“Well ... Don’t’ make me too f***** nice…” That’s what Melvin Van Peebles said to his son when Mario Van Peebles approached him about making Baadasssss!. And he took his father’s advice to heart. He has made a film that celebrates his father’s remarkable accomplishment but doesn’t sugar coat anything. You can even feel little bits of anger, resentment and confusion in the film. After all, Mario was an eyewitness to the making of Sweet Sweetback.” He was just 13 when his father insisted that he play the young Sweetback in the film in a shocking scene of a young boy losing his virginity in a whorehouse.

In 1970, Melvin Van Peebles had made Watermelon Man, a fairly successful film about racial stereotypes. In an alcohol - and adrenaline-fueled fever, wanting to do something new and different, he wrote the screenplay for Sweetback. It tells the story of a black man who grows up under racist circumstances, becomes radicalized as a result, beats up a couple of racist cops, flees and doesn’t get caught.

Not surprisingly, no studio was interested, not even Columbia Pictures where Peebles had a three-picture deal. As his agent tells him, “Even Cagney didn’t get away with hitting cops.” Nobody wanted to make a movie that celebrated a black anti-hero . So Van Peebles struck out on his own. Baadasssss! is wonderful in depicting all the roles a filmmaker plays to get a low-budget movie made. Every kind of charm and less-than-gentle mode of persuasion are used as needed.

In Van Peebles case, he employs many very sharp tactics. He tells the unions - all-male and all-white - that he is making a porno film, so that he doesn’t have to hire union workers. Porno production was allowed to go on under the union radar. On the days when the union reps show up on the sets, they film the sex scenes.

He insisted that at least half the crew be people of color, and he inspires them shouting, “No crew has ever looked like you!” At one point, he has to bail his crew out of jail. They’ve been arrested because the cops don’t believe that this ragged bunch of people of color, women and hippies could have come by the movie equipment honestly.

He begs and borrows money he needs, at one point convincing Bill Cosby to just write him a check. Cosby, who did donate funds to the film in real life, makes a cameo appearance as T.K. Carter, the man who provides crucial funding. When they blow up a car, as part of the shoot, they keep shooting as the fire trucks show up to put the fire out. That way they don’t have to pay to hire the firemen.

And, as in any good story about how movies get made, there is some of what makes every movie, luck. Van Peebles’ very funny assistant Priscilla (Joy Bryant), who has some of the best moments in the film, has a boyfriend who is in a band that offers to do the soundtrack. The band turns out to be Earth, Wind and Fire. I wish there was more of their lively vibe in Baadasssss!, but it is still a sweet piece of the story.

By the end of production, there is no money left and Van Peebles has been working so maniacally he has lost sight in one eye. But his struggles aren’t over. Once a movie is made, you have to get it shown. Van Peebles did not want to submit his film to the all-white ratings board. He said they are not a jury of my peers. So he did not submit the film. The MPAA gave the film an X rating anyway. With the marketing flair studios would kill for these days, he had t-shirts printed that said “Rated X by an all-white jury.” This just helped.

The distribution part of the film departs slightly from the true story. In the movie, the one theater in Detroit is ready to close the picture in less than a day, when after the first couple of shows few were coming in and some were walking out. The tide turns with the endorsement of one Black Panther. But it is true that the film was championed by the Black Panthers who viewed it as a “revolutionary masterpiece” and encouraged all their members to see it.

Love Story is widely regarded as the surprise hit of 1971, but Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song did more business, and came from nowhere to do that. And in no time, the studios were making films like Shaft, Superfly and Foxy Brown. Blaxploitation was born.

Mario Van Peebles has made the times and the attitudes of those times come alive in Baadasssss! He delivers a great performance as his father, and his scenes with Khleo Thomas (Holes), who plays the young Mario, are especially touching.

Baadasssss! has a great visual feel, a palate that is both vivid in feel and slightly too bright and slightly washed out at the same time. It has the look of an art film.

There are plenty of good laughs in Baadasssss!, and, true to the spirit of Sweetback, they are at the expense of whitey. Adam West is horribly fearless, but the film doesn’t really soar. There are moments that feel turgid. He hasn’t made his father too nice, but a little too much respect and awe creeps in.

Baadasssss! tells a great story of a very different time, and. though not controversial like Sweetback, it is a film that audiences of different ages and races will respond to very differently. As a movie and a chronicle of moviemaking history, it is a worthy effort. I hope the father is proud of his son.