sweet sweetback's baadasssss song, and baadasssss!

before there was shaft, before there was superfly, there was melvin van peebles' sweet sweetback's baadassss song! a black director weary of seeing far too many films where black people were portrayed as being weak and stupid, melvin scraped up a small budget and a film crew made up of a diverse cast of characters, and made sweetback. an interesting side-note: he originally wanted to call it how to get the man's foot out your ass. it wasn't easy, however. things kept going wrong and by the time the film was made, melvin was left penniless and destitute. he did, however, get one lone theater in detroit to premeir his film. after a whole half a day of no patrons showing up to see the movie, the theater owners pulled the film and put on the marquee the film 50 foot monster or some garbage like that...well, later that day, a SHITLOAD of people show up and ask, "hey, i wanna see this sweetback thing! where is it?" so, the theater owners start showing the movie again and it's a full house from then on! it became the highest grossing independent film of 1971. not only that, it started a whole revolution in black cinema.

fast forward to 2003, mario van peebles, son of melvin van peebles, has now made a film that is ABOUT the making of sweet sweetback. it is simply titled baadasssss! it is a beautiful, wonderful piece of filmmaking. mario is the spitting image of melvin, and he PLAYS his father in the film! it's fucking awesome! in fact, i reccommend watching baadasssss before viewing sweetback. it's just so wonderful. it doesn't matter what color you are, it will leave you feeling so fucking empowered and incredibly...human.

 

Seen both of these. The first is obviously a seminal piece of cinema and a landmark film.

The recent one was very interesting too, especially after viewing the original..

I'll have to pull these both out again in the near future.

 

I saw Badasss, but haven't had the chance to see 'Sweet Sweetback' yet. I'll have to check it out.