E-mail a friendMelvin Van Peebles
original airdate May 27, 2004
Black cinema pioneer Melvin Van Peebles has led a varied life. He's been a navigator/bombardier in the Air Force, stock trader and novelist. He also directed, produced and starred in numerous films and plays. Perhaps best known for his groundbreaking film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, he launched his career in Paris, where he made his first feature. A frequent collaborator with his son, Mario, Van Peebles plays himself in the film, Badass.
Melvin Van Peebles
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome talented father and son Melvin and Mario Van Peebles. In 1971, father Melvin directed and starred in the film "Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song." Now son Mario has made a film paying homage to his father's classic movie. The film's called "Baadasssss," and we got tonight Baadasssss original Baadasssss. Mario plays his father Melvin, and here's a scene from "Baadasssss."
Melvin: On script, we got Randy over here. And our genius in sound is Tommy, backed up by Big T, who'll also be heading up security.
Big T: Oh, no, no, no, man. Hey, hey. Why do I gotta answer to a white man on an movie about a brother finally breaking the chains, you dig? We've been answering to whitey for 400 years, blood.
Melvin: T, hold up. Tommy here is risking his career to be here. He's one of the few
Tavis: Ha ha ha. Melvin, Mario, nice to see you.
Mario Van Peebles: Good to be on.
Melvin Van Peebles: Great to be here.
Tavis: It's hard to say Melvin, man, 'cause your father is such a legend. I don't want to dis you by saying "Mr. Van Peebles," but it's so hard to say Melvin. How do you live with a guy--
Mario: No, it's not Melvin. It's Sir Melvin.
Tavis: Sir Melvin. OK.
Mario: Brother from the south side of Chicago has been knighted. He's Sir Melvin now.
Tavis: Sir Melvin.
Mario: Yes. Sir Melvin.
Tavis: How do you grow up in the shadow of a guy--I want to talk about the movie in a second--but how do you grow up in the shadow of a guy who really is a legend in his own time?
Mario: You know what? I think it was terrific for me, because I grew up with a dad that wasn't a rapper, wasn't a ball player, was H.N.I.C., worked with people of all colors, was mad at systemicism--systemic sexism, systemic racism, but not mad at people. And the main thing, never thought being successful would make him forget his blackness, make him forget who he is. And that was 'cause I saw him--I saw him every day. So you grow up as a young brother seeing that, you say, "Well, I can do it if I've got the skills to do it."
Tavis: Wow.
Mario: And that was cool. So it was like growing up in--as an oak tree beside another oak tree. Well, that's a good thing.
Tavis: Sir Melvin, how do you navigate that? How do you...how do you grow up in an institution, in a world, in an industry where you are, to Mario's point, mad at the system, but not mad at the people? Don't the people run the system?
Melvin: Sure, but see, those individuals you learn to...to deal with. I mean, you just gotta do what you gotta do, you know? That's, uh--for example, a lot of times people will say, "Well, you're very tough. Very different." It's just logic. If you know there's nothing you can do to satisfy the man's sense of your worthlessness, you might as well go down swinging. That's just the logic to me.
Tavis: Take me back to 1971, and I know we only have so much...so little time here and so many things we could talk about, but just give me a sense of the struggle that you encountered just trying to get this film made back in '71.
Melvin: Well, I had the same struggle in 1957. It was the same struggle that Harriet Tubman had, Sojourner Truth--it's nothing different, and we try and think of the moment, but at that time when I went to make that particular film, the unions were all white, and I wanted to make a film that--that utilizes everybody, the whole thing. So that was one of the movies I had to make. I couldn't get any money. Uh, you couldn't do anything, and when the film was finally finished, I had to hire a white guy to pretend to be the boss to sell the movie.
Tavis: Speaking of not enough money, Bill Cosby was on this program last night. And I'd heard this story, but had forgotten until I started researching for our conversation that it was Cosby who had put up the money to help you get this thing completed.
Melvin: Well, what happened was Bill came through. He never saw the script, never knew anything else, but I was one of the 3 black directors around, and I was in trouble that was not a trouble of my own doing. It was a trouble of the racism. That is, the crew got arrested for driving while being, um, multiracial.
Mario: And they see camera...a mixed crew like that with camera equipment, so they figured it must be stolen. So they put 'em in jail. So my dad went to Cosby, and Cosby loaned him some money to get them out. And so when I called him up--
Melvin: Didn't say a word. They put it together and loaned me the money. And when I finally was able to pay him back, he would not take any interest on his money that he had put up.
Tavis: Wow. Mario, contrast/compare for me the struggle that you had 40 years later--
Mario: 33 years later.
Tavis: 33 years later, to be exact, making "Baadasssss." compare for me, contrast with the struggle you had in getting it made and whether or not you were able--I'm trying to get to a point here of how much progress we've made in this business. Were you able to find that diverse crew that you wanted? What struggle did you have getting this remake done?
Mario: My dad made "Sweetback" in 1971.
Tavis: Right.
Mario: I made "New Jack City" in 1991, and now 10 years later, I made "Baadasssss," so it's about 33 years later. There's still no head of any studio that's a person of color. So when I sent the script out to the studios, they said, "We love it, " but they gave me all the notes that would make it into cinematic water bread. And they said, "If you're gonna have complex characters, you probably should make them white. You will not have a "Good Will Hunting," you will not have a "Lost in Translation" with people of color. If they said, "You wanna make it for people of color, you should make it like a hip-hop comedy on the set." I said I'm not gonna dumb it down. I'm not gonna do that. I have no problem with us having comedies, but we need to also see that we can be Melvin Van Peebles, that we can be Malcolm, that we can be the Panthers. So I made...33 years later, I had to make...I made "New Jack" in 36 days, "Panther" and "Posse" in 40 days. I had to make "Baadasssss" in 18 days, independently with my little company. The same way my dad made "Sweetback" 33 years earlier, walking the same shoes. But now, 'cause of what he did, I was able to find brothers and sisters and Asians and Hispanics and have a mixed crew that was in the union 'cause my dad stood up for it and fought for it back in 1971.
Tavis: As a director, tell me what sense of comfort or, I suspect, discomfort you have in being forced to make a project this significant in 18 days?
Mario: Well, the thing is I know this, and daddy has said it a long time. The golden rule is he who has the gold makes the rules. The good thing is that I know how to do it. Malcolm had said--I remember, my dad had interviewed Malcolm when my dad was a journalist in France. Brother Malcolm said, "If they don't want you at their restaurant, build your own restaurant." And my dad had said "If they don't want you in their movies, make your own movies." So I grew up in a filmmaking family, by-any-means-necessary filmmaking family, so I knew how to make a movie, but also had the involvement--Ossie Davis came out and said, "I'm down." Paul Rodriguez, Michael Mann, who'd been directing me in "Ali" said I'll be your executive producer. I mean, people for no money. Nia Long, Joy Bryant, David Alan Grier, and, of course, at the end, Mr. Cosby. So we got 2 generations of love for the original "Baadasssss" right here. For people who see--it's important that we see this legacy, that we know we can win it, we can do it. And young folks that've seen the movie now, it just got--Roger Ebert and them said it was one of the 10 best movies of the year, and it's been exciting. So, you know, to do it and have to play your own father. There's so much I could say about this movie.
Tavis: Speaking of your father Sir Melvin, when Mario...
Mario: Sir Melvin. Ha ha ha!
Tavis: Was but 12, you cast him in the original "Baadasssss." 12 years old, and lest any of us should forget, he wasn't just cast in the movie. He's a 12-year-old, he loses his virginity--
Mario: 13, actually.
Tavis: 12, 13, you still lost your virginity. I don't care how old you were.
Mario: In the movie. I'm looking for another shot at this scene now.
Melvin: He keeps bugging me, could he get another shot?
Tavis: "Give me a retake! Could I have another shot at that?" So he's 13 years old, you got him on screen losing his virginity to a prostitute. As a father, how did you rationalize that casting?
Melvin: If my dad wanted to help me out at that age, I'd have been happy as a pig. You know. It obviously didn't hurt the boy.
Tavis: That's a heck of a way to break into the business, though, Mario.
Melvin: You gotta understand what I was up against. I had to make this thing that would kick behind with no holds barred. I mean, the movie, for example, I could've called it "The Ballad of the Indomitable Sweetback" in whitese, but I kept it--this was before ebonics had been invented, you know? "Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song." I mean, it was that way all the way. Don't forget, only 2 theaters in the entire United States would show it. Nobody would run an ad for it. So it couldn't be half of this, half of that. We had been inundated with liberals, sort of nice movies where we always ended up dead at the end. And I said, no, no, no, no. I put everything into the movie that I wanted to see. I make movies like I cook. I put in what I like in case the other folks--you're gonna have to eat it for the rest of the week. You see what I'm saying?
Mario: It's a trip. When I did "Baadasssss," I went to my pop, and I said, I want to put some clips of "Sweetback" in "Baadasssss," which you saw.
Tavis: Right.
Mario: Right. So he said, that's great. You gotta pay for the clips. I said, what do you mean? This is product placement. People are gonna see--
Melvin: Business is business.
Mario: People are gonna see "Baadasssss" and then they'll wanna see your movie.
Tavis and Melvin: Business is business.
Mario: So he charged me $2,500 to put clips of his movie in my movie. But then--hold up. Then he says I'm gonna take you and all your "Baadasssss" kids on vacation. So he took $2,000, and then he took us on this great vacation.
Tavis: Speaking of your "Baadasssss" kids--you said it, I didn't. Um, you have your kids in your project.
Mario: That's correct. In fact--
Tavis: How's that like for you?
Mario: Oh, it was--
Tavis: This is like a serious, paternal link, link, link going on here.
Mario: And we don't get that a lot. You know, it's like what brother Cosby was talking about. We don't get a lot of us, you know, who have this strong paternal line that we see in film, anyway. Do you know what I mean? It was a trip. One of my boys, Mandela, starts out playing the angel muse of inspiration. And so the first voice you hear in "Baadasssss" is the son, then it goes to the father, and the last image is of my dad. So it's son, father, grandfather. And there was a scene where we're shooting on "Baadasssss," we're gonna get kicked off this lady's lawn, my D.P. had gotten a camera for free. We're losing light. The camera broke down. We hadn't broken for lunch. Everybody's getting irritable. And I looked up, and finally the camera's working again, and my son is running off to have lunch with all the other kids, and I heard my dad's voice. He said, "Git your little butt back here. We gotta finish this scene. This is a job. Take it seriously. It's a family business. And I realized my dad was in New York. And the voice was coming out of my face, 33 years later. I was kicking mykid's butt to get it right. So I--it's interesting because suddenly playing your father, you do a lot of stuff that you thought you'd never find yourself doing.
Tavis: When you went to your dad--I love the story of him making you pay for the rights to rebroadcast, if you will, to reuse his original work. But what did your dad say to you specifically when you said to him you wanted not just to do a piece about his piece...
Mario: Right.
Tavis: But you were gonna play him in the piece?
Mario: Very interesting. He said "Whoever plays me, don't make me too damn nice," which was his way of saying, tell the truth. I was a tough father. I'm a tough man, and he had to be. We're not the same guys. We're different fathers. I'm gonna give my kids yellow. They'll give their kids red 'cause I didn't give 'em red. I gave 'em yellow. But he said, play the truth. And I did that in "Baadasssss." I think we really did, and when he saw it--to sit next to your dad--the first time he saw it was in Toronto with 600 other people. To watch your dad's expression while you play him is a trip. And at the end, I said, pop, what do you think? And we had a standing ovation. Tell him what you thought, dad.
Melvin: Well, it was sort of like, um, "Seabiscuit" on 2 legs.
When we came back, Bill said one of the things, everybody talks--and a lot of young filmmakers come up to me now and say, oh, this is great, it occurred, and
so forth. But there's a whole other aspect. I spent years learning the craft. We have somehow become antieducation. And you have to know how to do all these things. I shot "Sweetback" in 19 days. Mario--
Tavis: Without technology.
Melvin: Without technology. And Mario shot in 18 days. You can't just do that. You've got to have learned and know all the aspects from the lenses, from the lighting, from the makeup, from the lines, from everything else. And many times we--it's so important for our kids to know that you've got to learn how to do everything, and don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. By that, I mean don't throw out just because the man teaches you how to do something technically. Um, "Well, I don't wanna learn that. I wanna do it the other way." There is--many times you have to learn. You can then keep what you want.
Tavis: Yeah. I only got 30 seconds left, Mario. I don't know if at home you ever get the last word with Sir Melvin. I'm gonna give you the last word today.
Melvin: All the time.
Tavis: OK. What it's like at home. In less than 30 seconds. Tell me what you think the legacy is of your father's wonderful piece "Sweet Sweetback."
Mario: Very, very simple. I think my dad showed us that we can do it. Every person can make a difference. You can get out there. "Baadasssss" is about a man with an impossible dream and a complex relationship with his kid, and people come out of this movie saying, we got that, "Yes, we can do it" spirit. That's it. We can do it.
Melvin: Yeah, but like I said, you supposed to have the last word, but just to mention on the side here--look--
Mario: Give him his gift, give him his gift, give him his gift.
Melvin: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, man, you know, here you go.
Tavis: Give that to me so I can get out of here.
Mario: What did you teach me, dad? What did you teach me?
Melvin: What did I teach you? What I taught everyone is if we can all hold together, then--
Mario: Early to bed...
Melvin: Early to rise, and...
Mario: Look like hell, and...
Mario and Melvin: Advertise!
Tavis: There you go. Advertise. Check it out, New York and L.A. First, and then around the rest of the country. Up next on this program, Joe Lamond of NAMM. Stay with us, we'll talk about music education in schools in just a moment.
Back to May 27, 2004