Taking Confessions

Last month, I spoke with film director Melvin Van Peebles shortly before his 77th birthday; during our interview, he mentioned more careers than eight decades would seem to allow. Aside from helming the influential 1970s films Watermelon Man and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, he’s penned a Tony-nominated Broadway musical, worked as a trader for the American Stock Exchange and been a crime reporter in France—to list just a few of his résumé credits. His latest film, the picaresque Confessions of a Ex-Doofus-Itchy-Footed Mutha, has its Chicago premiere this week.

Time Out Chicago: In Confessions, you play the main character from boyhood on. Did you base his experiences on your own?
Melvin Van Peebles: Well, yyyes. [Laughs] What is it, the law when they can’t indict you anymore? But I’ve lived most of these lives, yes.

TOC: As in Sweet Sweetback, sexuality plays a strong role here: a young guy on a sexual-awakening journey.
MVP: Once, I was making a documentary in an insane asylum in France, and there was this woman who was anorexic. She would steal food and then spit it out. The doctor said, “Oh, she thinks she’s the Virgin Mary.” Nowhere in the Bible does anybody take a crap. If she ate, she’d take a crap. All these stories, you never see people doing bodily functions.

TOC: So you’re just showing that bodily function.
MVP: No biggie if you don’t make it a biggie.

TOC: I read that in Sweet Sweetback, the sex scenes were actual sex scenes. Truth or myth?
MVP: Um, I can’t answer that directly, except I did catch a case of the clap shooting that film. And you know what I did? I called my union and asked for compensation. They were so [Laughs] flabbergasted, they gave it to me! Instead of buying penicillin, I bought more film.

TOC: Your son Mario was also in that film—
MVP: He didn’t catch the clap, no. He was only 11 or 12.

TOC: But he did have a sex scene. Not too young?
MVP: Well, he thought he was. He said to me, “Dad, this is gonna be X-rated or R, right?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Whew, so the kids at school won’t see me.”

TOC: Sweet Sweetback is seen as a seminal film in black cinema—
MVP: No.

TOC: No?
MVP: No, it’s seen as seminal in independent film. No independent film had made money before. It started the independent-film movement. I’m the godfather of, what do you call that, blaxploitation, but also of The Blair Witch Project.

TOC: A big claim.
MVP: Look it up. Nobody could get to the toilet before me.

TOC: From what I’ve read, you had quite an adventure shooting that film.
MVP: A lot of adventures, but it was calm compared to flying jet bombers.

TOC: Which you also did?
MVP: I was on the semisecret jet bombers. We were in a war with the Russians, the Cold War, and we had the B-47, and it only had room for three people. I flew around with this atomic bomb at the back of my head.

TOC: How old were you?
MVP: Once, the plane was having a very bad day, some of the engines caught on fire, and I remember praying, “Oh, Lord, just let me make it to 23.”

TOC: Speaking of adventures, you were also the first black stock-options trader on Wall Street?
MVP: Yep, the American Stock Exchange. A lot of my friends worked on Wall Street. We were discussing the money to be made on something, and somebody says, “Wait a minute. I’ll get to the computer.” And I said, “I can do that”—I did the numbers in my head. One of my friends said, “You can do that?” One day we had a bet about something, and he says, “If you lose, you gotta go work on Wall Street.” I lost the bet.

TOC: When did this happen?
MVP: Now we’re talking the ’80s. I was pretty successful. In fact, I did a technical book which was a best-seller called Bold Money. I found it quite funny to do the book.

TOC: You’ve worn a lot of hats, just like the guy in Confessions.
MVP: Yeah, yeah, I have the French Legion of Honor. You can’t get any higher than that in France. I’m big shit there.

TOC: To get back to the films: Before Sweetback, of course, was Watermelon Man, the story of a white man who wakes up black.
MVP: Before that was The Story of a Three Day Pass. I came back to the United States in 1967 to the San Francisco Film Festival as one of the French delegates. No one knew I was an American, let alone black. And then the film won Critics’ Choice. That was very embarrassing to Hollywood because, since the advent of sound, it never had any serious black feature making. Here I was a French director who was actually an American whose name sounded like he was a Dutchman. [Laughs] I was then offered a lot of jobs by Hollywood to cover up the thing, but I wouldn’t take it because I felt my presence was more of a threat outside. It was at that juncture that two African Americans were suddenly given a chance: Gordon Parks and Ossie Davis. That was the first breach in the lily-white situation in Hollywood. I had no money or anything, I was on a park bench, I didn’t even have enough money to get back to France. [Laughs] Hollywood kept after me to come make a film, and then I agreed to make Watermelon Man.

TOC: You’ve only made a few films since Sweet Sweetback—what kept you from directing more?
MVP: Well, I had a three-picture deal with Columbia after I did Watermelon Man, but they’d be giving me their ideas, and that’s not what I wanted to do. I said, “I know what the audience wants,” and then I made Sweet Sweetback. Of course, then Columbia tore up my contract, and I was ostracized, etcetera, etcetera. [Laughs] That’s when I went to Broadway and did Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, which was nominated for seven Tonys.

TOC: What do you think of Hollywood today, its treatment of black characters, black directors?
MVP: It’s improved a bit, doors opening slightly, but the golden rule in Hollywood is: Whoever has the gold makes the rules. I mean, it’s very nice: “Oh, Mr. Van Peebles, you’ve done this, that,” and I’m always getting these medals. But this movie, nobody would come in with me, I got to do it all myself. Okay.

TOC: You were born in Chicago—how long did you live here?
MVP: My dad had a tailor shop on 58th Street; that was until I was about ten years old. Then we moved to the suburbs: Harvey, Phoenix. But I still worked every day for my dad in the ’hood.

TOC: What do you remember of Chicago?
MVP: I can tell you one thing: Before I was 11, just looking out the window on 58th Street, I’d seen nine people killed. But it was an everyday occurrence. You just accepted it.

TOC: Any thoughts on turning 77?
MVP: Look, here’s what I do: In the morning, I get my paper delivered. If I’m not in the obituary column, I get my ass up.

TOC: How will you celebrate?
MVP: I’ll get laid maybe, if I get lucky.

TOC: How does that go for you these days?
MVP: Great. From a kid, I’ve just been lucky. One time, this lady was chasing me, and my daughter turned on the woman, she said, “What do you see in this little twerp?” The woman said, “Mm, honey, you just don’t know.”

TOC: So what do the ladies see in you?
MVP: I haven’t the slightest fucking idea. No pun intended. [Laughs]

Confessions plays at Facets Friday 4–September 10.

More film