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" 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

Air Force

Restaurant

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

" I walk down the street; the garbagemen will shout at me, and we'll talk. That's a pleasure when people feel, 'If he can do it, I can, too.' "

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" As a navigator, I started studying astronomy because sometimes you're not able to use the equipment, so you'd have to do it the old-fashioned way, figuring out what you were seeing in the sky. "

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

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

" 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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" I work from a subjective palette. "

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

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" 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. "

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

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

" Scars are the price you pay for success. "

" 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! "

" Don't ask me something if you don't want to know. Because I will tell you. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It wasn't really me who invented rap. I stole the idea from Aristide Bruant. "

" When I was a kid, from 10 years old, I worked every day for my dad, huh? Never played basketball. I never played tennis - never did. We worked so that we could eat. "

" Truth of the matter is, I can't even read or write music. "

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

Melvin Van Peebles

Find

Think

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

" There's something on Wall Street called PIG - panic, ignorance, and greed. Those are the big sins. I'm not greedy, I knew I was ignorant, and I didn't panic. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I'm not a normal director. You can't look at me that way. What's kept me alive is my technical skill at doing other things. "

" 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.' "