I first met Melvin Van Peebles in the summer of 1978. I was attending college in New York and hustling internships/free-lance writing gigs for experience and money. I talked a now long defunct black entertainment magazine to let me interview Van Peebles. I was twenty-one, green as fresh cut grass and anxious to figure out my life. I wanted to be a novelist, a rock critic and maybe write screenplays. I had no idea how black people got to do all those things, but figured if I interviewed people like Van Peebles maybe they had a tip or two to pass along.
At the time he had an midtown Manhattan office on Seventh Avenue in the ‘50s somewhere close to the show biz hangout the Stage Deli. When I was granted access to his office Van Peebles was sitting in a rocking chair, bare foot and shirtless except for suspenders clipped to a pair of trousers. He wore a fedora and smoked a rather long cigar. He proceeded to generously give me a truncated of his very eventful life story. Born in Chicago, served in the Air Force, lived in San Francisco (where he drove a cable car and wrote his first book), Mexico City, Amsterdam and Paris, wrote novels and magazine articles in France, where he shot his first film, ‘The Story of a Three Day Pass,’ which bought him back to America were he directed a race problem studio comedy called ‘Waterlemon Man.’ Following that breakthrough he used his money, loans and lots of deception to shoot ‘Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song’ in 1971, the tawdry tale of sex, violence and revolution, shot with French new wave editing and full on African-American bravado, that was a rare financially successful American indie film that helped spark a series of mire conventional Hollywood flicks known as blaxploitation.
But, as widely celebrated and controversial as ‘Sweetback’ was, that was far from Van Peebles’ only early ‘70s breakthrough. Using some of the profits from Sweetback he would write, direct and producer not one, but two Broadway shows in ‘72 — ‘Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death’ and ‘Don’t Play Us Cheap.’ Both of those show benefitted from the fact that he was a prolific songwriter who would record four albums in the ‘60s and ‘70s that featured his rough voiced singing and spoken word verses.
Keep in mind that I met him in ‘78. There were years of films, theater and albums yet to come. He’d even work in Wall Street as a broker at one point. Looking back on that day summer day the thing that really remained with me was that Melvin Van Peebles existed. He wasn’t a legend, a phantom or a one hit wonder. In a country exploited, marginalized, ignored and then celebrated certain black artists, denying their artistry even as the national profited from their genius, Van Peebles had kept moving. He went where his muse took him. Later when Hollywood blocked him or Broadway kept him at bay, he pivoted to becoming a broker or he traveled back to Europe which, like a jazzman, always appreciated his vision. I never heard him complain about Hollywood or any gate keepers. He took for granted that resistence and always seemed to have plans B,C and D. As he was described in documentary the man was “unstoppable.”
I reconnected with him in the early ‘80s when I’d become a full-time music journalist. He’d mounted a new play, ‘Waltz of the Stork,’ aND released a sound track LP, which I did liner notes for. One song from that album, “The Apple Stretching,” would later be re-recorded by Grace Jones. Over the next few decades, as I moved into film and television, Melvin was a semi-regular presence in my life, whether I visited his home on West 56th Street, chatted with him at movie premiere or saw him running the streets on NYC with a strong, barrell chested stride. He’d watched me grow and always encouraged me not to follow trends, but to stick to my vision and feed my ambition. Once asked about his legacy he said, “I do what I want to do.” And he urged everyone he came in contact with to do that same.
[GREG TATE, MELVIN VAN PEEBLES and NELSON GEORGE in 2013]
He continued to be creative, writing plays (Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha, Champeen), directing television movies (The Sophisticated Gents), writing and narrating documentaries (Melvin Van Peebles’ Classified X), and performing music live well into his ‘80s with a band called Laxative because they “make shit happen.” His son Mario made a fine film about the making of Sweetback called ‘Baadasssss!’ in 2003, while the Greg Tate’s musical collective Burnt Sugar played songs from Melvin’s catelog on a tour of France.
So while he’s hailed as an icon of American independent film, that was only one aspect of his life as an artist. Writing songs, conceiving plays, painting and design were also vital parts of his life and creative practice. His apartnent was full of odd objects he’d designed, like a hot dog dresser or the back a car that emitted smoke, along with many paintings that lined his walls. He was an artist all the time and everyday.
About ten years ago I was trying my hand at an true indie film, shooting it guerilla style around Europe and the U.S. It was my attempt to do a ‘Sweetback.’ Melvin generously agreed to do scene with the young lead actress at his apartment. She was on the run from the law and came to his character for advice on her next moves. For about an hour we sat in his office and Melvin, storyteller supreme, improvised a scene with her, using his signature mix of native wit, international knowledge and drama to pull my haphazard story into shape. I abandoned the film years ago but, with Melvin’s passing, I need to go back and put that scene together.
The Criterion Collection released restoration of ‘The Story of a Three Day Pass’ in May of this year and has just released a Blu-ray boxed set that includes ‘Watermelon Man,’ ‘Sweetback’ and a filmed version of ‘Don’t Play Us Cheap’ as well as ‘Three Day Pass.’ A revival of ‘Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death’ is scheduled to reach Broadway in 2022. So Melvin’s body may have left us but his ribald genius will endure.
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