When talking to people who’ve visited or live in the city of New York, you’ll always get stories of how they’d ran into celebrity x or y of this or that movie and how that could happen just about every day in the city. As of today, yours truly has a story like that too.

As we stepped into a Harlem bookstore, I grabbed the freshly published graphic novel ‘Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha‘, the graphic novel telling the story of Melvin Van Peebles latest film. From behind the counter I heard a voice: “You know Melvin is coming to sign books today, at 6 pm!”

Sure enough, a couple of hours later, mr Van Peebles stepped into the place, and for a small crowd of fans started telling stories of his career as the godfather of black cinema…

Hiphop cats might know Van Peebles as the voice sampled on Quasimoto’s ‘Come On Feet‘, a sample taken out of the soundtrack to Van Peebles’ classic movie “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song“, a film he wrote, financed, marketed, played the main role in and wrote the soundtrack to (which was then performed by Earth, Wind & Fire.

It is hard to imagine for a European (and for younger people in the States even) how big an influence this movie has had on American society. Before Shaft, Sweetback was the first film that used its soundtrack as an entire part of a film concept. At the same time, the movie caused a cultural earthquake because of it’s criticism on racist America.

As Spike Lee states:

“Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song gave us all the answers we needed. This was an example of how to make a film (a real movie), distribute it yourself, and most important, get paid. Without Sweetback who knows if there could have been a [...] She’s Gotta Have It, Hollywood Shuffle, or House Party?”

In 2005, Van Peebles was the subject of a documentary entitled How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It), these are two interviews with the maker of that docu and mr. Van Peebles himself:

Apart from his career as a filmmaker, actor , stock trader on Wall Street, astronomist and musician (he even wrote ‘The Apple Stretching’ for Grace Jones) Van Peebles is also an aclaimed theatre writer, currently performing his show ‘Unmitigated Truth: Life, a Lavatory, Loves and Ladies’ in New York:

“Unmitigated Truth: Life, a Lavatory, Loves and Ladies,” is running Sunday through Wednesday each week until Wednesday, July 1st. For information about the play visit www.algonquintheater.org or call 212-868-4444. The show starts at 8PM.

Please, allow me to wrap this post up with some fragments of Van Peebles’ films: