Three Pickup Men for Herrick 1957 Melvin van Peebles first short is a deliberately aimless slice of life, mainly consisting of several men walking the streets of an American city Most interesting aspect is the disjointed, atonal harmonica score improvised by van Peebles himself A small slice of this film can be seen unidentified as such in the documentary What It Was Is on the Sweetback and Dont Play Us Cheap DVDs Along with his first feature, Story of a 3 Day Pass, this movie shows that Van Peebles roots were as much in European and art film as so called blaxploitation, and that the style of Sweetback was calculated primitivism, not merely inexperience