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"Love, That's America" is a song written by Melvin Van Peebles in 1970 for his film Watermelon Man . He re-recorded it for his 1971 album As Serious as a Heart-Attack . In 2011, the song became associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement due to being used on videos featuring footage from the movement.
The song was written by Van Peebles for his only Hollywood production, Watermelon Man. Van Peebles wrote the soundtrack himself, in order to have creative control. The song is narrated from the point of view of someone walking around America, and seeing "people run through the streets, blood streaming from where they been beat", and declaring "naw, this ain't America, you can't fool me". [1]
In 1970, the song was released as a single, [2] and mentioned as a top pick in Billboard's Oct 31, 1970 issue. [3]
The first video featuring video from Occupy Wall Street (mostly involving police brutality) and the audio from the song was uploaded to YouTube on October 26, 2011, [4] which was quickly endorsed via Van Peebles' Facebook page [5] and mentioned in several blogs. [6] On November 8, this video was presented at an Occupy Wall Street benefit at Zebulon Cafe Concert in Brooklyn. [7] In mid-November, several other videos featuring footage associated with Occupy Wall Street and the audio from the song were also uploaded, which have been featured in many blogs. [8] None of these videos were created by Van Peebles, despite the claims made on some blogs, but he did endorse the making of these videos. [9] On November 18, Newsday published an interview with Van Peebles from November 7, which discussed the original video as well as the fact that it has "gone viral". [10] On December 5, 2011, Turkish newspaper Radikal described it as the surprising unofficial anthem of the movement, and mentions three YouTube videos that use the song in connection with the movement. [11] On January 17, 2012, Van Peebles played the Players' Club to honor the fact that the song has become a theme for the Occupy Wall Street movement. [12] On February 22, 2012, Van Peebles commented further, "When I found out that the song had been co-opted by Occupy Wall Street, my jaw dropped. It went viral online. People were remixing it and mashing it up with videos from the protests. The time I wrote it was a time of social upheaval — the Stonewall Riots had just happened. Forty years later, the same thing was going down in the streets of New York City." [13]
Daniel Handler is an American writer and musician. He is best known for his children's series A Series of Unfortunate Events and All the Wrong Questions, published under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket. The former was adapted into a Nickelodeon film in 2004 as well as a Netflix series from 2017 to 2019.
"Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is a song by the British rock band Queen. Written by Freddie Mercury in 1979, the track is included on their 1980 album The Game, and also appears on the band's compilation album, Greatest Hits in 1981. The song peaked at number two in the UK Singles Chart in 1979, and became the group's first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US in 1980, remaining there for four consecutive weeks. It topped the Australian ARIA Charts for seven weeks.
Melvin Van Peebles is an American actor, filmmaker, playwright, novelist and composer.
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Mario Cain Van Peebles is an American film director and actor best known for directing New Jack City in 1991 and USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage in 2016. He is the son of actor and filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, whom he portrayed in the 2003 biopic Baadasssss!, which he also co-wrote and directed.
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a 1971 American blaxploitation action thriller film written, co-produced, scored, edited, directed by and starring Melvin Van Peebles. His son Mario Van Peebles also appears in a small role, playing the title character as a young boy. It tells the picaresque story of the flight of a poor black man from the white police authorities.
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Watermelon Man is a 1970 American comedy film directed by Melvin Van Peebles and starring Godfrey Cambridge, Estelle Parsons, Howard Caine, D'Urville Martin, Kay Kimberley, Mantan Moreland, and Erin Moran. Written by Herman Raucher, it tells the story of an extremely bigoted 1960s-era white insurance salesman named Jeff Gerber, who wakes up one morning to find that he has become black. The premise for the film was inspired by Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, and by John Howard Griffin's autobiographical Black Like Me.
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Ghetto Gothic is the fifth studio album by Melvin Van Peebles. Released in 1995, this album marks the second traditional music effort by Van Peebles, after What the....You Mean I Can't Sing?! Previously, Van Peebles released the experimental spoken word albums Brer Soul, Ain't Supposed To Die a Natural Death and As Serious as a Heart-Attack.
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Zebulon Café Concert, also known as Zebulon, is a music venue, bar, and restaurant located in Los Angeles, California. Zebulon was originally located in Brooklyn, New York, where it operated as a combined café/bar and hosted live music until closing in December 2012. It was named as a critic's pick by New York magazine. More than four years after its original closure, Zebulon reopened in a new space in Los Angeles' Frogtown neighborhood in 2017.
The Piano Guys is an American musical group consisting of pianist Jon Schmidt, cellist Steven Sharp Nelson, videographer Paul Anderson, and music producer Al van der Beek. Originating in Utah, they gained popularity through YouTube, where in 2011 they began posting piano and cello compositions combining classical, pop, film score and original music, showcased through elaborate or cinematic videos. As of March 2020 the group had surpassed 2 billion views on their YouTube channel and had 6.7 million subscribers. Their first six major-label studio albums, The Piano Guys, The Piano Guys 2, A Family Christmas, Wonders, Uncharted, Christmas Together, and Limitlesseach reached number one on Billboard Classical Albums or New Age Albums charts.
The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations garnered reactions of both praise and criticism from organizations and public figures in many parts of the world. Over time, a long list of notable people from a range of backgrounds began and continue to lend their support or make reference to the Occupy movement in general.
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How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company , is a 2005 documentary film directed and written by Joe Angio, and produced by Michael Solomon. The film follows Melvin Van Peebles through his illustrious musical, acting, and directing career. The name comes from a controversial article that Van Peebles wrote, but never got published. Joe Angio, the director received four nominations for his film. Three of these nominations were for best documentary at the Chicago International film festival, and one nomination was at the Los Angeles Film Festival for best documentary feature.