Black Rodeo: the cinematic wild west re-envisioned

Mia Mask: You, and your father before you, have become Hollywood legends for bucking the system and changing the game. Melvin Van Peebles was a visionary who changed the game in the 1970s. You succeeded him with your film and television work, beginning in the 1990s. Now you have your own production company, MVP. Can we talk about when you formed MVP and what kinds of stories and characters inspire you today?

Mario Van Peebles: My father once said, “Some fathers will teach you how to play ball. I don’t play ball well… so, I’ll try to teach you how to own the team.” He taught us that “pretty is temporary, dumb is forever”. Take a little time to understand the whole game. If you’re in cinema, it’s not just writing and acting. It’s also understanding directing and producing and how that artform can be realised, and [whether] your vision can be delivered in a way that doesn’t require you to take the dominant culture’s money and therefore put out the dominant culture’s vision. It may be a vision where your people are the exotic backdrop. I had an advantage. I grew up with someone who knew how to do that.

Yes.

It encouraged my creativity. I’m mixed with everything. My mom ain’t white – she’s neon white!

Oh, really? OK.

[Laughing] Having white and Black and Brown – and all the flavours in my family – I felt like my own family had all the colours. When I make a film, I like to paint with all the colours. My father showed me that it was possible. My mother helped me to dream. And my father helped me to wake up and realise the dream.

I remember once I was in New York City with dad. It was a rainy night. It felt like a magical evening. Someone came up behind us and said: “Excuse me, Mr Van Peebles…I love your work.” We both turned around.

Exactly. I was going to ask, who turned around?

And he said, “Sometimes I go to the movies and I’m entertained. Sometimes I go to the movies and I learn something. It’s an evolution in consciousness. And sometimes, I go to the movies and I come out proud to be a person of colour. With your movies, I get all three.”

That’s impactful.

And that was it. We were saying, “Let’s entertain. Let’s edu-tain. Let’s show our wonderful diversity as Americans as a strength” – which it is. I understand right now… when they’re literally erasing history from websites about folks of colour and women every day. They can remove it from the books. But the Van Peebles family puts it on the screen. We put truth on the big and small screen. You’re going to face ‘isms’ – lookism, sexism, racism, classism – in any field. Go into the field you love and make changes within that. That’s what we try to do.

Because you brought up the political climate, I’ll ask you now: how is the current climate impacting your work? In movies like Posse [1993], you brilliantly wove in references to the Rodney King beating. You addressed various social issues. You utilised Rodney King’s statement: “Why can’t we all get along?” as spoken by actor Nipsey Russell. In Outlaw Posse [2024] there are references to the political climate. Are there specific ways the current climate is weighing on you?

Yeah, the climate does a couple of things. First, it lets you know who they are. The reason they take down websites that show people of colour who were heroes in the military is because they feel Black excellence, or Brown excellence, or female excellence is a threat. They fear Black excellence might lead to political dominance; that Brown excellence might lead somewhere. An America where we’re all fairly represented is a threat.

If you look at my films, from my westerns – and going back to New Jack City in 1991 – my New Jack cops were played by actors like Russell Wong. He’s a great-looking Asian brother. Or Judd Nelson, a Jewish brother. Our prosecutor was a beautiful dark-skinned sister [Phyllis Yvonne Stickney]. That is real. When you look at Outlaw Posse, Stagecoach Mary [played by Whoopi Goldberg] is a fact. Sister Stagecoach Mary had her own stagecoach line running up through Montana. That’s a historical fact… When you’re actively trying to erase that history, it’s because that history is a threat.

I remember talking with my dad about his film Sweetback [Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, 1971]. Sweetback wore a wide brim hat. He didn’t use many words. Sweetback was a sepia Gary Cooper. If he had been white, it would have been a Clint Eastwood role. Basically, he’s a guy saying, “I’m not going to take it… don’t try me.”

In the western, you’re going back to a time – which they may be going back to again – wherein appropriating Native American land was legal. Disenfranchising women was legal. Destroying nature was legal. Enslaving Black people was legal. So, the outlaw line in our movie is: “When the laws are unjust, sometimes the just got to be outlaws.”

You’re taking iconic imagery the dominant culture wanted and building it up. After all, the term ‘cowboy’ was used for Black men. They called Black men ‘boys’ no matter their age. It came from: “Take care of the cows, boy… take care of the horses, boy!” The white guys were called ‘rough riders’.

Or ‘cow hands’ and ‘ranch hands’.

It wasn’t until cowboys became something Hollywood would glorify that white guys wanted to be cowboys. It would be like if everyone wanted to be a rapper so you create a history in which all rappers looked like Eminem. The Eminem phenomenon is true, but it’s an anomaly. We forget that heavyweight champs look like Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson and Jack Johnson. Hollywood makes them look like Rocky. The dominant culture inserts itself in a dominant way in the narrative.

Part of the liberation of what my dad and I do – and not just me with my own kids, but our brothers and sisters like the Avas [DuVernay], the Spikes [Lee], the [John] Singletons – is ensure we are represented in various ways. We have the right to see ourselves reflected on the big screen. That’s empowering. My dad and I always talked about the modern-day coloniser. They don’t just put chains on your body. The chains are on your mind. The way to free your mind is to control your own imagery.

Your westerns, particularly Outlaw Posse, seem to pay homage to Italian westerns. I’m thinking of the brilliant credit sequence and elements of the soundtrack. Your characters [Jesse Lee in Posse and Chief in Outlaw Posse] wear clothing that evokes Sergio Corbucci films and Sergio Leone films. They evoke Clint Eastwood’s ‘Man with No Name’ in the Dollars trilogy [1964-66]. Were you in conversation with Italian westerns?

Interesting. When I made Posse, I thought, “We as a people find a way out of no way. We’ll take the scraps from their table, and we’ll make soul food. We’ll take their hymns and make gospel music.” I wondered how we do that cinematically? Cinema is tricky because it’s such an expensive medium. Hip-hop artists like Wu-Tang Clan can whip up a hit without all that money. There’s power in that. 

What we’ve done in music, I want to do in cinema. I’m going to put John Ford on that turntable and Sergio Leone on this turntable and mix it up. When I did Outlaw Posse, it occurred to me that Leone also – to some degree – borrowed from us. Not just borrowed from John Ford. He borrowed from Black folks – my dad in particular.

For example, dad got Earth, Wind & Fire to do the soundtrack for Sweetback. Every movie Hollywood made afterwards – for Black audiences – had to have a dope theme song. The movie had a head nod. The main character had a cool theme song. Whether it was Shaft [1971] or Super Fly [1972]…

…Or Coffy [1973], Foxy Brown [1974] and Sheba, Baby [1975].

Yes. Right around that time you had spaghetti westerns coming along. And he’s [Leone’s] thinking, “Oh, we’re going to have a dope theme song.”

Yes. But the very first Italian westerns emerged in the 1960s. A Fistful of Dollars was 1964. Still… your point is well taken. Rock and roll was Black music. Rhythm and blues was Black music. Both entered mainstream consciousness via the airwaves and were informing movies as early as 1955. I’m thinking of Blackboard Jungle’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’. Early rock and roll music was derived from Chuck Berry and his contemporaries. That sound also came from Little Richard, Etta James and Otis Blackwell, among others. Blackwell was the songwriter behind Elvis’s greatest hits. That history is not disputed. Much of the early rhythm-and-blues-turned-rock sound [created by Berry, Richard, James and Blackwell among others] was co-opted by mainstream artists.

But here’s where it gets interesting. America is a funny place because there’s a dividing line. We’re looking on their side of the tracks. They’re looking on our side of the tracks. If we get the Jacksons, they go: “Damn, look at them cats dance.” Then, they want to get The Osmonds. We get Chuck Berry. They want Elvis.

Exactly.

Basically, they want to find their white equivalent of us… because they measure their talent comparatively. For example, in early Shirley Temple movies, the way they demonstrated she could really dance was to place her in a room full of Black folks. Then, some old Black guy would say, “You sho’ did good, Little Missy.”

Yes, well, in interviews, she’s admitted that Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson significantly developed her talent. There’s a lot of historical literature on her career.

The way you measured how cool you were in America, because we’re always comparing, was: could you hang with Black folks? Did Black folks think you were cool? What they wanted, to some degree, was white folks that could move and look like us.

Heck, that reminds me of blackface…

It was about who was cool. That’s why you get Tarantino’s work. No white guy [in real life] would be able to sit around for very long and call Sam Jackson the N-word 18 times!

Point well taken. The ‘cool pose’ performed by an Eastwood in the Italian films is coming out of America, from Black popular culture.

That hat. The brim. The coolness. Eastwood is very aware that he’s a jazz guy… But when I look at spaghetti westerns and listen to the soundtracks, and listen to the theme song of Shaft, it’s right in there. We stand on the shoulders of – and are inspired by – each other. If you look at Diva [1981] – I watch French cinema… you’ll see my references come from there too. I’m inspired by all of it.

As was your father.

As was my dad, yes. I was inspired by some of what the Italian filmmakers did to what we thought was our very American genre. But I’m also inspired by what we did. When making Outlaw Posse, I was talking to my composer. I said I want this theme song to have roots in 1970s Black Power and badass cinema, but to be flavoured with the western. I wanted it to be conscious. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear it’s got some 808-up underneath. You could easily bump a rap jam right up underneath it [laughs]. I wanted instrumentation with western roots, African roots and Native American roots – to acknowledge the beauty of that. I wanted our Native American brothers and sisters to be played like royalty. They were culturally and spiritually advanced.

They were beyond the commodification and ownership of land and animals.

The colonisers said, “We inherited the land from our forefathers after we stole it from the Native Americans.” Whereas Native Americans say, “No, you borrowed from our children.” It’s a very different mindset.

One parting question about Black masculinity: has it changed over time? When I think about the evolution of the western, I also think about the evolution of masculinity or masculinities. I’m thinking about different kinds of male role models, different kinds of westerns. Films like Sergeant Rutledge [1960], Rio Conchos [1964], 100 Rifles [1969], Buck and the Preacher [1972] and beyond. I’m wondering about masculinity in relation to the genre.

That’s a great question. One of the things that I wanted was that the character I play in Outlaw Posse; although he’s not the same guy he was in Posse because it’s a different film – there were roots in it. In Outlaw Posse this man has grown. He’s beaten up by life. He’s a survivor. We have had great Jewish comedians and African American comedians because we’ve had to survive trauma. To survive trauma, you must be resilient. Part of that resilience is outlook; your zeitgeist; your perspective on life… having a sense of humour!

The character Chief in Outlaw Posse is a cat that’s grown. He’s got perspective. He’s got a sense of humour. He finally gets a horse and a gun, but then his horse is stolen. He meets Ossie [Edward James Olmos]. When Chief sees the horses have gone missing, Ossie laughs and explains that the local Aboriginal people liberated the horses. This tribe doesn’t believe human beings have the right to own any of God’s creatures. Furthermore, this tribe liberated Ossie’s wife from slavery. You don’t see many westerns wherein someone experiences that kind of growth within a mixed community. This begs the question: how are we treating God’s other creatures? If you look at the end of Outlaw Posse, we listed all our four-legged friends who were in the movie. Most westerns don’t do that.

In a money system, people value the rich. Today, you can buy a president if you have enough money. In a money system, we honour the rich, but in a barter system, we honour the honourable. There are moments that force Chief to grow. At one point, a Native American leader speaks telepathically to Chief. He says, “When you have become like the people who would buy and sell your people, what have you become?” You don’t normally get those insights in westerns. It’s not only addressing questions of masculinity. It’s addressing questions of humanity, spirit and environment. I wanted a Black protagonist that grows. He finds his son and mends his ways. Ultimately, he finds Little Heaven.