2. Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song (1971, Dir. Melvin Van Peebles)
After his hit comedy Watermelon Man, African-American filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles was offered a three film deal by film studio Columbia Pictures but they refused to finance his next project: a film about a militant black man on the run from the police that contains so much real sex that it may as well have been marketed as porn. Undeterred by this, Van Peebles financed the film with his own assets, a $50,000 loan from sitcom star Bill Cosby, and a ridiculous health insurance payout that Ill mention later. So far, not exactly standard for an independent filmmaker but nothing too egotistical. Youll disagree with that statement after the next few paragraphs. Because of his low budget, Van Peebles took on a large number of rules including directing, editing and starring as the main character Sweet Sweetback. Sweetback is an orphan who works a towel boy in a brothel where he loses his virginity to a prostitute at the age of around twelve in a scene starring Van Peebles son Mario that I hope to God was simulated. The prostitute is so impressed at Sweetbacks sexual ability and the size of his penis that she nicknames him Sweetback in honour of it, his birth name being Leroy. So weve got Van Peebles casting himself as a character who is such an amazing lover and has such an enormous penis that the first time he has sex when hes barely reached puberty, an adult woman who has sex for a living is so impressed by it that she names him in honour of it. This is enormously self-indulgent stuff right off the bat. But it gets even more self-indulgent later in the film when Sweetback is on the run from the police, a woman cuts off his handcuffs in exchange for sex and another woman helps him in his escape because she is impressed by the size of his penis. tvtropes.coms page for the film describes Sweetback as only having about ten lines. All he really does is shag his way across America in an attempt to reach the Mexican border. But as well as casting himself as a character who can secure favours from people just by virtue of having a huge penis, Van Peebles also appears in the films sex scenes. All of which were completely unsimulated and unprotected. Though this particular bout of self-indulgence thoroughly backfired on him since he caught gonorrhoea from it. But being the absolute nutjob that he was and probably still is, when Van Peebles managed to get an insurance settlement for this workplace injury, he used the money to complete the film. Because to hell with treating a serious illness, the man had an ego to satisfy.