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" Blacks had a huge role in settling the West, but you'd never know it from Western movies. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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" Personally, I do movies the way I cook: I put in what I like in case nobody else likes it and I have to eat it for the rest of the week. "

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" Me and modesty don't mix. "

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" Our minds are not our friends when they realize we have work to do - they're our enemies. "

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" Music - some people just don't know that part of me. "

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" You've got to really check on what you're doing: check and recheck it seven other times to be prepared. Sometimes, people get carried away with the artistic-ness of the endeavor and don't quite have their game face on when the time comes. It's always a pretty costly mistake. "

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" Before me, music soundtracks were sort of afterthoughts. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" You have to not let yourself believe you can't. Do what you can do within the framework of what you have, and don't look outside - look inside. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" A bumblebee can't fly. He's aerodynamically unsound. But he doesn't know that. "

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" If you look down a barrel of a gun... you don't forget it. "

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" What some folks find funny, other folks find tragic. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" My first feature, I made in France. There's a great respect for the author there - they don't change your stuff. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Blacks are tired of seeing whites saying, 'I understand you.' You need a black to direct a black film. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I used to be the third person in the secret jets we had - they were secret at the time - a jet bomber that flew at immense heights carrying atomic bombs. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" If you give people something they want, they'll come and see it. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" When we talk about 'Sweetback,' yes, it stars the whole black movement, but it's also the first time an independent film made that kind of money and was that successful and taken seriously. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" The artistic world is one of high nuance. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" What happened when 'Sweetback' made all that money, the studios were in a very difficult position. They wanted the money, but they didn't the message. This marked the advent of the caricatures which became known as blaxploitation. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Many times, I get young people asking, 'What do you think about black movies?' And I say, 'What are you talking about? You mean Hollywood movies that have black people in them?' It's gone back to that, and that's not the same thing as a black movie. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" If I had to find one characteristic that is most symbolic of me, I think I am tenacious. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" There is a downside to affordable technology, and that's mediocrity. I mean, just 'cause you can afford it don't mean you can do it. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" Before I made 'Sweetback,' I had a three-picture deal with Columbia and enough juice, if I was real clever with it, to proclaim that I wanted to do an independent film. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I intend to stay dangerous. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" My life and career is defined by the constant pursuit of new forms of culture and self-expression. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" When I got to Paris, they welcomed me and showed my films. It was August of 1960, and I didn't have a penny in my pocket. But they had done something very dangerous: They had given me encouragement. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" The graphic novel is a great form that can be used to marry the book format with the movie. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" One day, I was sitting in a movie theater, and I said, 'What the hell? I can do better than that.' "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I'm from the Southside of Chicago. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I'm too short to play basketball and too nervous to steal. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" I didn't even know I had a legacy. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" No one - black, white, or any different - walks away from a three-picture deal with a studio. That's every filmmaker's dream. But it wasn't mine. "

Melvin Van Peebles