How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)

Artist Melvin van Peebles

Melvin Van Peebles will always be known as the man who not only changed the face of black cinema, but independent cinema forever, when he made his groundbreaking (and taboo breaking) film "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song." But's he's always been a lot more than that, as a playwright, actor, author, stage performer, musician and who knows what else he's done in his 80 years. And he's likely not through yet.

But how did a guy who grew up on the hard streets of the South side of Chicago go from there to becoming a filmmaker, a Tony-nominated playwright, an Air Force navigator, a novelist in two languages, a pioneer of the rap genre, and a floor trader at the American Stock Exchange among other things?

Taking the title from a never published essay by Van Peebles, the film follows his unpredictable life and career, both supported by his motto: if opportunity fails to knock, then build your own damn door and get on with it. The film includes decades of archival footage and interviews with a wide range of people, including Spike Lee, the late Gil Scott-Heron, Elvis Mitchell, the late pioneering filmmaker St. Clair Bourne and Van Peebles' own sons, Mario and Max.