Watermelon Man (film)
| Watermelon Man | |
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U.S. theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Melvin Van Peebles |
| Produced by | John B. Bennett |
| Written by | Herman Raucher |
| Starring |
Godfrey Cambridge Estelle Parsons Howard Caine D'Urville Martin Kay Kimberley Mantan Moreland Erin Moran |
| Music by | Melvin Van Peebles |
| Cinematography | W. Wallace Kelley |
| Edited by | Carl Kress |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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98 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1.1 million (US/ Canada rentals) |
| Watermelon Man | ||||
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| Soundtrack album by Melvin Van Peebles | ||||
| Released | 1970 | |||
| Genre | Soundtrack | |||
| Melvin Van Peebles chronology | ||||
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Watermelon Man is a 1970 American comedy-drama film, directed by Melvin Van Peebles. 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.
Van Peebles' only studio film, Watermelon Man was a financial success, but Van Peebles did not accept Columbia Pictures' three-picture contract, instead developing the independent film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. The music for Watermelon Man, written and performed by Van Peebles, was released on a soundtrack album, which spawned the single "Love, that's America". In 2011 that single received much mainstream attention when videos set to the song and featuring footage of Occupy Wall Street became viral.
Jeff Gerber (Godfrey Cambridge) lives in an average suburban neighborhood with his seemingly liberal housewife Althea (Estelle Parsons), who tolerates her husband's character flaws out of love. Every morning when Jeff wakes up, he spends some time under a tanning machine, hits the speedbag, drinks a health drink, and races the bus to work on foot.
Jeff presents himself as happy-go-lucky and quite a joker, but others tend to see him as obnoxious and boorish. Althea, who watches the race riots every night on TV with great interest, chastises Jeff for not having sympathy for the problems of black Americans.
One morning, Jeff wakes up to find that his pigment has changed. He tries to fall back asleep, thinking that it is a dream, but to no avail. He tries taking a shower to wash the "black" off him, but finds it doesn't work, when Althea walks into the bathroom, and screams. He explains to her that the "Negro in the bathroom" is him.
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Wikipedia