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" Me and modesty don't mix. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

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

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

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" With 'Sweetback,' I just put it together a little bit at a time. I didn't do it on anybody's grant. I did it like any other young executive - by cheating and stealing! "

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" 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. "

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

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" I'm pretty much a loner. That's not good, bad, or indifferent. "

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" 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. "

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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.' "

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" I intend to stay dangerous. "

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

Melvin Van Peebles

" I've never been to film school. I had to leave this country to make a film. All they would let me do in Hollywood was be a messenger. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" When I was in the Air Force, if I walked into a restaurant, in about eight or nine minutes the M.P.'s would show up and drag me out because someone had called saying that someone was impersonating an officer. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

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" 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

" After 'Don't Play Us Cheap,' I got very busy with theater and Wall Street. "

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" 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

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

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" The key to empowerment is no more complicated than what Jesse Jackson said, 'We are somebody.' But the 'We are somebody' I would like to be in the larger sense: not just the urban African-American but homo sapiens in general - We are somebody. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

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

Melvin Van Peebles

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

Melvin Van Peebles

" Over time, you accumulate a lot of life material. "

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

" 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

" I work from a subjective palette. "

Melvin Van Peebles

" In trying to cross over to the mainstream, some people stopped writing what they witnessed. "

Melvin Van Peebles

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

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" Whitey is uptight about offending blacks without really knowing what offends blacks. "

Melvin Van Peebles