The World Of Shaft

Up To Here!

The World Of Shaft 
By Steve Aldous
Foreword by David F. Walker
McFarland Books, ISBN 9780786499236

Subtitled, on the edition I read, A Complete Guide To The Novels, Comic Strip, Films And Television Series, Steve Aldous’ book The World Of Shaft is an almost but not quite complete overview of the Shaft phenomenom, which of course was started by writer Ernest Tidyman in the late 1960s/early 1970s (indeed, that original first novel was sold to the studio before it was published and was released at more or less the same time as the original movie). I say almost complete because this was written just before modern comic book imprint Dynamite had released their comics and new Shaft novel and, this was also a few years before the advent of the fifth (and probably final) of the Shaft cinema movies, which reunited Richard Roundtree and Samuel L. Jackson for a second time. Which is a shame because of a point the author makes in this book but I’ll get to that in a minute. 

Okay, the book is written by someone with an obvious love and respect for the character and the writer behind him. Indeed, the research which has gone into this, which includes going through a load of the late Tidyman’s boxes full of notes and letters, is nothing if not thorough. And, after a potted history of Tidyman’s career which is very illuminating, I’d say the emphasis is possibly more on the books themselves but he does bring a deep knowledge of this when looking at the rest of the media involved in Shaft. 

And it’s a cool breeze to read and, since there’s not much written critically. at least all gathered in one substantial place as it is here, it’s an absolutely essential tome to own in regards to the black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks. For instance, I didn’t know that of the seven Shaft books that Tidyman wrote... due to his being busy with other projects... the last four were partially ghost written by two other writers he was employing with the man himself coming in to flesh out and rewrite for the final draft. I liked those books as an early teen but never got around to acquiring the three gaps I had in the run. Silly me… I may have been picking them up for 30p a piece in second hand book shops in the 1980s but, when I looked into filling in my holes while reading this, I was shocked to find that they’ve been long out of print and mostly attract three figure sums on the likes of eBay. Apparently, the only place where the books are still in print is in Germany, where they still love the character but, you know, I don’t speak the language. 

After covering the books (Shaft, Shaft Among The Jews, Shaft’s Big Score, Shaft Has A Ball, Goodbye Mr. Shaft, Shaft’s Carnival Of Killers and The Last Shaft), their collective creators and the various character traits of regular characters in the books, not to mention a load about the proposed Shaft newspaper strip which never came to fruition (with some rare samples of the artwork)... there’s also a big section on the movies and TV movies/series. This includes a breakdown of each episode/film of the series and, of course, gets to the first revival film with Samuel L. Jackson. One of the author’s sticking points is that Jackson’s Shaft couldn’t possibly be the nephew of the original Shaft because he had no surviving kin in the books (and didn’t survive the last book himself, for that matter). So this makes it a shame that there’s no coverage of the last movie because, as you may or may not know, they retconned this in that story and it turned out that, actually, he’s Shaft’s son after all. Of course, given their similar ages, Roundtree would have had to have fathered Jackson when he was four but, yeah, that’s another story. 

But yeah, this is an informative read and it would be true to say I had a ball with The World Of Shaft. What it really needs now, though, is a second, revised edition to take into account the Dynamite stuff and the 2019 movie… can you dig it?

Shaft

Shaftermath

Shaft
USA 2019
Directed by Tim Story

So... earlier this year my best friend unexpectedly died. He was only a few weeks older than me and we had a whole host of things already earmarked to see in the coming months but one of the two most anticipated things was to go to the cinema to see the new Shaft movie, since we’d both been talking about the Shaft films together since we first met. As it turns out, this didn’t get a cinema release in this country but I’ve managed to find a way to watch it anyway and, although I have mixed feelings about the final product, I’m pretty sure that my friend would probably... mostly... have liked this one.

Shaft is the fifth film of a franchise which started with the original movie, Shaft, back in 1971 and which was followed by two direct sequels in 1972 and 1973, Shaft’s Big Score (my favourite) and Shaft In Africa with Richard Roundtree playing the titular role based on Ernest Tidyman’s novels. This was followed by Roundtree continuing the character for a TV series and then, decades later, a fourth film starring Samuel L. Jackson was made in 2000, originally to be called Shaft Returns but eventually just called Shaft, also... which was confusing enough at the time. That one had Richard Roundtree back as the original John Shaft in what amounted to a couple of long cameos and with Jackson playing his nephew. It was a quite good movie. Now we have a fifth installment in the franchise where the Shaft family tree has been convincingly retconned to make Jackson the son of Roundtree’s character, even though in real life he’s only 6 years younger than the actor himself.

And, yes, if you can believe this stuff... they’ve called this fifth film Shaft. Which is totally ridiculous and makes no sense whatsoever. At least the Star Wars films have subtitles but why have a franchise where over half the movies have the exact same name as the other ones. That’s not going to get confusing at all in years to come, is it?

So, anyway, this movie deals with the next generation of Shaft, played by Jessie T. Usher and is a humourously intentioned script dealing with his problematic relationship with his dad, his potential girlfriend Sasha, played by Alexandra Shipp.... and his mother Maya, played by Regina Hall.

So this starts off with a set up of Jackson’s Shaft and Maya and their baby son in a scene set over a decade before the events in the previous movie, where some motivation for barely seen villain of this film is provided and the film then gives us a montage catch up of the intervening years which briefly replays some scenes from Shaft (2000) and maps out Usher’s Shaft’s troubled non-relationship with his father. Then, when the latest family member’s best friend gets mixed up with drugs and is murdered, Shaft Jr, who works for the FBI but doesn’t exactly have much clout, gets his father involved with the case and the two bond as they try and catch the ruthless killers and even, in the last 20 minutes of the movie, have some nice scenes where the original ‘grandad’ Shaft, played by Richard Roundtree, gets involved in all the action.

So... okay. There’s good and there’s bad. The good being that there’s some nice and cleverly  handled shot transitions throughout the movie and even a split screen section at the beginning of the film. It’s also a blast seeing both Samuel L. Jackson and Richard Roundtree doing their thing throughout and, even though he’s mostly played as a joke, Shaft Jr is also not terrible in this either although, to be fair, he does get irritating quite quickly. Especially where a perfect reference to the very first Shaft movie... the scene where Roundtree crashes through the window on a rope, is payed homage to but, alas, in a very jokey way because Jr can’t get through his window.

There’s a lot of bad in this too though.

For instance, despite some nice shot set ups, there’s a scene fairly early on where Shaft Jr is talking to a teenager on the street  and the shot design, or lack of it in terms of consideration as to how the scene would be edited, is just all over the place and completely popped me out of the movie. I couldn’t believe how amateur this series of shots was in terms of cutting back and forth between characters on completely different and seemingly random areas of the screen. It didn’t make any sense and it’s like the scene wasn’t filmed to be cut that way at all.

Another problem... despite not being that funny, which is an objective thing anyway... is the fact that it was trying to be a comedy of sorts. The previous Shaft movies all took themselves very seriously in terms of the way the characters, for the most part, interacted and this just feels like it belongs in a different world, despite an attempt at least to give certain elements of the plot some social context. It just felt wrong. And don’t get me started on the running gag of three generations of jay-walkers who will almost get hit by a passing car whenever they walk into the road. This is just a mockery of the title sequence of the very first film.

Also, the pacing on the movie in terms of the actual story and the way it’s being driven is way too slow to fit in with the others (even the 2009 movie). I was at a point maybe 20 minutes or half an hour into the movie and I thought to myself... if this had been made in the 1970s you would have got all those story beats over and done with in the first 5 minutes. It really needed to movie faster than this and, again, this didn’t do anything to make it feel close to the franchise.

And then there’s the music.

I’m not all that familiar with Christopher Lennertz outside of his score for the TV remake of Humanoids From The Deep but he has done his best here. The music feels, for at least some of the time, like it belongs in a Shaft movie. There are some nice references to Isaac Hayes’ original Theme From Shaft although, tragically and inappropriately, the lyrics aren’t heard and the only vocal version, at the end of the movie, is just as part of some weak, sampled up rap version which, great idea as that could have been... just leaves a bad taste in the mouth (and ears, I guess). However, I was pleasantly surprised, when the two younger Shaft’s first go and revisit the original Shaft in his apartment, that he used part of Isaac Hayes original Shaft score which wasn’t part of the main theme and, I suspect, this is the first time this has been done in the franchise since its appearance in the first movie (with this particular cue... there are a few instances of similar Hayes’ references in the TV show).

Ultimately, I think fans of the original films are going to be less happy about what they’ve done with this than people who are coming into the franchise cold. True, there are some great one liners and gags scattered throughout but this honestly feels nothing like a continuation of the films although Roundtree is worth watching this for, if you do like the originals. Not the sequel I was hoping for and it took long enough getting made. I didn’t think I’d end up saying this but I kinda hope they leave this alone now. I think they’ve proven they can’t recapture the original magic which made the 1970s movies... and even the 2000 movie... such great pieces of cinema. Shut yo’ mouth!

A Site For Score Ears

Film Score Monthly

Welcome to the second in my occasional look at the most valuable resources on the internet. For my previous installment... click here.

Lukas Kendall, the man behind this most precious of resources to musical cinephiles started off his magazine, Film Score Monthly, in the form of xeroxed copies 20 years ago. Over the years, this little newsletter grew in format, scope, sales and reputation into a really great magazine which was a good companion to me on many a train journey home from London over the years. As time wore on and the economic strains of maintaining what was an exceptionally high quality and well written niche product grew too great in the “internet age”, FSM finally folded as a printed magazine (a sad day it was too) and went to an exceptionally inexpensive and highly recommended online version - which you can proudly subscribe to at www.filmscoremonthly.com

If it was just on the strength of the track record of the magazine and the accompanying website (with a very much “alive” online community in the form of its message board), FSM would be remembered fondly as it has found a special place in the hearts of many a soundtrack fan. But Lukas Kendall and the behemoth that was his creation didn’t stop at that. Back in 1996, FSM chanced its arm at releasing limited CD editions of scores that had never had a proper release in the format and they continue to this day with over 200 CDs currently released (many of them are still in print if you want to try and pick up some of these little gems from their website). That first release was released on their “Retrograde” imprint... David Shire’s "12 tone score with a jazz funk edge” to the original movie version of The Taking of Pelham 123. This was followed by John Barry’s score to Deadfall and then in 1996 they had their first release using their own name as the label, Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Stagecoach backed with his music to the TV show The Loner.

After that the releases just kept getting more frequent, with much loved scores getting out to the afficianados and FSM are currently releasing around 24 albums a year. Most of these are limited editions and a lot of them have never seen the light of day before in any format. They are always exquisitely remastered from the finest available materials and more often than not provide the most complete listening experience available from the surviving elements.

Some highlights for me over the years would be Ron Grainer’s The Omega Man, Bernard Herrmann’s On Dangerous Ground, Scott Bradley’s Tom and Jerry and Tex Avery Too, Ennio Morricone’s The Five Man Army and their three disc Shaft Anthology - His Big Score and More, which includes for the first time the actual original film tracks from Isaac Hayes’ Shaft (the best selling album was a rerecording) and also the scores to Shaft’s Big Score and various episodes of the Shaft TV show.

Their website has links to the scores which haven’t sold out and includes some generous sized sound samples for browsing customers. Their message board is where you can find a community which collectively has a very impressive knowledge of the history of films and the music used to score them. True, sometimes individual board members may let themselves get a little over-enthusiastic to the point where their arguments can reach Jerry Springer levels... but this can be entertaining in itself.

Frankly, I believe Film Score Monthly as a magazine, website and especially a music label has done more to help forward the cause of film score appreciation, both in bringing the people who like to listen to these things together in the form of an online community and in restoring and getting classic music out on CD which might not have seen the light of day without FSMs particular business model, than many of the great composers themselves.

A valuable resource for a less recognised sub-section of the music listeners around the world. If you’re still reading, you should go check it out.

www.filmscoremonthly.com