The title of Mario Van Peeble's Baadasssss is spelled as it is because the MPAA doen't permit the inclusion of the word ass in a title; apparently, one simply has to add an extra bit of syllabance and the word is something completely different. That ridiculous rule is as it was when Melvin's father made Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song in 1971; back then, though, a film in which a black antihero, not all that different from Dirty Harry Callahan, kills a crooked white cop and gets away with it was the type which the MPAA would slap with an X-rating without a second thought. Their solution to that problem was simple: in their eyes, Melvin should have continued making films like The Watermelon Man, comedies about black people that made white people happy. Melvin's solution was even simpler. "Fuck 'em," he said.

That's what he said to the studios, to his agent, to the lilywhite unions, to the producers who reneged on their promises, to everyone who didn't want to see a black filmmaker make a serious film about a black guy ("serious as cancer" was how he put it) who didn't die in the end. He made the film in twenty days, starring himself so that he wouldn't have to pay an actor, using his own money and also some of his friend Bill Cosby's to keep the ragtag production going on a day to day to basis; when it was done, distributors wouldn't look at it. Later, it was released in a single theater in Detroit and went on to break box office records.

I've only seen bits of Melvin's film. There are fragments of it included here, and I've seen other parts in documentaries. It's about as rough as rough gets, but it made its point, and the same goes for his this, his son Mario's film about the production. It is itself a low budget affair, and it shows, but his approach is so enthused and fired up that the film's imperfections, like the title, feel tantamount to revolution. It gets you riled up in all the right ways and leaves you feeling like you've witnessed something really important (as opposed to the recreation of something really important that it actually is).

The film begins with Melvin's agent (Saul Rubinek) telling him that he needs to choose a follow up project to The Watermelon Man, which had been a big hit for the studio. Melvin goes out to the desert and hatches the idea for Sweetback. He writes the script; no studio will touch it, and he can't find a legitimate investor. Slashing salaries and days from the schedule, he pools his savings, his kids' college money and whatever else he can scrounge together and shoots his movie.

Mario was inspired to make this film after playing Malcom X in Ali (that film's director, Michael Mann, is a producer here). He plays his father; or, to indulge in a cliche that's very appropriate here, he becomes him; there's a madness and anger in his performance that's hard to fake, and to an extent, he seems to be taking this opportunity to heal old wounds. The Melvin he portrays loved his two kids (including a young Mario played by Khleo Thomas) but did not shield them from anything, including his own worst moments. Much is made of their refusal to call him 'dad.' In one of the most unsettling moments, he coerces Mario, who was only thirteen at the time, to act in a sex scene in his film.

There's a lot of sex in his movie, which was another first; he convinces one actress to bare it all, telling her that black culture needs its first Marilyn Monroe. Melvin wanted the film to be raw and unabashedly sexy, but he also had an ulterior motive for all the skin: if the unions thought he was making a porn film, they wouldn't disrupt his shoot. This meant that he could hire whomever he wanted, and what he wanted was a salt and pepper crew. The co-producer of the film, Bill Harris (Rainn Wilson), is a white stoner, the B-camera operator (Paul Rodriguez) is hispanic, and one of the more endearing running subplots is the relationship between the old white sound recordist and his hulking black boom operator (Terry Crews). He's admittedly a pain to work for, but his passion -- the fact that he knows that this film has to, needs to be made -- is a spark that catches under his crew, and under the audience too; when the film finally hits the big screen and the three people that buy tickets end up walking out, our hearts sink to our feet, even though we know that things are going to turn around.

When they do, it provokes a familiar sort of exhilaration; certainly this is a classic underdog story, and the script follows the same basic plotline as Tim Burton's brilliant Ed Wood -- except that Ed Wood never made a movie that could actually have been considered important. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song lead to other, more slickly produced films in the genre that became dubbed 'blaxpoitation.' Granted, stereotypes still abound -- the film suggests that African American moviegoers were too open to stupid and demeaning comedies, and there are more than a few of those still being made today -- but until Melvin came along with this film, there wasn't an option (well, aside from another influential 1971 film, Cotton Comes To Harlem, directed by Ossie Davis, who appears here as Melvin's father).

The film is punctuated by interviews with and testimonials from the various people involved -- Harris, Cosby, Mario's sister, members of Earth, Wind and Fire, among many others. Not the real ones, but the actors playing them, which is an odd tactic until the end credits role and we see the real folks, as they are now, talking with genuine warmth and enthusiasm about the experience, about the bounced checks and black dildos and nights in jail and, above all, the joy of having been involved in something that was such a cultural watershed. Baadasssss gives us a pretty good taste of that feeling.