The working title of Mario Van Peebles’s Baadasssss! was “How to Get the Man’s Foot Outta Your Ass,” which, though wordier, gives a better idea of its thrust. The film is a dramatized account of how Van Peebles’s father, Melvin, made Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, the 1971 indie flick that showed the world there was an audience for a movie about a black man striking back.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Baadasssss! opens in 1970 with Melvin (played by Mario) riding high in Hollywood. He’s just completed a racially themed comedy called Watermelon Man for Columbia Pictures, which has offered him a three-picture deal. The studio wants him to make more comedies, but Melvin wants to make a movie about a black man who’s not at all funny. The story he has in mind is about a live sex show performer who works in an LA whorehouse. When he witnesses white cops beating a Black Panther, Sweetback assaults the cops with their own handcuffs, then spends the movie on the run–waking up to political realities in America and turning into a full-fledged revolutionary. Melvin’s agent (Saul Rubinek, perpetrating his usual Jewish minstrelsy) freaks out when he hears his client’s plans. The studio won’t back the project, and since Melvin won’t make a comedy for them, he’s blowing his shot at the studio deal. At this point Melvin starts scouring LA for independent financial backing, nonunion crews, and nonprofessional actors.
Mario intercuts the narrative of Baadasssss! with faux verite interview footage of the characters. The documentary elements are intended to enhance the historical texture of the film, but they’re not often persuasive; and they look even weaker when the credits roll over genuine interview footage of survivors of the shoot reminiscing about it three decades later.
Although Mario stops short of locating Sweetback in this canon, his own film is an engaging addition to the line of classic moviemaking movies like The Bad and the Beautiful, Living in Oblivion, The Stunt Man, and Day for Night.
Directed and written by Mario Van Peebles
With Van Peebles, Saul Rubinek, Paul Rodriguez, Ossie Davis, Adam West, Sally Struthers, and David Alan Grier.
