Mario Van Peebles plays his filmmaker father ... and mends rift
In 1971 playwright-filmmaker-entrepreneur Melvin Van Peebles pulled the pin from a psychedelic grenade and lobbed it into urban theaters. His Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, written, directed by and starring Van Peebles as the fleet-footed black pimp politicized by the act of attacking racist cops, was dedicated to "all the Brothers and Sisters who have had enough of the Man." His guerrilla effort was social commentary written in lightning, profanely articulating the disenfranchisement of African Americans much as Easy Rider had defined that of hippies two years earlier.
In 1971 playwright-filmmaker-entrepreneur Melvin Van Peebles pulled the pin from a psychedelic grenade and lobbed it into urban theaters. His Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, written, directed by and starring Van Peebles as the fleet-footed black pimp politicized by the act of attacking racist cops, was dedicated to "all the Brothers and Sisters who have had enough of the Man."
His guerrilla effort was social commentary written in lightning, profanely articulating the disenfranchisement of African Americans much as Easy Rider had defined that of hippies two years earlier.
While Sweet Sweetback's kaleidoscope of sexual and countercultural urgency made it the Mack Daddy of what came to be called blaxploitation, it is too of its own moment to have much currency today.
Yet Van Peebles' actor-filmmaker son, Mario (New Jack City), shrewdly recognized the picaresque possibilities in making a movie about the making of Sweet Sweetback.
Baadasssss!, written, directed by and starring the younger Van Peebles as his own father, is a sobering and wildly entertaining account of how the elder Van Peebles crashed through the hurdles that continue to hinder independent filmmakers.
The result is a deft juggling act in which the younger Van Peebles pays tribute to Dad as a trailblazing artist, yet criticizes him as an absent father, one insensitive to the emotional needs of his children.
Thirteen-year-old Mario Van Peebles (played here by Khleo Thomas) was both a witness to his father's madness in making a nonunion film in the shadows of Hollywood and a minor player in Sweet Sweetback, cast by his father as the title character in a humiliating flashback where he loses his virginity to a hooker.
Humiliation is the crucible that formed father and son as men and artists. According to the son's account, Melvin slithered out of his various humiliations by Hollywood moguls, pornographers and drug dealers as a snake might shed his skin.
The process of making Baadasssss! permitted Mario to examine the emotional scars he still carries from the experience of being more important to his father as a prop than a person. But what makes the film resonate with emotion is that he is now able to see his own humiliation through a boy's eyes and from his father's perspective.
Where Sweet Sweetback boiled over with confrontational rage, the cooler Baadassss! is about generational reconciliation.
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey
at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.
Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.
Baadasssss!
*** (out of four stars)
Produced and directed by Mario Van Peebles, written by Mario Van Peebles and Dennis Haggerty, based on the book Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song by Melvin Van Peebles, photography by Robert Primes, music by Tyler Bates, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics.
Running time: 1 hour, 48 mins.
Melvin Van Peebles. . . Mario Van Peebles
Priscilla. . . Joy Bryant
Bill Cosby. . . T.K. Carter
Grandad. . . Ossie Davis
Mario Van Peebles. . . Khleo Thomas
Parent's guide: R (nudity, sex, drugs, violence, profanity)
Playing at: Ritz Five, Ritz Sixteen/NJ