"How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)" to Get Re-release on DVD

Melvin Van Peebles' extraordinary life story reveals an artist and a man whose groundbreaking impact on film, politics and pop culture remains as relevant as ever. On the 45thAnniversary of his landmark 1971 film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song—the most successful independent film of its time and a watershed in African-American cinema—Melvin Van Peebles’ life and career are celebrated in a DVD re-issue of filmmaker Joe Angio’s 2005 documentary How To Eat Your Watermelon In White Company (and Enjoy It).

Taking its title after a never-published essay Mr. Van Peebles once wrote, How To Eat Your Watermelon In White Company (and Enjoy It) presents a multi-talented and wildly prolific man whose personal and professional résumé defies categorization. Boasting a life and career as diverse and unexpected as the art he’s best known for creating, Melvin Van Peebles is a trailblazer of the tallest order who has at turns made his living as a filmmaker, a Tony-nominated playwright, an Air Force navigator, a novelist in two languages, a pioneer of the rap genre, a floor trader at the American Stock Exchange and more.

Van Peebles was never deterred by opportunity that failed to knock; he’d simply build his own door and get on with it. After Hollywood rejected his early filmmaking efforts, his self-produced Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (which he wrote, produced, financed, directed, scored and starred in) earned more than $10 million at the box office and indelibly changed independent cinema forever.


Music Box Films Home Entertainment will re-release How To Eat Your Watermelon In White Company (and Enjoy It) on DVD on February 2, 2016  arriving as 2016’s Black History Month begins. Carrying the suggested retail price of $19.95, the DVD will include a host of brand new bonus features, including a new video interview with Melvin Van Peebles, three of Peebles’ hilarious news commentaries, and a pair of live concert performances.

Rated 92% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes, How To Eat Your Watermelon In White Company (and Enjoy It) is a critical success that offers a wealth of archival footage stretching over the decades and a collection of lively interviews with a wide range of people, including Spike Lee, Gil Scott-Heron, Elvis Mitchell, St. Clair Bourne and Van Peebles’ sons Mario Van Peebles and Max Van Peebles. The film, presented for the first time in HD, is at once a glorious commemoration of Melvin Van Peebles and his indefatigable spirit and artistry, and a playfully candid chronicle of the life he has lived, all presented with a verve that mirrors the unending creativity of the man himself.

How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)
Music Box Films Home Entertainment

DVD RELEASE DATES: February 2, 2016
Price: DVD $19.95
Director/co-writer: Joe Angio
Producer/co-writer: Michael Solomon
Featuring: Spike Lee, Mario Van Peebles, St. Clair Bourne, Gil Scott-Heron, Max Van Peebles, Elvis Mitchell
Running Time: 85 minutes 
Format: 1.78:1 widescreen
Sound Format: stereo
Rating: NR
Country: U.S.
Language: English 

Bonus Features*
-New video interview with Melvin Van Peebles
-Three TV news commentaries by Melvin Van Peebles
-Two live concert performances