Baadasssss!

Started by mutinyco, April 22, 2004, 11:18:24 PM

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mutinyco

Can Black People Fly? Don't Ask 'Soul Plane'
By A. O. SCOTT

Published: June 13, 2004

WEET SWEETBACK'S BAAD ASSSSS SONG" ends, famously, with a warning to the Man. The hero, a canny amalgam of Old West outlaw and third-world revolutionary, may have fled across the border into Mexico, but this is merely a tactical retreat. Before long, the words on the screen promise, Sweetback, the embodiment of and answer to centuries of insult and brutality inflicted on black Americans by their white oppressors, will return "to collect some dues."

Like many prophecies, this one, issued in 1971, has come true, though perhaps not quite in the way its author, Melvin Van Peebles, who wrote, directed and starred in "Sweetback," may have intended. In "Baadasssss," his stylish and thoughtful reconstruction of the making of "Sweetback," Mr. Van Peebles's son, Mario, portrays his father as a canny showman with a stubborn sense of political mission. Having directed an ethnic comedy called "Watermelon Man," the elder Van Peebles walks away from a three-picture deal with Columbia to make an independent film that he hopes will reflect, in raw, uncompromised and accessible form, the experiences and aspirations of African-Americans at a time of social upheaval and political confrontation.

"Baadasssss," which ends with the Detroit premiere of "Sweetback" before an ecstatic audience recruited by local Black Panthers, makes the case that he succeeded. The financial success of "Sweetback" — one of the highest-grossing independent pictures released here — brought 1970's Hollywood a belated news flash that has, unfortunately, needed periodic updating ever since: black people buy movie tickets.

To say that Sweetback collected his dues in the form of box office receipts is not to trivialize Mr. Van Peebles's accomplishment. The blaxploitation movies that "Sweetback" inspired may have been controversial at the time (and, like everything else in 70's pop culture, vulnerable to parody and condescension later on), but in appropriating the conventions of the western and the gangster film they nonetheless advanced the radical notion that black men on screen could be something other than buffoons, servants or model citizens. They could be action heroes — armed, dangerous, sexy and righteous leading men. It took a while, but that radical idea is at last beginning to look like conventional wisdom.

Which is not to suggest that Mario Van Peebles's history lesson should be taken as an invitation to complacency. According to "Sweetback," one of his father's grudges against the film industry in the late 60's was that, with a few exceptions, it shunted African-American artists into a low-comedy ghetto. The range of black pop-culture archetypes has expanded enormously in recent years, but the uncomfortable, double-edged legacy of minstrelsy nonetheless persists.

There is perhaps no more egregious recent example than "Soul Plane," a ragged, silly comedy that opened nationwide on the same day as "Baadasssss" made its art house debut. "Baadasssss" explores the obstacles facing a determined black man trying to make a film; "Soul Plane" (with Snoop Dogg as a stoned, ex-convict pilot) suggests that the idea that black people could run an airline, let alone fly a plane, is downright laughable.

Now, I don't want to sound like a scold. Without broad ethnic humor, American comedy would consist of one or two Ernst Lubitsch pictures and the collected monologues of Johnny Carson. And I won't deny that there are some funny jokes in "Soul Plane," including many that no anxious, well-meaning white person would ever admit to laughing at. But for all its boisterous sexual humor, the movie carefully avoids any real provocation, let alone insight. The airline's first-class passengers sip Champagne, while those in "low class" fight over fried chicken, but just about everyone is loud, crude, oversexed and liable to start dancing at the slightest provocation.

Except for the white people, who are represented by Tom Arnold, playing a guy named Elvis Hunkee. The Man, it seems, is no longer a scheming, cruel oppressor, but rather a hapless, sexless loser — not much of a man at all, really. And not much of a racist, either. He looks a little uncomfortable at first, but Mr. Hunkee is quickly swept up in the big, happy "Soul Plane" party.

Maybe this, like the easygoing acceptance of interracial romance at the movie's end, is a sign of progress. Perhaps the political passion that impelled Melvin Van Peebles to make "Sweetback," and that energized a later generation of black filmmakers (including Mario Van Peebles, who made "New Jack City" and "Panther"), is obsolete, and we can all sit back and laugh at each other. This is a seductive idea, but in the case of "Soul Plane" it is also a regressive one. Apparently we've come so far that we can now make jokes about lazy, incompetent and promiscuous black people, as long as some of them are also rich and good-looking, as long as the soundtrack has strong sales potential and as long as the movie is marketed primarily to African-American audiences.

"Soul Plane" almost seems to exist in a parallel movie universe, in which neither "Baadasssss" nor "Sweetback" ever existed because Melvin Van Peebles, on further reflection, decided to go ahead with a sequel to "Watermelon Man." Wherever he is, Sweetback still has some work to do, and some dues to collect.  
"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

Ghostboy

Seriously, this movie rocks.

mutinyco

Right on. I've been trying to push this for a month now, but nobody's seemed to care much.
"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

Ghostboy

Here's my review.

Honestly, I don't think there's a better new release out there at the moment.

mutinyco

Dunno if you caught a press screening or saw it in the theater, but the press notes were great. Mario took time and wrote them himself.
"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

pete

it's playing at the "indie" theater that I work at, which also screens Saved at the moment.  And I realize prior to every screening of Saved, some clever college kid must walk by the Baadassss poster and either try to over pronounce the word or they wanna say something "hip hop" like "ohh snap" or "bling bling."  Every screening.
Thought yesterday there was an old foreign (French maybe?) lady who asked me what was "Bah-Dahs" and I explained to her it's pronounced "Baadasss", then she asked me what it was about, I explained it to her, and then ten minutes she came back and said "Is 'Bah-dahsss' subtitled?"  I thought that was cute.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Ghostboy

Quote from: mutinycoDunno if you caught a press screening or saw it in the theater, but the press notes were great. Mario took time and wrote them himself.

I missed the various screenings, but the press agent told me she'd get me the press kit. I keep forgetting to get it from her. She said it was a good fifty pages or so.

mutinyco

Yep. That and Riding Giants are the thickest I've seen in a while.
"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

pete

the director from riding the giants came tonight, all these surfers were there, totally lame, hobbyiest weekend surfers.
but back to baadasss, it didn't seem that good--Mario Van Peebles was overacting, the cinematography was really annoying, and the narration was pretty unnecessary.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

wilberfan

The Film That Made 'Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song' Possible

By Nicolas Rapold
May 6, 2021

I don't think anyone who sees the title "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" forgets it. The eye-popping film made Melvin Van Peebles a pioneer of 1970s American cinema and pure independent hustle. But a few years earlier, Van Peebles directed his first trailblazer in France: "The Story of a Three Day Pass," his feature debut, which was released commercially in 1968 and is opening at Film Forum on Friday in a new restoration.

It's the deceptively simple story of Turner (Harry Baird), a Black American G.I. on weekend leave in Paris. But Van Peebles threads Turner's hopes and joys with seemingly inescapable aggressions against him as a Black man and societal anxieties surrounding race. The story's romantic idyll is shot through with a prickly visual style and a biting candor — all in a film that pointedly couldn't happen in the United States.

By the 1960s, Van Peebles, a Chicago native and Air Force veteran, had made some short films and published a memoir about working on a San Francisco cable car. But in Hollywood, doors were still closed to Black filmmakers, despite changes in the air and cultural upheaval across the nation. So like many Black artists before him, Van Peebles headed to Europe. He studied for a doctorate in astronomy in Amsterdam, wrote more, and found a fan in Henri Langlois, head priest of the Cinémathèque Française in Paris.

"The Story of a Three Day Pass" was based on one of the novels Van Peebles wrote in French, winning him a grant and a spot in the country's directors' guild. In 1967, he premiered the feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival — as part of the French delegation — next to art-house giants like Satyajit Ray and Agnès Varda. The movie's title in French was "La Permission," but Van Peebles took permission for himself.

Turner's weekend leave should be the most ordinary thing in the world — a soldier's escape. But it can't be carefree for Turner, whose white commanding officer makes a big deal of trusting him with a promotion and a three-day pass. In a mirror, the goofily hopeful Turner sees his sarcastic reflection talking to him: the promotion, his mirror self says, is just a reward for being an obedient "Uncle Tom." Van Peebles pits the two Turners against each other in a bewildering split screen.

That kind of double consciousness, and the feelings it churns up, loom over Turner's journey. The soldier does have one perfect moment, early in his Paris trip. He steps into a bar, shades on and ready to unwind. Except he doesn't walk — he glides. The camera keeps him at center, poised and cool, as he moves through the drinkers and dancers. You might recognize the same dolly shot from Spike Lee's movies, transporting you into the dream of a moment. But here it is in 1967 — the unmistakable flourish of a Van Peebles joint.

At the bar, Turner picks up a demure Frenchwoman, Miriam (Nicole Berger, who co-starred in the French new wave classic "Shoot the Piano Player"). There's a sweet, awkward innocence to their flirting across language differences and dancing to the turtlenecked house band. They plan a trip to the countryside the next day. But Van Peebles shows how their experiences couldn't be more wildly different.

The two get settled in a Normandy inn, and their inner monologues are revealed in fantasy sequences during sex. You might say Van Peebles doesn't mince images: Turner visualizes himself as a squire returning to his estate and his maid Miriam, while Miriam sees herself running through a jungle, seized by African tribesmen, one played by Turner. When it comes to technique, Van Peebles is fearless, using hard cuts in edits and Godardian music cues, as well as collaborating on the score.

Turner and Miriam do have a lovely time in the village, until a musician in a bar refers to them as "Miss Big Eyes" and "Señor Blackie." Then on the beach, they run into soldiers from his base. Word gets back about his fraternizing, and his promotion is revoked. (Van Peebles keeps us on our toes with a deus ex machina: a visiting church group from Harlem.)

For Van Peebles, the studio movie did finally come next: "Watermelon Man," starring Godfrey Cambridge as a bigoted white suburbanite who one day wakes up to find he's Black. "Sweetback" followed ("rated X by an all-white jury," said ads); then playwriting, leading to several Tony nominations; and a stint as a trader on Wall Street. You can see Van Peebles's influence in Lee and really any filmmaker who truly goes for broke (like the anticolonialist French-Mauritanian director Med Hondo, who is said to have hosted Van Peebles in Paris).

"I never decided to become a director," Van Peebles, now 88, said in a Directors Guild of America interview conducted by his son, the filmmaker Mario Van Peebles. "I just decided to show folks, especially minorities, like I saw them, not like they kept being shown around in cinema." With "The Story of a Three Day Pass," Melvin Van Peebles shattered the usual mirrors presented in movies, with a crash that reverberated far beyond one soldier's weekend off.

jenkins

<3 4ever a true original and just this aspect of his story was glossed over there

Quote"I went down to Hollywood and asked for a job (as a filmmaker)," he says. "They offered me a job as an elevator operator."

Accepting the assessment that he had no talent, he moved to Holland, where he planned to pursue a doctorate in astronomy, his second love. The school, he says, laughing, "assumed I was from an old Dutch family because of my name, and they accepted me."

But then the Cinématheque Française, the famed film archive in Paris that nurtured and inspired young filmmakers of the French New Wave, learned of his short movies through Amos Vogel, a supporter of experimental cinema who later co-founded the New York Film Festival.

"So I hitchhiked to France," Van Peebles says. His films were well-received, so he decided to stay in Paris and pursue a creative career, even though he didn't speak French and had no job. He became a beggar, "singing La Bamba in the street" for money.

"They'd given me hope," he says. "They had said to me it wasn't impossible."

After teaching himself French, he wrote and published five French novels and worked as a journalist. Then he made his first full-length movie, Story of a Three-Day Pass.