Ask Mario Van Peebles what some of his favorite coming of age movies are and he’ll site iconic flicks like House Party, Grease and The Breakfast Club. Each movie is different in terms of plot but what they have in common is the fact that the “teenagers†are played by adults, who look to be at least 10 years out of high school, and most of those movies depict teen angst from an exaggerated perspective.
Nearly 20 and 30 years since any of those films were popular, youth society has changed drastically. There’s the Internet, iPods, a Black president in office and a different mentality when it comes to what children know. It’s a revelation that hit Van Peebles during an outing with his teen sons, where he escorted them to a club as an undercover kid. Inspired by the experience, the filmmaker took notes about what he saw as far as how kids were dancing, how they talked and what music they were listening to and eventually the script for We the Party, which hits select theaters today (April 6), was born. The film centers around five high school friends dealing with sex, money, college, bullies, fitting in, standing out, and finding themselves in the age of Obama and the Internet.
BlackEnterprise.com chatted with Van Peebles about how he funded the film, why it was important to cast actual teenagers–including his five children–and why viewers should support independent films of this nature.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a fun coming of age flick with a Black lead; how did We the Party come about?
We the Party just kind of happened… I went out to these underground clubs with [my kids] and I’d never seen them like this. It was like going “incognegro†and just hiding out and I would just make notes… I just started writing it down and I was thinking about movies that I loved that were coming of age like House Party, which was mostly Black and The Breakfast Club, that was all White, and I thought what about 2012, if you could do a movie with real teenagers that was legit–the way they really are–and make it all teen. So, it’s mixed up. It’s everybody in it and you have a generation now coming of age in the Obama years and in the Facebook years and they’re radically different. This is the time to do that smart, fun, coming of age flick and it was inspired by my teens.
From Michael Jai White and Snoop Dogg to your son Mandela, who makes his acting debut, you have a diverse array of people in the film. How hard was it for you to get folks to see your vision?
Yeah, I got the teenagers my age in and they got the teens their age in [laughs]. It’s like you bring your friends and I’ll bring my friends. We not only got Snoop but also his son. We got Diddy‘s son; we got the Wayans’ brothers’ kids; we got a lot of second-generation kids… We got Orlando Brown from That’s So Raven, we got The New Boyz–my kids were my own little think tank, they were like, “Man, you better get this song in there by these guys called The Rej3ctz, and they perform it at the prom scene in the movie and now it’s at 84 million hits on YouTube. So the viral stuff on this is big.
The way in which you’re ushering your son Mandela into the movie business is reminiscent of what your father, Melvin Van Peebles, did with you. Can you speak on the father/son dynamic on set and balancing work and family?
My grandfather
had a tailor shop and when my dad worked at the tailor shop it wasn’t so much learning how to be a tailor, it was also learning work ethic. I have all five of my kids in the movie, three boys and two girls but it wasn’t just about starring or acting it was about getting work ethic. Let me say this, if you grow up on a family farm, you just learn a little bit about the town and fixing the chicken coup and taking care of the horses. It’s all part of the Zen of farming and when you grow up in an independent filmmaking family like the Van Peebles family, you learn about editing and directing and writing but just because you learn it, that doesn’t mean that’s the business you’re going to be in. We’re bilingual; I learned to be bilingual with my dad. We had one language as father and son and one language as director and actor. I was with Mr. Van Peebles the director [on set] and I understood that and that was cool, and when we got home he was just dad. I could wrestle with him and play with him and not always agree with him and that was in a different place.Click here to continue reading…
Why is it so important that people go out and support this film?
Think about this: When’s the last time you saw a movie where the core of the movie–not similar to The Karate Kid or Stomp the Yard–but a Black boy having to get his grades up where you see us in high school? That’s interesting subliminally. It’s almost like an ad for being a Black student where you got 50% of young brothers dropping out of college and you got brothers getting shot because they’re wearing a hoodie. In this movie, you have a boy wearing a hoodie. He emerges and performs a song with consciousness, so it’s interesting.
What I like is that the youth are embracing We the Party as real. There’s a lot of teen movies like Grease that are great films but they don’t feel like teenagers and they don’t look like teenagers but this one shows how they really talk and think. We got a movie that’s got heart. It has some nutritional value and something to say but it’s wrapped up in entertainment. I want it to hit some real stuff but I also want it to have something to say and still make it compelling.
As a parent, what are your thoughts on what’s been going on with Trayvon Martin?
I have three boys and first of all, like with filming We the Party, you want to be very careful about judging a book by its cover when you don’t know people. That’s always tricky. We know our Black teens–especially our teen boys–are a target and are stereotyped quite a bit, sometimes even by us. That was fun with the movie; playing with some of the imagery like, the guy you thought may be not what you think he is. I think, and without putting myself into a political spot because I’m a film director not a politician, I think democracy is like a car and when you take your foot off the gas, the car slows down. I think that even though we had a Black baseball player, very early on, we had that one Black baseball player but it didn’t mean baseball was integrated. Even though we have a Black family in the White House, which is smart and terrific, it doesn’t mean we’re post-racial and that situation clearly underscores that.
Going back to making the movie, what was your journey like in terms of getting funding?
It was very easy [laughs]. I looked in the mirror and said, Who’s that negro in the mirror and there was a White dude next to me named Michael. Michael is my partner who funded it with me. He’s my running buddy and we were just running on the beach talking about how it had been 20 years since we’ve had that cool coming of age flick so it was time to do another one with this generation.
You probably had an easier time than others with funding. Do you have an advice to other filmmakers out there on how to raise money for their projects?
I don’t think we had an easier time of it [laughs]. When you do it yourself it’s still hard. The movie comes out [today] April 6 and we need to spread the word for opening weekend because we don’t have big Hollywood money to support it. The films that Hollywood tends to support are often these reductive comedies that have us running around with wigs and dresses on, so they’ll get behind something that’s not always as positive as you might hope or without real aspiration. When Hollywood does that they’re going to say it’s too smart for the kids and they’re going to make you water it down. I didn’t want to water it down, so we had to do it ourselves. I think with the technology it’s easier to make a film but it’s harder to get it distributed because there’s no cinematic middle class in Hollywood. There’s either these huge 3D films, or the little indie movies. And we’re sort of in the middle and that’s a tough place to be. I think breaking that distribution down is key so, wish us luck.
For more info on We the Party go to Facebook.com/wethepartymovie.