HOLLYWOOD -- Once upon a time, he was the epitome of cool, the dude in the leather coat and nattily trimmed Afro who would just as soon punch some sucka' in the face as fool around with negotiatin'.
Nowadays, Richard Roundtree looks more like an especially hip university professor than John Shaft, the cat that won't cop out when there's danger all about. But a flash of that Shaftian menace crosses his face when the film that made him a star is mentioned in the same breath as the B-word: blaxploitation.
The success of 1971's Shaft (starring Roundtree in the title role) and its immediate predecessor, Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song, launched the genre that came to be called blaxploitation: cheaply made, badly acted and outlandishly funky films starring black actors and aimed at a black audience. But while some of these films were clearly cashing in on a trend, Roundtree sours at the suggestion that Shaft is in the same category.
"It has always offended me, because of who was the driving force behind that film," says Roundtree. "Gordon Parks (the original Shaft's director) is such an incredibly class human being that to attach a negative label to anything he is associated with is really a slap in the face.
"I'm vehemently opposed to any association of black exploitation with regard to Shaft."
With that sentiment, Roundtree aptly sums up the challenge of remaking - or, if you prefer, updating - Shaft for audiences in the politically-correct 2000.
The new Shaft stars Samuel L. Jackson in the title role (playing a nephew of Roundtree's original character) as a detective who must bring a rich, white killer (Christian Bale) to justice while protecting a scared waitress (Toni Collette) who is the key witness. It's directed by Boyz N the Hood's John Singleton and opens in theatres Friday.
The road to recreating Shaft hasn't been without its dips, bends and occasional collisions. There were squabbles between Singleton and Jackson, differences of opinion between the director and the studio and a looming awareness that Shaft was a character whose legendary stature in the hearts of many could not be treated lightly.
Still, Singleton - who saw the original film with his dad when he was just three years old - maintains he didn't feel overly bound to the Shaft legacy.
"I wasn't really thinking too much about the original film, other than taking a few essential elements from the original," Singleton says, listing them off: the cool leather coat, Isaac Hayes's music, the involvement of Richard Roundtree and an actor "who would embody that whole Shaft-itude. And Samuel L. Jackson took care of that."
But while the famed Hayes theme song asks, "Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?" the answer, at first, seemed to be: "Not the new Shaft."
Originally, there was to be no actual sex in the film at all - a title sequence showing Shaft getting hot and heavy was shot at the last minute, with a Jackson body-double. And the new Shaft was originally supposed to be a police detective throughout the film. No chicks, no private dick.
Singleton insisted that Shaft had to quit the police force and go solo in short order (which he does), but there wasn't anything he could do about the lack of sex.
"That was a battle between me and the studio," Singleton says. "If it was up to me, it would probably have been, you know, one love scene, and then one action scene, and then one love scene, and then one action scene, and then, 'Come here and give me some sugar, baby.'
"The studio (Paramount Pictures) was saying that they didn't really want to have it be this guy who's having, like, six or seven women. They didn't want to offend any women, and all this stuff. And I was like, 'This is Shaft, you know? He's got to have all the women.' But I mean, hey. You win some, you lose some."
Jackson, for his part, remembers Shaft as the first movie hero who looked and sounded like he did. Someone who he could emulate - "get a leather jacket and a turtleneck, comb my afro out, and get a girl," as he puts it.
But he seems resigned to Shaft's newfound celibacy.
"In the new millennium, it's kind of politically incorrect to fall into bed with five different women in the same movie," Jackson says.
But what about that legendary womanizer James Bond?
"James Bond has had that government injection. He can't catch anything. They're not passing that out to the rest of us. You have to be a 007 agent to get that shot."
SHAFT FACTS
The original Shaft was made in 1971 by MGM, which saw potential in a film directed by a black man, with black stars and aimed at a black audience. The groundbreaking effort of Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song earlier that year helped pave the way.
Along with 1972's classic Superfly, it cemented the "blaxploitation" genre. More than 200 blaxploitation films were made between 1971 and 1975, including such dubious efforts as Boss Nigger (a western) and Blacula (a vampire film).
After the runaway success of Shaft, two sequels followed: Shaft's Big Score! in 1972 and Shaft in Africa in 1973.
The weekly TV series Shaft ran from the fall of 1973 to summer of 1974, and also starred Richard Roundtree.
Actors who were at one time said to be starring in the new film include Ving Rhames, Delroy Lindo, John Leguizamo and Don Cheadle. None appear in the movie.
At one point, the new Shaft was to have been a $25-million US movie without any name stars, until MGM pulled out and the project was picked up by Paramount, who insisted Samuel L. Jackson play the lead role.
Jackson's salary for Shaft is believed to be in the neighbourhood of $10 million. Roundtree was paid $12,500 for his starring role in the original Shaft.
Despite it being the role that made him famous, Roundtree says he's tired of being constantly associated with the character John Shaft. (Perhaps he and William Shatner could form a support network.)
Gordon Parks, the director of 1971's Shaft, appears in a cameo role in the new movie, as a patron in a Harlem bar.
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