Tales of Erotica

Melvin "Block" Van Peebles is an American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, novelist and composer. He is most famous for creating the acclaimed film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which heralded a new era of African-American focused films. He is the father of actor and director Mario... Van Peebles. Van Peebles was born in Chicago, Illinois to a black tailor. He joined the Air Force in 1954, thirteen days after graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University, staying for three and a half years. He married a German woman, Maria Marx. They lived in Mexico for a brief period, where he painted portraits, before coming back to the United States, where he started driving cable cars in San Francisco. Van Peebles began writing about his experiences as a cable car driver. What evolved from an initially small article and a series of photographs was Van Peebles' first book, The Big Heart. One day, a passenger suggested that Van Peebles should become a filmmaker. He shot his first short film, Pickup Men for Herrick, in 1957. He made two more short films during the same period. According to Van Peebles, "I thought they were features.
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Robert "Bob" Rafelson is an Emmy Award winning American film director, writer and producer. He was an early member of the New Hollywood movement in the 1970s and is most famous for directing and co-writing the film Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson, as well as being one of the creators of... the pop group and TV series, The Monkees with Raybert/BBS Productions partner Bert Schneider. His first wife was the Production Designer Toby Carr Rafelson. His son is songwriter Peter Rafelson, who co-wrote the hit song Open Your Heart for Madonna. Rafelson was born in New York City, the son of a hat manufacturer. His uncle was screenwriter and playwright Samson Raphaelson, who wrote nine films for director Ernst Lubitsch. He had an older brother named Donald and attended Horace Mann School. As a teenager he would often run away from home to pursue a more adventurous lifestyle, including riding in a rodeo in Arizona and playing in a jazz band in Acapulco. After studying philosophy at Dartmouth College , Rafelson was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Japan.
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