HR0242 96TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0242 LRB096 12188 KXB 24672 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The cinema is just one medium in which the multi-talented Melvin Van Peebles has distinguished himself; after serving a stint in the United States Air Force, he lived in Mexico where he worked as a portrait painter in the mid-1950s; he made his first short films ("Sunlight" and "Three Pickup Men for Herrick", 1958) while working in a San Francisco post office; and he went on to live in Holland and France, and earned his living as a crime reporter in Paris, where he also began writing French language novels; and

WHEREAS, He made his feature debut adapting his novel, "La Permission/The Story of a Three-Day Pass" (1967), the story of a romance between an American Negro soldier and a French girl; it was selected as the French entry in the 1968 San Francisco Film Festival; some American reviewers embraced the picture as a promising directorial debut; choosing between various offers from American studios, he returned to the United States to direct and score a hilarious, sharp-edged comedy, "Watermelon Man" (1970), about a white bigot (played by comedian Godfrey Cambridge in whiteface) who one day wakes up black; though still a crowd-pleaser, some contemporary reviewers deemed it a one joke movie that was too broadly played; and

WHEREAS, The year before, he had recorded his first album, "Br'er Soul", which has been subsequently cited as a precursor to rap music; he independently produced, directed, wrote, scored, and was the star in his best known film, the tough, controversial "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" (1971), a violent, frenzied, and exceedingly stylized tale of a black superstud on the run from the police; "Sweetback" cost $500,000 to make (including $50,000 borrowed from Bill Cosby) and grossed over $14 million; opening to mixed reviews ranging from adoration from the hipsters to cautious condemnation from both the black and non-black critical establishment, the film's reputation has only grown with time; "dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who have had enough of the Man", "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" is an art film in the guise of an exploitation flick; and

WHEREAS, Melvin Van Peebles favored gritty zoom photography, multiple exposures, and hallucinatory colors; the movie has been hailed as one of the first films to define an African-American esthetic; in any event, it certainly helped to usher in the edgy "Blaxploitation" movies of the 70s and established Van Peebles as a folk hero; and

WHEREAS, After having worked in three vastly different styles of filmmaking (European art, American studio, and independent), Mr. Van Peebles moved on to other interests; he shone on the musical stage in the 70s with "Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death" and "Don't Play Us Cheap" (a 1972 film version languished on the shelf for 18 years), which contributed to the growing black presence on Broadway; Mr. Van Peebles segued to television, scripting and composing the title song for a TV-movie pilot for MTM Enterprises entitled "Just an Old Sweet Song" (CBS, 1976); Cicely Tyson and Robert Hooks starred in this drama about a Detroit family that is strongly affected by a two-week vacation down South; he reworked the project into an hour-long special entitled "Down Home" (CBS, 1978) which replaced Ms. Tyson with Madge Sinclair but again failed to get picked up; in between, he wrote the screenplay for "Greased Lightning" (1977), a low-budget biopic starring Richard Pryor as Wendell Scott, the first black racecar driver; and

WHEREAS, Melvin Van Peebles experience in the arts taught him that often the most challenging aspect of creation was financing a given project; with this in mind, he tried his hand at commodities trading where he enjoyed success in the 1980s; he even authored a financial self-help guide entitled "Bold Money: A New Way to Play the Options Market" (1986); and

WHEREAS, Melvin Van Peebles son, Mario, worked as a model and first gained celebrity as an actor in films and television; he starred as "Sonny Spoon" (NBC, 1988), a quirky short-lived detective series from producer Steven J. Cannell; the show afforded the elder Van Peebles his first gig as a recurring character on a television series as he played Spoon's bartender father; and

WHEREAS, Melvin Van Peebles again collaborated with his son (who scripted, co-produced, and starred) on "Identity Crisis" (1989), his first feature helming effort in 17 years; a broad farce about a young straight black American rapper who gets reincarnated in the same body with a gay white French fashion designer, the film bombed commercially and critically; he played a supporting role in the mostly black Western "Posse" (1993), directed by his son; Mr. Van Peebles returned to the spotlight with "Panther" (1995), a fictionalized chronicle of the rise of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, which he produced with Mario (who directed), scripted from his unpublished novel, and appeared in a small role; the modestly budgeted feature opened to mixed reviews, disappointing box office, and blistering attacks from both the political left and right; controversy arose from the many liberties the film took with the historical record for dramatic purposes; and

WHEREAS, Though none of his subsequent work has had a comparable impact to "Sweetback", he has remained visible as an actor in a variety of film and television projects; he has become an iconic presence in films by a younger generation of black filmmakers; his relatively brief film career is less important for its artistic finesse than for the fact that his grittier-than-Hollywood portraits of black America somehow made it through the system; in 1990, New York's Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective of his works; and

WHEREAS, Melvin Van Pebbles is the loving husband of Maria Marx and is the proud father of Mario; he attended West Virginia State College and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio Wesleyan University; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we honor Melvin Van Pebbles for his extensive body of work and wish him all the best in his future endeavors; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to Melvin Van Pebbles as a symbol of our respect and esteem.