MELVIN VAN PEEBLES
Don't write a check your ass can't cash:
words of wisdom from a true American pop hero
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Melvin Van Peebles
Melvin Van Peebles’ life project has been to defy and redefine the image of blacks in America. Although he is widely categorized as a filmmaker, Van Peebles is also an actor, playwright, novelist and stock options trader. Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1932, Van Peebles lived in Mexico as a painter with his then-wife Maria Marx, moved to San Francisco where he worked as a cable car operator, and then moved to Holland to study at the University of Amsterdam. After a move to Paris, he wrote several novels, one of which was adapted into the movie, The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1967). It was this film about a black soldier’s tryst with a white Parisian woman that led to a contract with Columbia Pictures and the 1970 film Watermelon Man. The film was a comedy about a white man who wakes up one day to find he is now black. There was turmoil between Van Peebles and Columbia over casting and the ending to the film, but in the end Van Peebles prevailed and the film was a modest success. Van Peebles used the proceeds from Watermelon Man to help finance his most well-known film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song which he wrote, directed and scored. The film is violent, low-budget and received an X-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. However, it is considered a turning point in both the portrayal of blacks in American film and marketing to a black audience. Moving away from filmmaking for the next two decades, Van Peebles began writing plays and produced two Broadway Musicals, Ain’t Supposed to Die a natural Death and Don’t Play Us Cheap which was nominated for two Tony Awards. During the 1980s Van Peebles became a stock trader and also continued to guest star in films and television. In 2005 a feature documentary about the life of Van Peebles was released, How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and enjoy it).
>via: http://ovationtv.com/people/224
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Revisit
'The Story Of A Three-Day Pass'
On Melvin Van Peebles'
80th Birthday
(His 1st Feature)
BY MALCOLM WOODARD
AUGUST 21, 2012
If I may toss in my own little piece of acknowledgement of Melvin Van Peebles' 80th birthday today (see Tambay's post earlier today HERE).
For those who think that Melvin Van Peebles didn't exist before Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, he made 2 feature films before that seminal work.
This is one of them - an exploration of contrasting European and American attitudes towards race, in 1698's The Story of a Three Day Pass.
Taking place in the 60’s, the film centers on an African American soldier stationed in Europe. His Captain gives him a promotion and a three-day pass to take the weekend off, because he thinks he’s such an exceptional black man. And over the course of the 3 days, Turner, the film's protagonist, meets a white French woman, leading to a love affair between the two. However, racial prejudice and other complications, brings the affait to a halt.
Harry Baird and Nicole Berger star.
What is considered Van Peebles' Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) film, it was based on a novel he wrote in French, La Permission. It was shot in 36 days on a budget of $200,000.
The use of fantasy sequences, jump cuts, freeze frames, photo-montage, and other experimental techniques, give the film an surreal/dream-like quality.
It was Van Peebles' very first feature film, and, it was also the first feature-length film (on record) directed by an African American since Oscar Micheaux's last film, 1948's The Betrayal. So, from 1948 to 1967 (when Three-Day Pass was shot), a 21-year gap, there wasn't a single feature-length, fictional scripted narrative film (on record) with an African American at the helm.
If anyone knows and can prove otherwise, please do so.
I know that William Greaves was working prior to 1968, but he only produced documentaries.
Before Van Peebles made Three-Day Pass, it's said that he couldn't get work in the film industry in the USA, so, like many other African American artists did in those days, he went to Europe (France, specifically), and directed his first feature (aka The Story Of A Three-Day Pass) in France, with French money.
Cue critical acclaim (both abroad and in the USA) after it was selected for the 1967 San Francisco Film Festivalorganized by Black film critic Albert Johnson, and eventually Van Peebles landed a job in Hollywood, and then he made his first and only studio film in 1970, Watermelon Man.
Here's the trailer for The Story Of A Three-Day Pass (it's incomplete, but there's enough there to give you some idea of what it's like). It's on DVD:
>via: http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/revisit-the-story-of-a-three-day-pass...