Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was a 1971 blaxploitation film. Unusually for the genre, it was directed by a black director, Melvin Van Peebles, who also starred, wrote, produced, and co-wrote the score with the then-unknown group Earth, Wind & Fire. The film, which was funded and distributed outside of the Hollywood system, broke conventions with its visual style, as well as its content. The film's fast-paced montages and jump-cuts were novel features. The film, which was at the time X-rated, made $10m off a meagre $500,000 budget, a testament to both the financial clout and political awareness of the black-community at the time. Surprisingly, Bill Cosby was among the financial backers of the film. Following the success of Sweet Sweetback the Hollywood studios attempted to cash in on the genre, most notably with films such as Shaft, Superfly, and Coffy. In 2004 Melvin's son Mario Van Peebles made a biopic based on the filming of Sweet Sweetback entitled BAADASSSSS
Plot
Sweet Sweetback (Van Peebles) is a male sex show performer. After the body of a black man is found in a river he agrees to go with two police officers who he knows to the station as a suspect to make them look good. However, he is forced to go on the run after he attacks the officers when they arrest and brutalise a young black man. The film focuses on Sweetback's run through South Central Los Angeles avoiding the police in any way he can, helped by the black community and a few disaffected Hells Angels, and on the way engaging in large amounts of sex and violence. The film ends with Sweetback disappearing into the distance, and we are told that the story, like the struggle of the American civil rights movement that it allegorises, is not over.
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