Sweetback's Setback

How a son's confession ensured the censorship of his father's most famous film

In one of the most bizarre own goals in recent cinema history, Mario Van Peebles' Baadasssss! - a docudrama celebrating the work of his father Melvin - has led to the censoring of the previously uncut Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song.

Regular FilmFour viewers will recall that Melvin Van Peebles' 1970s blaxploitation classic Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song opens with a scene of the young hero losing his virginity to a "party girl". In my introduction to the FilmFour Extreme screening of the film a few years ago, I pointed out that, despite the fact that the scene appears to feature the young Mario Van Peebles (who plays young Sweetback), the BBFC had determined that the actor in question was in fact Hubert Scales. Unlike Mario, Scales (who also appears elsewhere in the movie) was over 18.

This was an important distinction for, under the terms of the Protection of Children Act, which outlaws any potentially indecent depiction of minors, the scene would have been a problem if the under-aged Mario had been involved. But the BBFC had on file a letter from writer/director/producer Melvin Van Peebles assuring them that it was Scales who had performed the scene, an assurance the Board were inclined to accept since Melvin was Mario's father, and therefore hardly likely to have placed him in a potentially compromising situation.

Thus, Sweet Sweetback's Baad Assss song was passed uncut on video in 1998, and subsequently transmitted uncut on FilmFour. And all was well and good in the world until the now grown-up Mario came to make Baadasssss! in 2003, where he re-enacts the filming of the infamous scene with his young self in the starring role. Rather than merely skirting the issue, Baadasssss! goes into great detail about how Melvin (here played by Mario) insisted that his own son perform the scene because it wouldn't be right to ask someone else's kid to do it. In fact, the idea that any form of double (Scales or whomever) was even considered is roundly trashed as Mario remembers losing his cinematic cherry in toe-curling detail.