the way.

He had six, seven different women he had to "keep happy" during the week.

And while he did this, he had to visit them. He had to pay attention.

One was a contortionist. He'd go to her. He'd get that going.

The next one he'd talk about-- more of a domestic woman

who would cook him a pancake breakfast, and then he'd take care of her.

Then he'd be on to the next one. He was taking care of them along the way along this route.

Like the bee going from flower to flower, you know, taking a little from everywhere.

WOMAN: He keeps them really well organized.

If you are Tuesday night, you're Tuesday night,

and don't come or call on Wednesday evening.

That's my father.

ALLEN: If you want to be a part of Melvin's world,

you really have to understand his life and his work.

There are clear boundaries. There is work and there is play.

And if one minute after 6:00 work begin? Play stops at 6:00.

You know, and there is no way to get him back to play.

♪ Yeah, must have run all day ♪

♪ Sure have a bitch ♪

♪ Must have run all day ♪♪

DWELLINGHAM: There's a day when we were gonna go on down to Philadelphia.

My wife was with me, so Mel said come over to the office and wait for me.

So we're sitting in the office, and this woman come in to interview Melvin.

Nice looking blonde woman. Nice body. The whole thing.

Next thing I hear, the woman in there moanin'.

I said, "Now what the hell is happening in there now?"

Then I hear the woman, she getting louder and louder and everything.

Melvin in there doin' the woman.

I said, "Damn it. Did he know that woman?"

This is when I had just started working with him.

That's when I really found out how this guy was, you know.

And he was in there doin' the woman. The woman moanin' and groanin'.

They goin' at it like crazy, you know.

And my wife say, "Did he know that woman?" I said, "No, he didn't know that woman!"

Melvin had no problem with my porn career.

Uh, often showed up at some of my shoots, uh,

and chatted up the models.

Um, one of my publishers used to give me a certain amount of money every month

to make big parties to promote the magazine and to do shoots.

We had all kinds of strange goings-on,

and naked people and models at those parties.

Uh, I don't think Melvin missed too many of those.

My love belongs to you.

♪ My love belongs to you Mm-mmm ♪

♪ My love belongs to you Mm-mmm ♪

♪ My love belongs to you Mm-mmm ♪

Well, the first thing you do, you go in bodacious on 'em.

You know what I mean, don't you, fellas?

You throw 'em off balance, you dig?

♪ Forever, we're through ♪

♪ I don't mean just yesterday ♪

♪ I'm talkin' about today ♪♪

MARIO: He doesn't take himself too seriously.

He's the one that said, "Man, you've got four stages in your life.

There's Mario who? Get me Mario. Get me a young Mario. And Mario who?"

So do something you're proud of while you're here.

MAN: He's made a hit movie and been nominated for nine Tony Awards.

So what is Melvin Van Peebles doing on the floor of the American Stock Exchange?

MELVIN: I tend to hang with businessmen quite often

because they deal a little more where the rubber meets the road.

We were going to put money into a project, Henry Jarecki and I,

and we were arguing about the rate of return.

And I said one thing, and he said another.

MAN: My memory is that there was a bet.

I don't even remember what it was that we bet about.

Come on, Henry, give me a break. What's the vigorish of the bet?

I mean, you know-- And the vigorish--

that is, the interest of the bet on his side was if I lost,

I'd go to work on Wall Street.

MAN: To become a market maker down there,

you need to put your time in and really learn over a period of years.

It takes a while to assimilate all that material and to learn the language.

You're using a different language to trade in.

(babbling) I didn't know what they're talking about.

Everybody who'd been there had worked their way up for 15 years, et cetera.

I understood nothing.

And so two days later I took the test, and I didn't pass it.

And so I was off the hook, more or less.

But then, that sort of got my goat, et cetera.

And so I hired myself out as a clerk.

I was probably the oldest clerk.

And after a while, what sounded like Greek

began to sound like Old English,

began to sound like Shakespearean English,

and then began to make sense.

So the next month I took the test again, and I passed.

And two weeks later, I was a trader on Wall Street.

And on the American Stock Exchange, I was the first black trader.

NICHOLS: He would do it in his own way. Even down to--

In the very beginning, he'd give me these trade tickets.

And you were supposed to write what you bought.

You bought a January call at whatever price.

And Melvin had a whole shorthand that wasn't regular shorthand. He made it up.

Hey-- What are you talking about?

No more of them remarks.

NICHOLS: Melvin would come walking in with this real crazy, complex kind of trade,

and get the specialist going, "What is this?" and scratching their heads.

And while they were scratching their heads and saying, "Where'd you get-- What's this?"

Melvin would start engaging them in conversation, tell them a joke,

get them distracted.

He got them to do the trade. He'd walk away having the order filled,

and the specialist is sitting there scratching their head, "What is this all about?"

MAN: The fact that he came from a theater background

almost actually was his saving grace.

Because when you would walk into these crowds,

it was a performance.

You would walk in and there would be maybe 10, 15 people standing there,

and you would announce what you wanted to do.

And there was a certain theatrical nature to it.

And these are not, you know, just nice people.

These are, you know, these seasoned, veteran traders

who have been down there for 10 years,

and they all have an ax to grind, and you had to have some presence.

And he had a lot of presence.

WOMAN: He would wear very wide, out-of-fashion ties,

And the reason he wore these out-of-fashion ties

was that became the joke on the floor of the exchange.

What kind of tie is Van Peebles wearing today?

And, "Hey, Van Peebles, where'd you get that tie?"

It was his way of giving people an opening to be friendly with him.

He didn't have the kind of style that the floor traders did,

but he was very sensible and thoughtful

and a big help in getting us to think about it.

And he ultimately even did a book about it.

Uh, I think the two of us were staggered to see a book on options trading

from Melvin Van Peebles. Right.

Four years later, I turned on the TV, and there's Melvin on Channel 5 or whatever,

talking about, you know, as a financial options analyst, talking about the market.

I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe it. Right.

How did he do that?

MELVIN: Is Wall Street a vital link in commerce or a rich man's bingo?

Actually it's both.

Wall Street is the center of trade and, as such, it serves a vital function.

On the other hand, it's a booming, fertile casino.

Melvin came from Wall Street, so his first bunch of commentaries were about Wall Street.

Then he could go on any other ideas

and crazy spots that he had in mind.

Tonight, Melvin's going to tackle, uh--

Well, he's going to be talking about--

I'm going to let you figure it out.

I have the housing solution.

Here goes-- hookers and the homeless.

The homeless need beds, right?

A bed is not much when you got one, everything when you don't.

There are beds, hundreds of them,

little used, relatively speaking,

scattered conveniently all over the city.

Rooms of prostitution-- cribs.

Every hooker should be assigned a homeless person

who gets the mattress when she's not using it.

And those ladies or gentlemen or in-betweens of the evening

will do their bit, gladly, without a fight,

seeing as how they all-- everybody knows-- have hearts of gold, right?

I'm Melvin Van Peebles. Good night.

♪ All I wanna do-- do is have some fun ♪

♪ I got a feeling I'm not the-- I'm not the only one ♪

Yeah. Wh-What's up? What do you want?

Thank you.

MAN: Since he works on 50 projects at a time, one has to come.

One has to happen.

If he goes into a meeting and-and

you practice your song and you don't like it--

"It's all good. Don't worry. I have another one. Here.

I have another one." You know what I'm saying?

He's always ready for the next move.

WOMAN: It comes from that session. ♪♪ (piano: jazz)

It comes from-- Yeah, but I'm thinking we can do something like Count Basie.

♪♪ (hitting notes) ♪♪ (scatting)

♪ All I wanna-- ♪ You know, just each note--

You know, "blee-dink" or "bleh-dink."

♪ All I wanna-- ♪

MAN: Tell me more about the cabaret show. MELVIN: It's pretty eclectic.

I use a lot of the American songs, and a lot of my own songs.

And people get to hear 'em again in a way that they've never heard them before.

♪ Don't tell my heart ♪

♪ My achy breaky heart ♪

♪ I just don't think he'd understand ♪

♪ Don't be a dog ♪

♪ But if you tell my heart ♪

♪ My achy breaky heart ♪

♪ He might just blow up, kill this man ♪♪

MEGAN: There is a lot of patience

that my father has that a lot of people don't see.

Like with this new movie,The Bellyful.

Um, that's a novel

that my dad has wanted to do for 33 years.

(French)

(gasps)

(French)

Très bien. Perfect! Perfect!

MILNER: There's a part of Melvin that really is an enigma,

and nobody will ever know the roots of so many things about him.

When I asked him once how he came to be so good at deal-making,

uh, he said that when he was a little kid in his father's tailor shop,

his father used to give him a little toy wagon to go out with

and pile on the clothes that were not claimed by customers and sell them.

"If I asked too much money for the clothes,

then the big boys would beat me up and take the clothes anyway.

And if I asked too little money for the clothes,

my father would beat me up when I got home."

He said, "So I learned how to make deals where everybody came out a winner."

These are some of the little clues you get about Melvin's early life.

He made himself an early promise about sex--

that he was going to get plenty of it.

And, uh, sometimes I tell him now that this promise he made to this 11-year-old boy,

maybe he should ease up on it a little bit now.

(laughing) But, uh,

he stays faithful to those vows he made to himself

when he was very small and he was going to overcome the world.

MELVIN: There are 50 billion things that I want to explore, that I want to understand,

that I haven't had a chance to do.

I had to deal with the pragmatic-- making it work.

And since there was no infrastructure,

I had to be a one-man infrastructure.

I thought of myself as sort of like on a unicycle.

Remember that song "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho"?

Well, what actually happened my Joshua of the situation is--

I'm on a unicycle. I go-- (imitates horn)

I blow at this end. I pedal real fast to the next side of the wall.

(imitates horn) And people say, "Jesus, we're surrounded!"

It's just one guy out there on a fuckin' unicycle. You know what I mean?

That's what I did.

(no audible dialogue)

They did a good job.

Pretty close, huh?

MAN: He taught me it's possible. And he taught me it's possible.

And he taught me you have the choice, and you have to make it.

But you have the choice to make your life what you want it to be.

You don't have to let it be imposed to you.

MARIO: My dad didn't change his lifestyle.

He early on recognized the power in keeping a low overhead.

He realized that there is a line, a balance between having what you want

and doing what you want.

And the more you have what you want, the less you're gonna do what you want.

So once he said, "Hey, man, I've got three jackets, two jeans and some boots,

I can make anything."

(no audible dialogue)

MELVIN: I'm not really interested in the outside part of it,

the-- the accolades of it.

I'm-- I'm just really fascinated by the people of it.

(chattering)

MAN: Melvin Van Peebles,

on behalf of the president of the French Republic,

and by virtue of the powers vested in me,

I hereby make you a knight of the Legion of Honor.

(cheering)

MELVIN: I'm fascinated by people.

And, as such, I want to know them.

I want to see what they're doing.

And I find notoriety, in many ways,

is an extreme hindrance

to, um-- to really deal with people.

So I prefer-- if possible--

to sort of, just like they say, just "lay in the cut"

and watch things pass.

That's what I prefer to do.

And, um, I don't really feel any major urge

to be out there, to be, um--

to be in the limelight, other than

it's nice to get paid for your work.

But outside of that, eh,

I'm a happy camper just hiding in the shadows,

watching the world turn.

MELVIN: ♪ Excuse me, lady, but you foolin', ain't you? ♪

♪ Where can I be? This ain't America, is it? ♪

♪ Oh, Lord, where can I be? ♪

♪ This ain't America, is it? ♪

♪ Naw, this ain't America ♪

♪ You can't fool me ♪

♪ This here's the home of the sheriff ♪

♪ Not the land of the free ♪

♪ In America, folks don't run through the streets ♪

♪ Blood streaming from where they been beat ♪

♪ And the parks are for the people ♪

♪ And the cops In the good old USA ♪

♪ Don't think they're some kinda gods either ♪

♪ Naw, this ain't America ♪

♪ You can't fool me ♪

♪ If you don't spit the right image ♪

♪ They just pull out their DDT ♪

♪ If they don't like the way you look ♪

♪ They just law and order and trick and trip

♪ Name and frame and blame ♪

♪ Just legislate and club away ♪

♪ And just laugh louder and louder ♪

♪ Naw, this ain't America ♪

♪ You can't fool me ♪

♪ Naw, this ain't America ♪

♪ You can't fool me ♪

♪ Love ♪ ♪ That's America ♪

♪ Open arms for every creature ♪

♪ Love ♪

♪ That's America ♪ ♪ Open arms for every man ♪

♪ Love ♪

♪ That's America ♪ ♪ Joy and peace and harmony ♪

♪ Love ♪

♪ That's America ♪ ♪ Children with laughing eyes ♪

♪ Love ♪

♪ Love, that's America ♪ ♪ That's America ♪

♪ Love ♪

♪ That's America ♪ ♪ Our old eagle soarin' again ♪

♪ Love ♪

♪ That's America ♪ ♪ The old eagle wearin' a grin ♪

♪ Love ♪

♪ That's America ♪ ♪ Our old eagle soarin' ♪

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ Love, that's America ♪

♪ Love, that's America ♪

♪ Love, that's America ♪

♪ This here's the land of the sniper ♪

♪ Love, that's America ♪

♪ Not the home of the brave ♪

♪ Oh, say can't you smell? Are you too smug to see? ♪

♪ Greed done pulled the plug ♪

♪ Your democracy's defrosting ♪

♪ Something gone rotten ♪

♪ Smells like justice and liberty ♪♪