May 17, 2005

It is rare and usually disastrous (for at least one of the parties involved) to get two looks at the same thing in two movies in the same short period of time. The rarest of things is when you get two of two successful films on the same subject at the same time.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to see Mario Van Peebles' Baadasssss!. Fans of the film kept prodding me- first pushing me to see it in Toronto in 2003, then Sundance, then Tribeca, then during the summer, and on and on. I finally saw it at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival a few weeks ago... the way it was meant to be seen... on a big screen in a full theater.

Mario plays his father in the film and is himself a major character. The film tells the story of the making of Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song in some detail and with a mixture of perspectives on what really happened. I quite like the film. But watching How To Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It) takes the Melvin Van Peebles story somewhere altogether more complex.

For instance, when you look at Baadasssss!, it is hard to forget just how good looking Mario Van Peebles is. This works on the brain in a few odd ways. First, it changes the nature of Sweetback, which he is making throughout the film. It is, in some ways, the difference between Sweetback and Shaft. But even more so, it changes how we see Melvin's relentlessness. In How To Eat Your Watermelon, we hear from someone who knew him as a child and describes him as a geek of sorts... we hear about how he worked as a cable car driver and got fired on a weird whim... we see him directing... we see his earliest work...

It's amazing to see young Melvin as young Melvin... because he is more handsome than current memory suggests... he is more compelling... because, in an odd way, he is defined by his own standard and not by Mario's beauty. Even seeing Melvin now, in his 70s, jogging around Manhattan in skintight spandex, the image isn't all that beautiful, but it is really interesting and defining of the man, almost more than any story about him could be.

Melvin Van Peebles has an odd place in Hollywood culture in that the split between Sweetback and the rest of his public career is very sharp. It was ten years between Van Peebles being Sweetback and his next film role. He was almost 40 years old when Sweetback was made. The next time we saw him, he was in his 60s.

But Hollywood's distance from Melvin Van Peebles is not the whole story at all. The documentary looks at his work on Broadway, which is fascinating. The form seems almost impossibly rough hewn when you look at the high end of theater today. But Van Peebles took the rage of 60s Black America to Broadway... think about it... Broadway. There is a great story about Clive Barnes panning "Ain't Supposed To Die A Natural Death" and then actually apologizing the next day for not getting it. Then there is a great clip of the Tony awards being aired and the other shows in competition - "Jesus Christ Superstar," "No, No Nannette," "Ain't Supposed To Die A Natural Death," and the musicals of Rogers & Hammerstein followed by Peter Ustinov stumbling through a trying-too-hard intro of the show. Amazing.

He followed that show up with "Don't Play Us Cheap," which Van Peebles imagined as a play and a movie at the same time. I saw the movie on cable late the other night... and it was remarkably steeped in the moment... almost unwatchable... yet somehow hypnotic. Just like Melvin Van Peebles.

And then there is his career as a Wall Street trader... a man who has truly lived his life.

How To Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It) is not the most remarkable piece of documentary filmmaking ever. But it is one of the best I have seen. The subject is that fascinating and the materials are, it seems, about as complete as you could ever expect in a 90 minute film.

Sony Classics really should buy this movie from first-time filmmaker Joe Angio. Combined with Baadasssss!, the package would be a must-buy for cinema programs across the country. It wouldn't fly off the shelf, but it would be a perennial. If you haven't seen Angio's doc, you have missed a key part of the history of the arts... not just movies... not just black arts... all arts.... for all seasons. And to see it without seeing Baadasssss! would just be a waste. Mario's perspective is not only a wonderful, insightful entertainment, but another angle on a man that is almost beyond definition.

READER OF THE DAY: The biggest outpouring of e-mail, at a rate of about 10-1, was in support of my dislike of Crash. But I am a bit uncomfortable highlighting that since e-mail tends to come more from people who agree and those who disagree with me on Crash probably see me as a bit of a lost cause. (One reader went as far as withdrawing my name from Pulitzer consideration based on this and other wrongheaded criticism I have written this year.) And so, I will leave it to two examples, one positive and one negative, even if it does not represent the overall weight of what came over the electronic transom.

But before I do... one more point of irritation... the Gordon Parks cameo at the back of the bus at the end of the film... oy!

THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THESE LETTERS!!!

YURTLE'S MOM writes: "David, I was surprised to read that you hated Crash. I'm going to disagree with you on this one. It's not that I thought it was the greatest thing since white bread, but damn, it deserves better than you gave it. I won't argue your points, I'll offer this observation from my perspective instead... the movie is making many people think about their own racist attitudes. People leave the theater talking about it. To me, that's the sign of a film that has touched the audience in a positive way.

I consider myself an enlightened person, who had confronted her own latent racism long ago. I make a valiant effort to avoid thinking along those lines. But after watching Crash, I found some of the scenes had made me uncomfortable. They just cut a little too close to my bones. I realize I'm not quite as free of prejudice as I'd flattered myself into thinking I was.

I've had conversations with several other people who reacted the same way. This film has started a dialog, and that has to be for the good. I enjoyed most of the performances, I enjoyed being taken along on a twisting and turning carnival ride of a plot, and I want to see it again.

And the flip side comes from GLENDALE X: "For the first time, I think ever, I was compelled to walk out of a film. What surprised me (and it may surprise you as well) was which film it was. No, it wasn't some Hollywood Mega-Behemoth, nor was it an overly flatulent comedy, or even an Adam Sandler movie. This was a film that has been given a lot of praise by a lot of critics.

It was CRASH. Probably one of the most patronizing, most insulting films I've seen in years. And frankly, I can't believe the amount of praise it's getting, in particular from people like you. High-minded, intelligent, broad-minded Film critics.

Now, I know what you're going to stay. It's an edgy film. It's a dangerous film. It's meant to push buttons. That's not really my objection at all. The film really doesn’t say anything. (People look at race different. Big surprise!)

My problem is not in what it says, but how it says it.

Now, this was not a film that had to be scripted, and or directed by an African-American. I know that White America figures into the race equation as well, and should be allowed to say it's piece. For the record, White America been allowed to say WAY MORE than its piece, since the overwhelming number of filmed entertainment about this topic has been crafted by white filmmakers, writers, producers and directors. And by way of example, I have found the work of John Sayles (CITY OF HOPE & LONESTAR), and Television Shows like THE WIRE and HOMICIDE exemplary in this regard.

Again, let's not confuse the message with the messenger.

It is my understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong on this one) that the writer was carjacked himself, and wrote this piece as a meditation on race. Well, to be perfectly honest, it shows. It shows in the simplistic nature of the arguments made, the screaming matches from the female characters (one would think Mr. Haggis was channeling the recent work of Oliver Stone), and more over, the ending (from what I understand) was simply fantasy...a white man's fantasy.

Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe, I just don't get it.

Then again, I kind of doubt that. I'm African-American. I'm educated. I've lived in the middle class all my life, yet at the same time, I've lived on more of a racial firing line that Mr. Haggis ever has. I think about race every day. I have to. White America, I hate to say, only thinks about race when it's put face to face with it. Now, I don't mean that to be insulting. That's just a fact. White America doesn't have to live with it. It doesn't have to think about it.

(And I have to apologize. Here I am cracking on a film for how it handles race in America, and I'm going to wind up describing all the characters either by the actor's names or in very broad strokes. It's a faint irony, but one I hope you will forgive me for.)

For twenty minutes, I really thought I was in for something. I really thought I was being shown a new way to look at things. Watching the Larenz Tate and Ludacris characters reacting to an innocent gesture from Sandra Bullock was amazing. Watching the character of the Latino Locksmith peeled back, was breathtaking. These were parts of the film I was anxious to see.

In broad strokes, the movie's plot was strong. It's overarching ideas were good. But it is in its execution that the movie lost all credibility.

I knew we were in trouble when Thandie Newton stumbled out of her Lincoln Navigator to go Zsa Zsa on Matt Dillon's Racist Cop character. It was scenes like this, where the writer felt the need to FORCE the drama along that made me leave. There was simply no believable reason AT ALL for her to do what she did. And now, I don't buy the movie's excuse that she was drunk. No African-American who has ever lived in this country for more than fifteen seconds would ever do something like she did...period. Now, I would have been okay with this if they had made Mrs. Newton's character European or African, where she doesn't have this connect to the racial problems in America, and her husband did. Can you imagine that scene? Terrence Howard having to explain to his loving wife that there are just some things she can't do in America, and having that create a real divide among them. That makes the scene palatable, but they didn't go that direction did they? In fact, they made a bit of a deal about the relative noveau-riche backgrounds of both their characters. The closest thing he ever saw when it came to black people was the Cosby Show. "Just because I was in equestrian club" so on and so forth...

Every day of my life, as educated as I am, as provided for as I am, whenever I see the red and blue flashing lights, I know in my heart of hearts, all it takes for me to die is one Cop on a really, really bad day. My Father knows this, and he's a PhD in Math. It doesn't matter because deep down, a Cop doesn’t see who we are when he or she stops us. He sees a profile.

Any other movie, I'd have written it off. But for a movie that stakes its claim on the basis of showing America a new side of the racial equation, it's unacceptable for it to be this ignorant about how race actually works.

Again, with the big Cop-confrontation toward the end, I get the idea in broad strokes. But why not just have Ludacris leap into the car with Terrence Howard, and as they're stopped there the Cops show up and have to filter out who's Good citizen and who's bad guy. But for him to go on a suicidal binge, and for what exactly? He couldn't protect his wife from armed Cops? Tony Danza told him to change a line of dialogue and subtly threatened his job? Some of us call that every day life, and I guarantee you African-Americans in the real world know how to get through it.

If you're going to give me story about race, and supposedly show the human side...SHOW ME THE HUMAN SIDE. I got the human side of Matt Dillion. As racist as he was, I understood why he felt the way he felt. The Latino Locksmith, they showed me what he was about with his family and his new neighborhood. They showed me nothing of the Arab Shopkeeper, he was all rage, all screaming all the time. They showed me nothing of Sandra Bullock's character. (And someone please tell me how exactly someone of Brendan Fraser's age became District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles). Why did Don Cheadle's character turn on Jennifer Esposito's character like he did, racially?? I know the Filmmaker is trying to say that it's in all of us, but please, it ALL COMES FROM SOMEWHERE. He took the time with Matt Dillion's Character. He didn't virtually everywhere else.

Again, please don't give me editing, or running time as an excuse. You rise or fall depending on the choices you make up on screen, and Mr. Haggis, by hook or by crook chose not to give the audience that background.

I walked out right as the Arab Shopkeeper went after the Locksmith with the gun. I didn't stay to find out the gun was filled with blanks, I didn't care at that point. I decided I had better things to do with my time, than watch this garbage. My pal who stayed to the end, felt the same way I did. That it was a pure fantasy. But what really bugged me, and would have had me freaking out was the round of applause the film got as the credits rolled.

It's one thing for one guy to write and direct and picture like this. It's another thing a critic or two praise it. Such are the mores of individual tastes. But for a crowd of people (mostly white, and I guess limousine liberal, since I saw it at the Grove), to applaud this, and to think this shows an honest accounting of America's racial affairs, nothing could be sadder.

Hey, I'm willing to admit if I was wrong. I'm willing to hear another side to this, the side I missed. I'm not trying to get this letter published. I really want to know what it is you see. Because, frankly...I don't get it."


E-ME. What do you really think?