Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song / Baadassss!

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song – 1971, Melvin Van Peebles
Baadassss! - 2004, Mario Van Peebles

Melvin Van Peebles is a despicable pervert. He has always been overrated as a director. He deserves some credit for having had the guts to pour every penny he had into ‘Sweetback’. In SSBS a black guy (Sweetback, played by Melvin) kills a couple of white cops and gets away with by fucking his way to freedom. He made it knowing it was a film ‘his people’ wanted to see. That SSBS kicked off the Blaxploitation genre (along with Shaft) often overshadows the even more impressive fact it was the most successful independent film made in 1971. ‘Sweetback’ is the result of one mans vision and his incredible effort to have it made. A better director would have been less ambitious with the limited budget Melvin had (and made a less sloppy film) and may have squeezed better performances out of the actors however amateurish they were.

Of course the film should be taken into context. As an independent film made by a black director in 1971, it’s an incredible, audacious achievement. But I couldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they were very interested.

The story behind the making of ‘Sweetback’ and the legacy it left is far more interesting than the film itself. Baadasss! was made by Melvin’s son Mario Van Peebles. Mario actually appears in SSBS playing the young Sweetback in the scene where he loses his virginity to a prostitute. In the UK version, these scenes are removed and replaced by a message "In order to comply with UK law (the Protection of Children Act 1978), a number of images in the opening sequence of this film have been obscured." Melvin made his 13 year old son simulate graphic sex in front of the camera.

Mario obviously wasn’t too scarred by the whole thing though as he went on to be a successful film maker too. Baadassss! uses an unusual ‘fictional-documentary’ style to tell the story of how SSBS was made and all the ‘crazy’ people who were involved. What I like most about it is that even though it is a low budget independent film about the making of a low budget independent film, it doesn’t have the self conscious ‘this is a sophisticated independent film’ attitude that, by 2004 had become the norm for films of this type. SSBS isn’t trying to be clever and impress anyone, and nether is Baadasss! It also features Adam West in a nice little post Family Guy role.

*******!!!!

Primer

Primer – 2004, Shane Carruth

Very clever Sci-Fi film made for $7,000. An excellent example of what you can do with a little money and a lot of imagination/hard work/a degree in mathematics. Basically it’s about a dude who invents a time machine, so naturally it all goes wrong and gets very hard to follow. Definitely the type of film you’d want to read about on Wikipedia afterwards.

It’s full of techy guys mumbling about physics, and if you stop listening at the wrong moment, you’ll lose track of what’s going on sooner than if you’d been listening intently, but you’ll lose track either way.

That may not sound like much of an endorsement, but I would recommend Primer to anyone who likes a film they have to pay attention to. If you liked ‘Brick’ you’ll like Primer.