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" I said to my kids, 'Learn the business of America if you want to be an artist in America. The rest of that stuff, the art part, you could pick up in an hour and a half.' "

Melvin Van Peebles

You

Art

America

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" I was getting my Ph.D. in Holland - I speak Dutch - for a number of years before I moved to France because I had one of those offers you couldn't turn down. They offered me to come and do my films. "

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" Somebody once asked me, 'Melvin, how'd you get to the top?' It was simple. Nobody would let me in at the bottom. "

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

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

" Making 'Sweetback' took an exorbitant amount of energy and time. "

" 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. "

" Why not have fun, man? If I feel like doing something, I just go ahead and do it. "

" 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. "

" I work from a subjective palette. "

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

" It must be horrible to do things that you don't like hoping to please other people, and they don't like it either, and you've got to eat it. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I have no illusions about running. I hate running. If I could feel as good as I felt at 30 without running, I wouldn't do it, but that's not the way it works! So - no pain, no gain. "

" I do what I want to do. "

Melvin Van Peebles

Want

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The studios didn't really take independent films seriously, till 'Sweetback' was such a financial success. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I went to a number of schools when I was a kid on the south side of Chicago. "

" In the morning, I get the paper. I look in the obituary column. If I don't see myself in there, I get up. "

Melvin Van Peebles

Look

See

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

" Big publishers want you to change this and change that. I'd rather go to a little publisher - who needs the tsuris. "

Melvin Van Peebles

Big

You

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

Melvin Van Peebles

Music

Sort

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

Melvin Van Peebles

Find

Think