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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! "

Melvin Van Peebles

Cheating

Young

Together

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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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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" The artistic world is one of high nuance. "

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

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" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" Me and modesty don't mix. "

Melvin Van Peebles

Modesty

Mix

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

Melvin Van Peebles

Down

Speak