Mario Van Peebles is one of the few consistantly working African American directors who actually makes films that remind us of where the African American people came from and what contributions they made to American society and history. NEW JACK CITY, POSSE, PANTHER – they all had a tough story to tell about the African American experience in America. Some of them made for great film going experiences (NEW JACK CITY, PANTHER) and others didn’t (POSSE) but all strived for an honesty not present in the films of Van Peebles’ other contemporary in the media spotlight Spike Lee.
BAADASSSSS! is no different and it marks his most personal and best film to date. The story concerns the trials and tribulations of his father Melvin as he faught to make his ground breaking film SWEAT SWEATBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG, which ushered in the Blacplotation film movement.
Van Peebles does not hold back. He shows both the creative genius of his father as well as the stuborn egomaniac that some would thing abused his children. Van Peebles was bold to play his own father as was his father who placed the title character in the landmark film but like the film so boldly states “he is the only man who can bring this story to light because he lived it” (or thereabouts).
Having made NEW JACK CITY and PANTHER Van Peebles is no stranger to controversial subject matter and BAADASSSSS! pushes the buttons even further but also shows a man trying to break down the walls that the Hollywood Studio system wanted to wall him behind. Melvin was a man who wanted to show the world the “real” experience of the African American and other minorities in this country in a system that only wanted to see African Americans portrayed as comic foils for the main “white” characters of the film.
He even went out of his way to have a minority crew (that would learn by doing) and put his own money into the film, as well as use non-union labor – all which would have been unthinkable at the time.
The truly scary revelation of this film is how true it was then and how true it still is today as the Hollywood “machine” still underhires minorities and still wants the standard “comedy” from many directors/actors/producers of those minorities. In this, Van Peebles is still fighting the same fight his father faught almost forty years earlier. There have been some advances to corect this but forty years is a long time to still be doing “baby steps.”
