HOLLYWOOD -- Can ya dig it? Isaac Hayes' Shaft song remains the same in the John Singleton modernization of the '70s flick, which opens Friday.
Apparently, you can't improve on perfection. There are some changes, however.
Shaft, in the 2000 version, has Samuel L. Jackson portraying John Shaft's nephew. He's a New York cop who quits the force in disgust to track down a bail-jumping, racist, rich, white kid (played by American Psycho's Christian Bale) charged with killing a black man.
In the new Shaft film, Shaft also has to locate the one woman who witnessed the murder, a fearing-for-her-life bartender played by Toni Collette. Vanessa Williams plays Shaft's cop buddy and Busta Rhymes portrays a street-wise cohort.
Bad cops, drug czars, scum-bag informers and a psychotic white kid. Sounds just about right. Even better, Richard Roundtree co-stars as Shaft, although both Shaft characters seem less sexual than Roundtree's '70s portrayal.
Shaft? What's the deal? Let's pull the Shaft file, and find out.
1: DESCRIBED AS: Pop movie icon. The 1971 Shaft, directed by Gordon Parks, had Roundtree playing a private eye, John Shaft. He was the ultimate in cool back then, since he was the first African-American in film to live by his rules. He gets hired by a Harlem gang leader to find a kidnapped daughter. But the essential popularity of the picture came from its anti-establishment feel.
Two follow-ups -- Shaft's Big Score and Shaft In Africa -- never matched the original for energy. Neither did a 1973-74 TV series.
2: CONSIDERED: Disarmed and not very dangerous at the box office, "and, like, so yesterday" by Turner Classics, which owned the rights to Shaft. Director Singleton, being black and of sound mind, knew that Shaft could be a commercial goldmine. He bought the rights in 1997 for an undisclosed amount.
Turner took the rest of the titles off the market soon after Singleton's purchase. "Turner realized too late the mistake they made," says Singleton, who had Wesley Snipes lobby him for the lead part, which eventually went to Jackson.
3: DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: Like Shaft, Sam Jackson has lots of opinions. A few of them led to the re-writing of the Richard Price screenplay and some adjustments to Singleton's sequences while shooting in New York. "I will voice my opinion," Jackson says. "I wanted John to do it my way, and not shoot another scene his way. I know the more stuff a director shoots, the more he can change the movie his way. It wasn't about power with me, it was about common sense."
Jackson's script changes included having Shaft leave the police force, having Roundtree appear more frequently, and updating the dialogue so it sounded more African-American. A Jackson addition? He has Shaft say to his girlfriend: "It's my duty to please the booty."
And what does Jackson see as the difference between his Shaft now and Roundtree's Shaft then? "The Shaft then was against the man and the system," he says. "My Shaft deals with race crime and drugs."
Okay, and being Shaft means what?
"Being cool with the skin you're in," Jackson says. In Jackson's case, that also meant being wrapped in Armani leathers and shades and sporting a shaved head and fancy goatee. The shaved-head idea was that of the shaved-headed Singleton. The fancy goatee came from Jackson.
Says Singleton of the Shaft persona: "It's attitude -- looking good and being bad ... Sam is the only actor who could've pulled it off. He's the coolest actor on the planet."
That is, other than the theatre-trained Roundtree, whose Shaft job was his first film role back then.
"I've been trying to distance myself from it for years," says Roundtree, who failed. "I like this new Shaft. It meant I was handing off the baton to someone else."
4: KNOWN TO FREQUENT: Again, Shaft was filmed in New York. We catch some of the Shaft action at the Lenox Lounge, a classic Harlem art-deco hangout from the 1930s that has been revamped. Other locations? Brooklyn 'hoods such as Vinegar Hill, Red Hook, Bedford Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. Washington Heights, in northern Manhattan, was used as the Dominican drug lord's zone. The crew also filmed along the Hudson River near Jersey City.
5. LAST KNOWN SOUL ADDRESS: Isaac Hayes. He scooped up an Oscar for the Theme From Shaft song in 1972. He also earned a nomination for best musical score. The former Stax session player had collaborated on many classic R&B tunes, including Hold On I'm Coming, Soul Man and I Thank You, before Shaft came along. In the '70s, there was also Hot Buttered Soul and the Black Moses in chains on the Oscar telecast way back when.
Some South Park fans know Hayes better as the voice of Chef. Hayes also wrote the music for Beavis & Butthead Do America. Currently, Hayes has a top-rated morning drive show on New York's WRKS.
Hayes did lots of acting in the '80s and '90s, but he doesn't do a cameo in the latest Shaft. Hayes says, "I don't know why." Singleton says: "We couldn't work it out."
So why didn't Hayes do a techno version of the theme in the re-recording? "I couldn't improve on it, I just re-recorded it with modern equipment," Hayes says.
The original was written and recorded by Hayes in two hours with "Memphis magic," and some of The Bar-Kays band members who worked with him on Soul Man and I Thank You. "The director Gordon Parks said at the time that he needed something to describe a guy who was roving and relentless."
In the studio, Hayes got his drummer "to do some high-hat work and I got the guitarist to 'ching-ta-ching' while I worked the wah-wah pedal with my hand."
Thirty years later, the song is still infectious.
"It always makes people smile when I play it," Hayes says.
Reports Jackson: "It was the first pop song to wanna make white audiences go see a black movie."
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