The most interesting man in the world? You won’t find him in a beer commercial. Until yesterday, he lived right across the street from me. The first time I met Melvin Van Peebles was after a knock-down, drag-out with the then 4-year-old progeny. That freezing cold morning, she refused to put on her coat. Well, I had to get her to pre-K and once she got cold enough, I figured, she would be grabbing that jacket right out of my hands. I put her in the stroller and we headed out the door.
“That child should have a coat on.” Who the hell is talking to me like that on the streets of New York? I whipped my head around. Melvin Van Peebles?! Isn’t that the guy who famously made his kid do a sex scene in a movie at age 13? You’re giving me parenting advice?! You’ve got to be kidding. He was not; not a hint of a smile on that well-seasoned face. “She shouldn’t be out in the cold like that.”
I had seen him around the neighborhood, usually early in the morning, just like now. He was slight and had a distinctive, though off-hand, kind of style. Jaunty, elegant even, but insouciant. I never saw him move too fast or show a great deal of effort but it always appeared that there was quite a bit going on there under the hood. We had a nodding acquaintance ever since the coat incident but it didn’t really go much farther than that. He seemed to show a special appreciation for Madame but I guess I couldn’t begrudge him that. I mean, after all, I know I did.
That probably would have been as much as he and I ever knew about one another but, as it happened, he involved my friends Burnt Sugar, the Arkestra Chamber, in a project that he was developing. It was to be a live stage show of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” his’ cinematic eruption that many like to credit with launching the entire blaxploitation movement. Certainly it had been (and continues to be) an enormous inspiration for independent filmmakers, Black artists and free thinkers of every stripe. I thought this event was something that we should document and Greg Tate and Jared Michael Nickerson of Burnt Sugar were kind enough to introduce me to the auteur.
After attending a number of rehearsals and a performance in Brooklyn, I was invited to Mr. Van Peebles’ place to discuss my proposal. I knew he lived in the neighborhood but it turned out that he actually lived right across 9th Avenue from me. I went over there that evening after dinner to tell him what I had in mind.
I could see very quickly that my proposal was not going to stand on its own merits unless he valued the person it was coming from. Maybe it was the years he had spent in Europe or just the fact that he was a generation older than me but this was not going to be a business discussion in the style to which I was accustomed. We were going to have to get to know one another first.
He was a very gracious host and we had an open, unguarded conversation. I asked him about the art that he had in his apartment He had a piece in the middle of his living room that was a recreation of a type of 3-dimensional skylight that is very familiar to NYC apartment building dwellers. It was accurate right down to the bird droppings on it, a feature of which he was particularly proud. We talked about his knighthood in the French Legion of Honor, the grand and ornate certificate for which, he showed me, was hanging inside a closet.
Eventually, we got around to discussing my idea of capturing this live stage show, an event of historical significance that I thought people would like to see. His mind wasn’t made up but he invited me to come back another night to continue our discussion. And why didn’t I bring a bottle of pink zinfandel and whatever I might like to drink? Mr. Van Peebles, if you’re drinking pink zin then so am I.
I went back with a few different bottles of wine and we continued from right where we left off. I found that there wasn’t a topic I could bring up that he couldn’t discuss in detail. The man was not just a groundbreaking filmmaker and novelist. He had been a San Francisco cable car gripman (a job requiring a legendary degree of strength and finesse), he had had a seat on the American Stock Exchange, he had been an air force pilot… I mean, come on! His truths were better than my lies. How was I supposed to keep up with this guy?
By now, we were truly in our cups. I know I was pretty lit up and he had as much to drink as I had, and I must have weighed fifty pounds more than him. it was a glorious, late-spring evening and we went out on his balcony. I told you that we lived half a block apart. Well, we both had balconies facing south, across midtown Manhattan, his on the 9th floor and mine on the 7th. The views were very similar but slightly different. As on my balcony, there was a clear view of hundreds of buildings. “Ya know,” I said, “the only reason I live in Manhattan is because I love looking in people’s windows!” (which happens to be true, although I don’t usually say it out loud). “You’re sick, you know that?!,” said Melvin, “You’re a real sicko!” And with that, he went inside the apartment and left me sitting there by myself. Suddenly it was dead quiet. What did I say? Why did I say that? I thought it sounded funny, in a slightly rude way, but I obviously offended this guy. So am I supposed to slink away now? Just totter home in defeat and ignominy? The guy has been gone for I-don’t-know-how-long… Just then he plops down in the seat next to me and hands me the biggest pair of binoculars I have ever seen. They looked like military surplus from Viet Nam. I picked them up and suddenly I was practically inside someone’s apartment on 53rd Street. Melvin was laughing like a hyena.
We went back in the house, poured another glass, and continued talking. Finally, we talked about the idea that had brought me to him in the first place. He had absolutely no interest in allowing anyone else to share in any aspect of his work. He had produced and directed all of his own projects and he didn’t see any reason to include anyone else in it so his answer was no. I accepted that and thanked him for hearing me out.
After that, we went right on talking and drinking, drinking and talking. I thought about inviting him to do a Deep Focus with me. In this kind of situation, rather than telling someone about the show and asking them to do it with me, I try to steer the conversation to the type of music that I play; I look for a glimmer of passion on the part of my prospective guest. To my surprise, I didn’t see it in him so I left the topic alone (I was also surprised that, considering all the pictures I had seen of him with cigars, he wasn’t more enthusiastic about them, either. He told me that he mostly chewed them, rather than smoking them).
Having turned the conversation to music, I asked him about a song of his that I have always loved, “The Apple Stretching.” He told me all about it: what it was about (morning in NYC), how Grace Jones had come to cover it; he even told me how he had written it. He took me over to the upright piano in the hallway on the way to the kitchen and there on the keyboard were sticky colored dots. He explained that he didn’t know a thing about music but he used the color coding to communicate the notes that he picked out for the song.
To hear him tell it, everything Melvin Van Peebles had done in his life, he had done just that way. He had a casual disregard for the conventional ways of doing things and he just followed his ambitions and his imagination. You didn’t necessarily see the enormous effort that it must have taken for him to have accomplished all that he had in that fashion but you could certainly see the results. Fame and fortune didn’t just fall in his lap.
He was always gracious to me after that and I could usually count on seeing him around the block if I got up early enough. He was definitely a morning person. I was just thinking about him last Friday as I walked by his building, on the way back from FedEx. I even asked his doorman how he was, something I had never done before. “I can’t say,” was the response.
Here’s Grace Jones’s version of “The Apple Stretching.”
No, it ain’t judgement day
No, it ain’t armageddon
It’s just the apple stretching and yawning, just morning
New york putting its feet on the floor