CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 05/28/04

Like Father, Like Son

By steve ryfle

The son pays tribute to both his father and the blaxploitation genre he created in this biopic of writer- director Melvin Van Peebles and the first blaxploitation movie, but the film leaves some important questions unanswered.

Baadasssss!

Mario Van Peebles and Dennis Haggerty
Based on the book The Making of 'Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song' by Melvin Van Peebles

Mario Van Peebles co-wrote the screenplay, directed, and stars as his father, director Melvin Van Peebles, who spat in Hollywood's face when he turned down lucrative studio offers to direct safe, mainstream pictures. Using money cobbled together from loan sharks and friends, Melvin instead made the defiant Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song in 1970. The film was a gigantic hit, proving that Black audiences needed more than Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. Black cinema was changed forever, but Melvin Van Peebles never got much credit, until son Mario was inspired to pay him this cinematic tribute.

The epic struggle of the filmmaker to persevere against all odds, without sacrificing the creative vision, never goes out of style. It's a story that's been well told in books like Rebel Without a Crew and films such as Hearts of Darkness, and now comes another fine example in Baadasssss!, which re-creates the making of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, one of the most important African-American movies.

The emotional spine of the Baadasssss! screenplay is the relationship between Melvin and young Mario (played by Khleo Thomas), who was about eight years old when the film's events took place. At the time Sweetback was being made, Mario had only recently begun living with his father (he spent his earliest years living with his mother), and the man and the boy were very much strangers to one another.

The script is best at depicting the boy's struggles to win the approval of his demanding, strict, emotionally stunted dad. But the writing isn't quite up to the task of getting inside Melvin's head and explaining what really drives him and why he puts up such big walls around himself. Was Sweetback a political or personal statement? Was there a specific life incident that made Melvin want to "stick it to the man?" Where did he get his uncompromising code? Watching Baadasssss!, all that's certain is that Melvin risked everything he had, including his life, even his children's college fund, to get Sweetback made. We know the intensity of his drive, but not really the reason for it.

That said, there are some wonderful moments of humor (like when a gay producer, played by Adam West, offers to finance Melvin's film in exchange for a little quid pro quo, if ya know what I mean) and some nice characters in the ensemble that portrays the Sweetback film crew. The movie is interspersed with talking-head blurbs from cast members, who were interviewed in character and gave improvised answers about their experiences working on the film-within-the-film. This being a making-of picture, there is also -- regrettably -- one of those "writing the screenplay" sequences wherein Melvin jots down ideas on notecards and pastes them all over the walls of his room. As Monty Python's "novel writing" sketch so wittily proved 30- some years ago, writing somebody else write is boring. But watching this re-enactment of the creative struggles and personal intensity of Melvin Van Peebles in his artistic prime is hardly dull.

At a time when mainstream Black films have been reduced to third-rate fluff like Soul Plane and Johnson Family Vacation, Baadasssss! pays homage to a filmmaker who shredded cinematic stereotypes in a way that no one today, it seems, would dare.

Baadasssss!
Sony Pictures Classics
Rated PG-R; 108 min.

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Steve Ryfle is a contributing editor to Creative Screenwriting magazine, and has also written for the Los Angeles Times, E! Online, and other outlets. Ryfle also literally wrote the book on Godzilla, and was recently interviewed by National Public Radio's Fresh Air on the big green lizard.

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