The Girl With the Baadasssss!
The Girl with the Pearl Earring and Baadasss! (both now on DVD)... you couldn't think up two more dissimilar settings, but the themes are almost identical - the struggle between the artist and the powers that be. Girl With the Pearl Earring is a fictional story about the subject of a famous Vermeer painting. I discussed the book in several book groups. It was a favorite, had all the earmarks; female protagonist that was overlooked in regular history... but we modern women see how things looked through their oppressed eyes (in contrast to our own....) The girl, and Vermeer, himself were completely subject to the personal, corrupt whims of the one wealthy patron in town.
In Baadasssss!, Melvin Van Peoples had to go to extraordinary lengths to get a film made, including turning his social conscious-raising, groundbreaking (for example, music was far more integral and blacks had never been portrayed so militantly before, paving the way for Shaft etc.) film into a porno flick in '71, because as a black man, even one of the most powerful black men in Hollywood at the time.... it was what he had to do to get it made. So, as MVP, the son, who made the movie, in referring to the state of change that occurred between the making of his father's film and his own, said, "Plus ca change, plus ca res meme". The more things change, the more things remain the same.
But....not always. In the struggle between art and money, art sometimes wins. When? When the real power asserts itself, i.e., when the public demands it. The context of Melvin's original film is the perfect illustration. He got nothing from the studios, even though, at the time, they were selling themselves off for parts because they refused to make relevant films. The studio system was dying and in it's place independent young auteurs like Beatty, Spielberg, Peckinpaugh, Hill, Scorcese, Lucas & Coppolla were capturing the market. There is a great film about this called "Easy Riders and Raging Bulls". The studios tried to pump out musicals and bedroom farces while kids were being beaten in the streets and they just could not sell it anymore. Every time the infrastructure gets too big and arrogant, they sow the seeds of their own undoing. Yin/yang... eternal truth. Pride goeth before the fall. It happened to film in the 70's, it's happening to music now.
In addition to the above themes, the film sheds light on the extreme state of racism that existed in Hollywood at the time (not that it's much different today) and pervaded not only the town itself and the ability of non-whites to work, but the images portrayed and the attitudes which disseminate from Hollywood to the rest of the world. Melvin relied on something which existed at that time and then somehow fell apart... a somewhat organized underground. It provided him with a guerilla MO and an audience. He succeeded at getting the film made and it went on to become the top-grossing independent film made that year.
It grossed $15M at $1./ticket which translates into a $120M film today, a hit by any standards, particularly given the cost of the film, which Mario won't disclose, but was probably pretty low. Melvin had some major names work on his film, basically for free, out of respect for the project and its pedigree.
In Baadasssss!, Melvin Van Peoples had to go to extraordinary lengths to get a film made, including turning his social conscious-raising, groundbreaking (for example, music was far more integral and blacks had never been portrayed so militantly before, paving the way for Shaft etc.) film into a porno flick in '71, because as a black man, even one of the most powerful black men in Hollywood at the time.... it was what he had to do to get it made. So, as MVP, the son, who made the movie, in referring to the state of change that occurred between the making of his father's film and his own, said, "Plus ca change, plus ca res meme". The more things change, the more things remain the same.
But....not always. In the struggle between art and money, art sometimes wins. When? When the real power asserts itself, i.e., when the public demands it. The context of Melvin's original film is the perfect illustration. He got nothing from the studios, even though, at the time, they were selling themselves off for parts because they refused to make relevant films. The studio system was dying and in it's place independent young auteurs like Beatty, Spielberg, Peckinpaugh, Hill, Scorcese, Lucas & Coppolla were capturing the market. There is a great film about this called "Easy Riders and Raging Bulls". The studios tried to pump out musicals and bedroom farces while kids were being beaten in the streets and they just could not sell it anymore. Every time the infrastructure gets too big and arrogant, they sow the seeds of their own undoing. Yin/yang... eternal truth. Pride goeth before the fall. It happened to film in the 70's, it's happening to music now.
In addition to the above themes, the film sheds light on the extreme state of racism that existed in Hollywood at the time (not that it's much different today) and pervaded not only the town itself and the ability of non-whites to work, but the images portrayed and the attitudes which disseminate from Hollywood to the rest of the world. Melvin relied on something which existed at that time and then somehow fell apart... a somewhat organized underground. It provided him with a guerilla MO and an audience. He succeeded at getting the film made and it went on to become the top-grossing independent film made that year.
It grossed $15M at $1./ticket which translates into a $120M film today, a hit by any standards, particularly given the cost of the film, which Mario won't disclose, but was probably pretty low. Melvin had some major names work on his film, basically for free, out of respect for the project and its pedigree.
posted by Intervision at 4:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home