Blank Check with Griffin & David - Shaft with Demi Adejuyigbe

Episode Date: June 6, 2021

He’s a bad mother...pod your cast! Demi Adejuyigbe (The Amber Ruffin Show) joins Griffin and David to discuss the cultural legacy of Detective John Shaft - most specifically, John Singleton’s 2000 interpretation. Is there enough sex in this version of Shaft? What does Shaft mean when he says, “Giuliani Time!” ? Does Jeffrey Wright put too much paprika on the sandwich? Listen here! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Blank Check Thank you. Shaft. Shaft, shaft, shaft, shaft, shaft. Shaft. Shaft, shaft, shaft, shaft, shaft. I'm Samuel Jackson. I'm John Shaft. Shaft. Shaft, shaftft Here is my uncle

He's John Shaft Shaft, Shaft Shaft, Shaft He's not my unk He is my dad And now I have a son And his name's also John Shaft Shaft in the shaft.

Wait, so the song was secretly about the 2019 Shaft the whole time? I went through a couple drafts of the song. Because I felt like I was worried about making it feel a little too focused on the Tim Story movie. But I felt the need to upfront acknowledge how bizarre the relationship between the three films just titled Shaft is. It really is a lot. What was the melody there? The theme to Night Court. So, Demi.

Got it. The first episode we ever did that wasn't about Star Wars Episode I, The Phantom Menace. Wars Episode One, The Phantom Menace, back when we thought this was only going to be a podcast about Star Wars Episode One, The Phantom Menace, was, of course, of course, about David Dobkin's motion picture, The Judge. Sure. So I thought it would be funny to call that episode Judging the Judge and rewrite, write lyrics to the theme to Night Court for that episode. Then some point in that episode, I promised that we would do an episode on angley's hulk one day called hulking the hulk so when we did that years later i sang a hulking the hulk song how have you not done that for every episode since i want to make it count and this felt like a

the right one you only busted out for the big ones this felt like the right one because this is a song with a famous theme song a movie with a famous theme song it's a swerve one could say yes right because ben right before he recorded texted should we try to come up with a shaft version of the theme song and i said no i got something planned which is instead of doing that instead of doing what people would like sure let me do the night court theme song again you gotta make them wait for it but also hulk and the hulk judge and the judge were both about the weird relationships between the father and the son that's true that's true and of course this is about the weird relationship between

uncle and nephew sorry sorry i mean father and son they're actually father and son okay so david you told me you have not watched shaft 2019 i have not but I do know that it retcons the very important piece of information that Shaft 2 is Shaft's son, not Shaft's nephew. Demi, have you seen it? I have, and I'm ashamed to say that that is the first Shaft I ever watched back when it came out. I was in New Zealand when it dropped, and it was on Netflix for free there. So I was like, yeah, let me check this out. i immediately was like this sucks it's bad it's very bad i i feel bad because i i have a hate love relationship with uh tim story just i i think he gets a little he's very much like a studio gun but i think sometimes he turns out on not as bad as it's criticized thing and i do think shaft 2019 is

bad barbershop is good barbershopping ride along is fun i yes i like that's that's my thing with tim story okay i was thinking this while watching this is like tim story is this guy who both i feel like needs to be defended a little bit and also needs to be attacked a little bit like you're like there's no middle ground for him. And you know what? Fantastic Four enjoyed it. See, I hate those movies. I get it.

And I would never argue with someone who says they're bad. But I do feel like that in that period of superhero film, that one was very fun to me. And also just where is Yon Griffith nowin now yeah whatever his name is that's just an odd thing that he got that role for those two movies yeah he he had a show where he like he's like a cop who dies at the end of every night oh fuck i believe it's the opposite i believe it's that he never dies he's a cop who's been alive for like 400 years. No, that is New Amsterdam. And that starred Nicolai Coster-Waldau.

I remember that show. Is that what happens in New Amsterdam? That's not a doctor show? Then they did a doctor show also called New Amsterdam. Oh my God. Jesus. No. But the John Griffith show was called, fuck, Forever.

Forever. And let's see. He's a medical examiner who is studying the dead to solve the mystery of his own immortality. So he also is immortal. Yes. Two immortal shows. But he was an immortal M.E., Griffin. You know, like we all.

Yes, sure. Right. griffin you know like we all yes sure right i i've been watching uh uh penn and tellers fool us which is only streaming on cw seed we were talking about obscure streaming services right before this and cw seed in addition to having cw shows also has shows from other networks that they don't care about so like forever which was an ABC show, I think, produced by Warner Brothers, is on CW Seed. And if you watch Pantel or Fool Us, you'll get 18 commercial breaks to promote Forever,

a show that was canceled seven years ago and only had one season. Yeah. Are you saying Seed? Yes, it's called Cw seed that's a insanely bad name yeah it's i don't understand the name there but i feel like every other net thing is like just us plus or us max so i give them credit for just being like we don't want to do that it's very very bizarre uh but yes no tim Story is a guy who either surprisingly over delivers or ruins what should be a slam dunk.

Yes. And it feels like there's very little middle ground. I have not seen. He did the Tom and Jerry, right? He did the Tom and Jerry movie. How is that? Bizarre. I haven't heard good things, but I have heard it's surprisingly not enough Tom and Jerry.

They fucked up. They forgot to put Tom and Jerry in it. they forgot to put Thomas look tiny mistake all right so that's a wrap on Joest oh wait we got more rats we got Pena we got shows what are we what are we now that was a mistake also when they first screened it they did a test screen the the title was Jost and Jerry. Sony's got the rights to Tom. We're doing the best we can. It's a workaround. Yes.

Tim's story, a very, very bizarre career. Sometimes I feel like he deserves more credit. Sometimes I think he deserves more shame. But the Shaft movie is a bizarre misfire. I'm front-loading this talk here because then we're going to talk about John Singleton's Shaft primarily because this, of course, is Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin. I'm David. And it's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. And this is not a mini series on the films of Tim's story. We're not ready to tell the story yet. The never ending story. No, it's not impossible

that we could do a Tim's story mini series, right? I was doing this recently. I was curious what the current rankings are of highest grossing black directors. Coogler. See, Coogler, you would think so just because, obviously, Black Panther is so huge. Yeah, and Creed. Creed's big.

Black Panther is humongous, but he's only done three movies. F. Gary Gray has him beat. F. Gary Gray has the title now because he did it he did a fast and furious he did a men in black right so like he did fate of the furious that's a billion in the bank worldwide then he gets a men in black he gets straight out of comp that like there's enough italian job there are enough big movies in there but fate of the furious pushed him over then i think coogler's number two and tim story's number three wow tim story was one for a while which is crazy because i think of those uh directors he's probably the first one where i think a lot of people will just be like

i don't know who that is or who worked on or not the first one but just like i think you'd have a chance that f gary gray would be like i know that is sure i and i like i know what f gary gray looks like i don't know that i know what tim's story looks like me neither i googled him and i'm like oh look it's like a guy with glasses he's bald you know sure can i say he he looks like john singleton's dorky younger brother sure he's he's he's bald they're both bald and he's got glasses like singleton but he just looks very kind of like meek and quiet um but but, it's like, right. Okay, so he did Barbershop, which launches a franchise.

He does two Think Like a Man movies. He does two Ride Along movies. He does two Fantastic Four movies. He does Taxi. He does Taxi. Which I love. He does Hurricane Season, which does not exist, which was a post-Katrina Forrest Whitaker

inspirational basketball drama that the Weinstein Company pretty much never released. And then Tom and Jerry. Like, that's a pretty fucking weird filmography. Yeah. I'm just looking at, I mean, Hurricane Season starred both Bow Wow and Lil Wayne. Yeah, it's like Lil Wayne's biggest acting role. Jeez.

He's second build. geez he's second build the crazy thing is that all like none of these movies feel like him taking uh like just building up like he he doesn't feel like he's done a blank check movie yet these all feel like for studio he's a studio guy like the biggest blank check he ever got was like that he i don't know did a movie with the silver surfer in it or something i i just don't know did a movie with the silver surfer in it or something I just don't know where he was like I can't you know I've got to do this you know I've got to show people how to think like a man too and this is a perfect bridge and of course joining us today to help build this bridge is our dear friend return to the show Demi Adjayewebe hello writer for the Amber Ruffin Show, which people should watch on Peacock, is a great show, among many other notable credits. But that's the big difference, right, is that Tim Story is the ultimate company man.

And he'll be like, yeah, I want to do Ride Along. I love my buddy Kevin Hart. I'd like to make a movie that makes him a movie star, right? He'd be like, yeah, I was a Fantastic Four fan growing up i like tom and jerry cartoons growing up but none of the shit feels super personal ever it doesn't feel like he necessarily has a personal statement within him and uh even the shaft remake just kind of feels like a shrug from where it's like oh that feels like a fun property to reboot yeah which i also i i think i partially credit that to uh kenya barris who wrote it as well because i feel like a lot of things he does just feels like there's not really

a take here as much as it's just like what's a new way to do this existing property okay i swear to god we're gonna talk about the fucking john singleton shaft which i would argue is very much a passion project definitely is a bizarre case where you have a filmmaker experience massive success early on in his career, then experience a series of underperformers. The bloom had sort of fallen off the rose for him. He did something that's on its face was like, here's a guy trying to rebound commercially with an obvious slam dunk studio movie. But it was actually as much a passion

project for him as any of his earlier films that is true but as you say right it's like this was kind of a i remember when this was announced and i was like a 13 year old movie nerd i was like oh samuel jackson is like the new shaft like brilliant like i'm so excited in the bank like right right that's a great idea you know like it was exciting people honestly when they announced the fucking new thing with you know three generations of shaft or whatever i was like oh that could be good and then obviously it was not good and that that's that happens but i was excited for that he's such a slam dunk shaft that it's so clear that they were like we don't have there's no new person that could fill that role we have to make him also the star of the 2019 one even though they're like it's another generation it's like he's not the focus the new kid is not

the focus it's like let's bring back middle shaft yeah isn't the new kid they're all just like get out of here you twerp yeah they're just like kids nowadays oh it, it's such a. It's so bizarre. I could talk forever about why I think it's like a first of all, a perversion of a perversion of Shaft. It just feels like someone just like three levels, like a story you heard from someone who heard a story about Shaft. And then they wrote a movie based on that. It's just off. I have more thoughts I want to share in that movie. I think we should put a pin in it and come back to it post SingSingleton talk, because there is a lot of context for this middle shaft entry. But I just want to say, before we go on to this, just because you mentioned it, Demi, and I've been thinking about this a lot recently, okay? one of these guys who is like a pseudonym for a writer's room of 15 people like i know there is literally a kenya barris but is there also like a a a voltron a han zimmer scenario right is there

a han zimmer is there like a ghost kitchen of kenya barris's because you look at his career right he he is like a tv vet right he's writing on all these shows and uh you know like but but but kind of like you know okay he writes for the game are we there yet girlfriends soul food the tv show he created america's next top model which i always forget yeah that's wild that it was his idea is wild but then 2016 okay from 2016, and he's already created and is show running, blackish at this point. And over this time, he also expands to mixed-ish, grown-ish, what have you, right? Right.

2016, barbershop the next cut. 2017, girls trip. 2019, shaft. 2020, the witches. 2021, coming to america announces the showrunner on the cheaper by the dozen disney plus reboot with gabrielle union and zach braff i also want to point out that he is not the sole writer of any of those movies he's a shared credits guy for these things they bring the him in for reboots, revivals,

things like that. And very often it feels like the other person he shares the credit with is someone who is on the writing staff of one of his shows. And it feels like he comes in, gives the pitch. And it's like, the take is the new shaft is a pussy and his dad's got to teach him how to man up.

And they're like, great $500 million. And then he passes it over to someone on his right. I feel like that's exactly what happens. Right. He acts as the showrunner for these movies in that, like, they have other people doing like writing on it. But then he comes in and is like, all right, I'll give you notes on this. And what if we do this here?

And it's like, you're just doing punch up on this movie. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I and we have to talk about Sha shaft um but i have not yet seen coming to america neither have i i have seen it um i i've been meaning to watch it um i know that he's only i know that the original writers already also worked on it right blaustein and sheffield or but i remember reading an interview with eddie murphy because i found out that the premise is that he has like a daughter or a son so He has a son, right? He has both.

That's every reboot. Right. But he has like a son in America. David, the premise of the movie is he has only daughters, which means he will not be able to pass his kingdom on. Sure. So he wants his daughter to marry some shitty guy. And then they find he had a bastard love child with Leslieones one night when she essentially date raped him this is the premise of the movie right this is the thing i i have seen coming to america many times it's a movie i like and i was like uh wait why how does he have a son i've seen that movie he's very kind

of chased and quiet in coming to america like and then i read some interview with eddie murphy where he was like yeah like we weren't sure how to do a sequel and then someone wrote the script where it's like oh but he actually secretly had a one-night stand and that really unlocked the story for us and i'm like it did that unlocked the story that means this is the best take we had and right that's what it sounded like to me it was like oh okay the other thing I saw him say in an interview that unlocked the story for him was he was like, well, I was like so chaste and like virginal in that original movie. I didn't know how we could possibly justify that there was some conception that you didn't see. And then he was like, and then I saw the Irishman. And I was like, the technology is there.

We can shoot a new scene. is there we can shoot a new scene and there is a new scene in coming numeral to america where i swear to god it is maybe the best use of de-aging technology i've ever seen like the scene is bad but the technology they finally cracked it it's perfect oh i wonder if that movie was eddie murphy going like i can play characters again i can play all sorts of not as much makeup i can yeah just be like de-aged like he sees the irishman and he's like oh i can do that sorts of not as much makeup i can yeah just be like dh like he sees the irishman he's like oh i can do that instead of sitting in a chair for a bit too let's go hey i would watch it i will say he he does the deep makeup again like he does go for it he he plays the the old jew at the barber shop he plays the the sexual hot chocolate guy right right like uh yeah i don't know that movie

is anyway interesting is the better version of what the 2019 shaft is trying to do but has similar weird kenya barris let me reboot your property uh with millennials uh uh fingerprints on it but shaft is i just think this is an important stat that does not get discussed that much shaft is obviously it's earnest tiddyman right uh writes a book shaft about a sort of street level man of the people private detective yeah earnest tidyman like i you know he's like he wrote the french connection obviously he's like a gritty crime novelist. He was like a crime reporter. He knows how this shit works.

He gets hired to do French Connection off of the Shaft book. And then he sort of becomes like a little empire in and of himself. He starts producing the movies more. He becomes sort of like a developer of these things and combining sort of true life with fictionalization. But a key detail, Shaft in the book is white. In the first Shaft book, Shaft is white. Really?

He goes on. Yes. He goes on to write many more Shaft books in the wake of the films. And then Shaft becomes definitively as a character, the New York City African-American private detective. That is fascinating. But at the very least, Schaaf's ethnicity is not defined in the original book. And I know for a fact that when they first optioned the book to make into a film,

it was not intended to be a black character. That's so crazy because it feels, it's like so down to the DNA that like Schaaf is black that it feels like the story, it couldn't happen with a white character. So I'm just like, what did they change? That's what I why I bring this up, because you you look at the original Shaft and you're just sort of like, well, what movie is there if this guy is white? guy is white right like it just feels like a guy who doesn't like cops it's a crime movie it's like yeah it's just like a yeah the mob he's got to deal with you know like it's it's such a marginal programmer at that point like i think uh tidy man sort of talks a lot about how he kind of had a very unpretentious approach to how to make engaging text and make these things like you know like jump off the page and whatever.

But you also you look at the meat and potatoes of the story of Shaft and there's not a lot there without that interesting element, right? Of just like this is kind of the first black cop you're seeing in a movie like this. And, you know, his weird relationship between the authorities and the people on the street and what have you. Between the authorities and the people on the street and what have you. I think it's handled very deftly and like smartly in Shaft 1971. But but the thing I have not been able to nail down is the timeline of whether they hire Gordon Parks first and then he has the decision to recast to cast Shaft with a black actor or if it was the other way around Melvin Van Peebles had always taken credit for it because Sweet Sweet Back comes out in 1970 and he

said like that movie was so big that then at the last second they decided to make Shaft black which is not the case well it kicks off the blaxploitation uh sort of trend in conjunction with Shaft but I feel like because they sort of came out around the same time, I have to imagine that it was like either. I just I also can't imagine a studio hiring a black director to tell a black story at that time, like caring. So I can imagine they hired someone and then Gordon Parks was like, what if it's this?

And they were like, yeah, whatever. That's my gathering of it. Because, yes yes i think like sweetback and shaft were two separate things happening in two different silos that culturally came out within nine months of each other and sort of then within like three months of each other they both came out in 71 they're very close together yeah they don't as you say right like sweetback is a that's an indie that's the indiest of indies, obviously. He's, you know, selling his bodily fluids.

It's not, that's where Robert Rodriguez. But, you know, it's like that kind of a situation. Whereas Shaft is a studio movie. It's MGM, right? Yeah, and it's the movie that kind of saved MGM. One of many films over many decades that saved MGM when they were on the brink of, like, bankruptcy. It was, like, a real revitalization. But like, you know, Shaft is very much a programmer, right?

It's like it fits into this model of this kind of like private dick movie. But with this electric performance, with Gordon Parks giving it this sort of like New York City electricity and obviously the score. It's so good. Right. And then like Sweet Sweetback is like a primal scream. Like it's barely a narrative film. It is so much more experimental than I think most people realize.

And it is just sort of like a chaotic story about like a force of nature. story about like a force of nature and then i feel like those two things combine to get these sort of like outlaw vigilante blaxploitation movies that like then becomes the model with like fred williamson movies and pam grier films and all these things that pretty much start the year after this like the real capitalization shaft shaft is not that lurid like obviously the song is incredible chef rules it's the best i've seen it so many times i just like it as a new york movie it's a great new i like you know him walking around he's so hot he's just like insanely hot the turtlenecks i couldn't stop taking note of just how good his skin was also like for for a movie at that time to like be just to be able to see someone's skin and feel like, whoa, it's not like it's not like smoothed out by film. It just looks really good naturally.

Like, well, that's anyway. It's a good point, Demi, where like, you know, this is a thing that people far more knowledgeable than me have discussed at length. And you should do supplemental research into what I'm about to say. But like the very creation of film as a technology inherently had a lot of racial bias in it and was was sort of chemically developed around white skin tones and notoriously black skin tones were really, really hard to capture for a very long period of time. And that is a thing that is very striking. The original Shaft movie is you have Gordon Parks, who was this like kind of polymath genius, master of all trades, but notably was like a very, very famous photographer. And you really feel like this is a movie where someone actually knows how to capture the African-American complexion on camera, especially when you're dealing with like New York City kind of verite style night shooting.

It's pretty striking. Well, with that knowledge, maybe it is possible. They were like, we want to do this with a black lead. We need someone who can shoot black people well. And they were like, well, let's get this photographer who's famously doing it well. But again, don't know. I think he, I think Parks is the one

who wanted to cast Roundtree. I now wish I had sort of looked more into, but look, we're going to talk about the singleton shaft up right yeah i i was trying to get definitive answers in the timeline here and i couldn't it's weirdly hard to pin down the reason i unlocked all this and knew all of this and this is a humble brag but uh uh michael murphy the great character actor michael murphy uh who is a regular of robert Altman movies, in Brewster McCloud, which comes out in 1970, plays Detective Frank Shaft. His character is like a bullet parody, but he's a guy who wears turtlenecks and the double shoulder holsters and is known for being super smooth and super slick. And it's funny because it's like the year before Shaft

and other than being white, he has a lot of the similar characteristics of Shaft as a character. Some years ago, they were releasing an Altman biography. And I went with my father to the party where they were after the book had launched. And it was like a lot of other Altman family people there.

And I went up to Michael Murphy because I'm such a big fan of Bruce McCloud and was just like, I'm just a big fan. I end up talking to him for a while. And I was like, you know, no one ever calls out the fact that you were the original Shaft, which I said kind of half jokingly. And he said, how did you know that? And I went, what do you mean? I mean, like in Bruce McCloud, you play a character, a detective named Shaft, the year before Shaft. And he went, oh, I didn't even put that together.

I thought you were talking about the fact that I was supposed to play Shaft. What? And he like secretly was circling the role of Shaft? They were aggressively pursuing him they wanted him to play shaft wild and he i love michael murphy but he is notably kind of his stock and trade is that he is super white bread i don't think the movie would have been as much of a hit i feel like it would have faded into obscurity it would have been any other cop movie you know and gordon parks is like uh the what the learning tree is that's like 69 i

think yeah or yeah like late 60s is this uh landmark movie yeah well he the learning tree is like the first american movie made by a black man like basically right like yeah pretty much i i mean it is it's interesting like again i feel like a whole it would be a whole episode to talk about the 71 chef because like i think mgm hired like a black pr firm they they like realize what they had on their hands after sweetback comes out they reframed sort of the whole marketing of the movie right right you know i mean i mean shaft also is the greatest second tagline shafts his name shafts his game like where you're like it is what does that mean you know like okay it is his

game though i know i know um like everything the logo is the best the only thing that's weird to me about shaft is that they only made two sequels like and i don't really there's not really a big story for why that is because both shaft in africa was kind of a bomb but like you could have done more shafts i think i don't i don't know what happened there they did a tv show that didn't go anywhere i think that was part of the problem i bought that box set and thought optimistically i was going to make it through the nine Shaft TV films. That was optimistic. Way too optimistic.

But they tried to like – did I watch any of them? No, I did not even put the disc into the play. Did you watch the movies? Yes. I watched every Shaft movie in preparation for this. Right, right, yeah. I did too, except for the Tim story. Yeah.

They tried to make Shaft into like colombo it was like it'll be 90 minutes cbs movie of the week shaft solves one mystery kind of things and there are a lot more rote that would be brilliant if shaft's entire thing was his detective process instead of just being like a guy who doesn't like the police and has, it's just sort of like, I don't know, overly sexual. And also just like, I don't know, he just sort of shows up places. He's chill. Yeah. We're just following like the world's most basic investigation through these movies.

Right. And he'll like go see some mobster and the mobster will be like, hey, fuck you. And Shaft's like, I don't think so. And you're like, like shaft isn't scared of this guy he never fires first he's always like defensive definitely it's like i don't know i think which is something that and we'll get into shaft 2000 but i think they really change that about the character in a way that does not sit well with me they change a lot that i'm just like

i think it's i think it's a look there is no weirder way to watch the singleton shaft than having watched the first three shafts in like two days which is because that you are like wow this is and it just a whole other thing like this is just not shaft at all like thematically spiritually and politically just unaligned with the original shaft in so many ways right i imagine gordon parks watching and just being like i'm so fucking upset i am because he's in it too so he must have like he probably went to the premiere or whatever yeah was he like yeah i loved when he said giuliani time like oh my god well i just imagine he's like i don't have any control over this it's gonna get made whether or not i am involved so let me yeah i'll be in it that's i mean the other weird thing i i just always think it's such an interesting stat is gordon parks

jr directs superfly the following year really yeah his son directed superfly which then becomes the template for i think what most people think of for blaxploitation movies like shafts right like shaft and sweetback combined to equal superfly which then becomes the movie that everyone else is copying i feel like the cultural uh sort of like understanding of shaft for right now feels so much more like superfly i feel like a lot of people are like uh shaft is a guy who smacks around his women it's like no he doesn't and like dresses like you know crazy and has like wacky outfits it's like no shaft just like wears turtlenecks and goes to the bar he's cool so chill yeah and when he has sex with someone it's chill because everything he does is chill he's a chill guy if he walks into like fifth avenue cars slow down because he's walking. So relax.

He doesn't yell at the cars. They just slow down around him. That's the weirdest thing about the whole Shaft legacy, which I've been trying to build up to, is it feels like Shaft 2019, but in particular Shaft 2000, which is what we're ostensibly talking about today, are movies that are like sequels to the cultural reputation of Shaft more than actual Shaft? Because what Shaft is has become sort of so abstract over decades where you're like, this first movie is this movie where the combination of the right director casting like a great discovery movie star and then getting the coolest person to do the soundtrack turns it into something different than what it is on paper right but it is somewhat alarming watching the original shaft

and being like oh this is in its very nature a pretty straightforward crime movie it is not as flashy as in your mind you think it is because of what shaft has come to represent i think it's because this movie is all it created a vibe it didn't sort of like coast on a vibe it starts the blaxploitation genre it has like a soundtrack a look and just a marketing sort of thing that you feel like is so iconic now but back then it's just sort of like they just we just created it out of nothing and it's wild to think of a movie being so like based on nothing that even though it's like, it's an adaptation of this book,

but it's also just like everything about it that stands out is so original that it just feels like you don't have an idea of, you think of shaft and you're not thinking of it as shaft. It's like shaft is kind of like this plus this. You're like shaft is shaft. And so that just gets perverted in your mind as to like, well now what I remember of shaft, because it's just,

it's like seeing an original painting for the first time and then trying to describe the painting without comparing it to anything else you just kind of go like uh i'm gonna make up what i kind of think i have to describe it as right and david sorry no i just remember the trailer for shaft 2000 dropping and he says it's my duty to please that booty and things like that and i as a teenager i was like yes, yes, this is Shaft's energy. I haven't seen Shaft. But I assume he's just someone who talks in- Classic Shaft.

Like, I'm fucking 10 years old, 11 years old. And I was like, that's the Shaft I know and love. And my dad was like, you haven't seen Shaft. You've seen fucking Maniacs parody Shaft. And look, I think there's things that i would but like 70s shaft yes isaac hayes does sing a whole song about how cool he is that won the oscar that won an oscar and it's an iconic performance at the academy awards and it's deserved but like i feel like if john shaft saw isaac hayes do that number he'd be like yeah that's cool like he would not have a

big reaction to it he might be a little embarrassed yeah he'd just be like right on yeah I think he'd be like I don't need all that flash let's take it easy it's like Richard Roundtree is just has such a casual command of the screen that is the

thing that makes him so cool and he also has the command anytime he walks into a room, but he's not overzealous in any way now. And Demi sort of, as you were saying, like everything that made Shaft so kind of culturally impactful feels like it happened organically, right? Like it was all these different things developing at different ways that all came together and like made this big splash. But what we think of as Shaft was sort of codified by everyone imitating Shaft. And even to a degree also more the Shaft sequels than actual Shaft.

And it's like I think there was the Shaft sequels feel a little burdened by like are we making a second shaft movie or are we making what now shaft feels like it needs to respond to right are we adapting a meme right right right especially right the round tree sequels they're more james bondy they have more sex they have more montage they have more like costume changes and stuff like they're trying to be more what you're talking about the round look let's talk about john singleton's chef okay we got it we let's you know this is this is the line i'm drawing so singleton i was reading a lot of articles from when this movie was getting announced when it was being developed when it was coming out there was like so much press hullabaloo around this movie

i think because uh singleton was seen as sort of like the golden child who had sort of lost his way as this is chance to like reclaim the culture. And this is really like Samuel Jackson's first time being the lead of a big studio movie after being like such a fucking dependable player for the nineties, right? Like just essentially owning the nineties. Like when he's a lead before then,

it's like the negotiator or sphere or the long kiss good night or what he you know he's a dual lead with someone else like die hard with a vengeance yeah you know whole fiction yeah like rules of engagement that's i'm like looking through his obviously he's sort of the secret he's like presented kind of as the lead of deep blue sea but obviously he's not uh because he gets eaten by a shark spoiler alert for deep blue sea um yeah that's it you know he's the lead of jackie brown that's an ensemble movie yeah he really hasn't had a samuel jackson is title movie right so i think there was that feeling of it being overdue and And Singleton talked

about that he felt like this movie was like his destiny. That he saw the first Shaft when he was three years old. His father, who was a little bit of a

fabulist, you know, is obviously the character that inspired, is the guy who inspired the Lawrence Fishburne character in Boys in the Hood.

Boys in the Hood. His father used to claim that shaft was based on him and he was like you were a detective and he was like no but i lived in new york city and i walked around cool i think someone must have seen me that's rex hard to dispute yeah ernest heidemann's like at his desk like hammering on a typewriter he sees him walking around he's like oh that guy's walking pretty cool. I'm going to make him white in this book, though. I'm going to make the second book be called Shaft Among the Jews, which is truly the title of the second Shaft book.

Why did they adapt that one? They're going to. No, they're going to. They're going to get to it. I would love for Kenya Barris to be in charge of that one yeah that would be he's like all right um but but yes so uh uh singleton was always like i love shaft shaft was like james bond for me right that's the thing that's the key to this movie i think is that you have someone who has a very young child imprints upon this character and is like this is our superhero and to some degree the film we end up seeing decades later is him making his like

little boy fan fiction of shaft right here's the other thing though that i feel like has to be this is there's not much mentioned but singleton's other passion project he gets attached to shaft in 96 is a luke cage movie and this is kind of a luke cage movie yes that's the other thing you know like kind of like super guy in harlem busting things up like right it's and i feel like he's just sort of got that too he just wants to make kind of like this like larger than life movie he wants to make his black superhero movie and like he for a period of time was trying to do black panther he wanted to do it with wesley snipes i need to find the interview wesley snipes talks about it it sounds terrible like wesley snipes was like i love john

singleton but that was a really really fucking bad pitch i have i'll give you let me tell you what wesley snipes said the pitch was yeah he was like i pitch classic black panther secret world in africa technically advanced society yada yada yada and john is like no no i wanted to have the spirit of the black panther and he's gonna get his son to join the black panthers and they have like political strife and i want to like make it be all about the civil rights movement and wesley steinstein's was like have you read the comic i don't think any of that's in there like i think you're just talking about a different movie like yeah that's that's the most he described it as basically thank

god i love john but i'm so glad we didn't go down that road uh the line here that's incredible is he and his son have a problem and they have some strife because he's trying to be politically correct. And his son wants to be a knucklehead. I hate when that happens. That pitch is basically Shaft 2019. It is. Oh, no. That's what's fascinating about it. But, yes, Luke Cage was a much better fit for him.

He wanted to do it for a long time. Even through the mid-2000s post-X-Men and Spider-Man, he for a long time was saying that he He wanted to do it for a long time, even through like the mid 2000s post X-Men and Spider-Man. He for a long time was saying that he was going to do it with Tyrese because Tyrese became his guy. But it never materialized. This feels like absolutely correct. The culmination of those two desires, right, to make the movie that he imagined in his head as a little boy reading luke cage comics watching shaft movies he wants to do it with don sheetal that's his big thing when he signs on to do the project he's talking the trades i love don sheetal i think he's the next big movie star and his rep at this time is traffic or is or no pre-traffic same year okay traffic's the same year i mean so who is don

sheetal to the world at this point that he's like i love this guy he's like a great devil in blue dress right right yeah out of sight you know like he's he's he's coming along he's in rosewood obviously right that's the thing he's like he's in boogie nights like good directors have recognized that he's an amazing character actor devil in the blue dress was the thing where people thought he was going to get an oscar nomination he didn't but he was certainly not being positioned as a leading man which is wild because i feel like this movie doesn't exist without samuel jackson doing pulp fiction i feel like the cultural understanding of shaft is so much of what he's doing in that movie with all the like do you speak it motherfucker and then like i imagine people seeing that and being like,

oh my God, shaft. It's a two prong thing. It's literally, it's that it's that Sam Jackson was like the right star to conceptually reboot this with where the studio was going to sign off on it. And to Jackie Brown,

weirdly, I was just reading all these interviews where they talked about the fact that he had wanted to do it, that no one had any interest. He was ever actively developing it, but he always always was like i would love to do a modern shaft uh and then scott rudin at paramount at that point in time i don't know why paramount has the rights to shaft because the shaft rights are confusing i got it for you right here oh somebody did google all right so this movie was in mgms it was mgms and then they sell it to paramount

singleton said he made them sell it to paramount because mgm wouldn't give him a big budget they thought it would just be a quote-unquote black movie like he he he basically curses out mgm and so mgm kicks the rights to paramounts to paramount when that's when scott rudin comes aboard uh in 1997 and let's say scott rudin uh notorious monster at that point in time is just kind of the biggest producer at the overall deal at paramount so like any top priority movie at paramount he's going to put his claws into which means this was really seen as potential for a huge franchise for them yeah and i think like that you know initially they he held auditions at the apollo theater for like he wanted an unknown at some point like there was some big event he did where he's like i'm gonna cast the new shaft but then sam jackson comes aboard and like that feels like the studio

being like well wait a second no like, let's make this a big movie. The other thing I read, there's a Shane Salerno who co-wrote the original script for this. The guy who did Armageddon. And is now writing Avatar 5, The Seed Bearer, or whichever one. But he wrote a long,

excuse me, eulogy for Singleton when he passed away a couple of years ago. He said that at one point Singleton was really into the idea of it being Will Smith and Lauryn Hill. Right. He definitely wanted Lauryn Hill to play Shaft's like sister. I think he wanted Lauryn Hill to play the Vanessa Williams character. But this is the other thing. His original pitch was he very much wanted to be the two generations of Shaft. He wanted the whole movie to be the two of them together. So I think he wanted a younger Shaft originally. He wanted

someone in the Will Smith, Don Cheadle age range. And Rudin and Paramount were like, we don't want the fucking old guy Shaft. Make that a cameo. You can sprinkle him in there a little bit. Let's make this a vehicle for someone to be a fucking movie star and sam jackson obviously has just had this dominant 90s um but the other thing is that like even though jackie brown underperformed it sort of launched a uh a blaxploitation sort of like uh reclamation project especially with like pam breguer being put back in movies again yeah um and just the vibe even though that movie is not ostensibly a blaxploitation pastiche fully that then they were like oh you could do like shaft but make it like jackie brown well if you're gonna do that just get

get the tarantino guy get sam jackson absolutely the other yes yes i mean they also had like a cleopatra j remake set up. They had a Superfly remake set up. They never happened. I know they eventually did Superfly like a couple of years ago. But like, yeah, I think Hollywood at the time was like, yeah, let's let's do remakes of all this stuff. And also that, you know, the 90s were obviously things run on this 20 year cycle. The 90s were when there was this big seventies nostalgia wave and you get things like the Brady Bunch movie and you start getting like seventies TV show adaptations and all that sort of shit.

Which is so strange because it's them trying to capitalize on the success of these things that were all based so much on vibe and then being like, well, let's get rid of the vibe. Right. It just, it just, I don't know.

They sort of like make a new metal shaft and I'm just like, I don't know what people are supposed to think of this i mean there's there's a really irascible singleton piece i need to figure out which one it is i have it somewhere in my tabs here but where he's talking about like all the rumors that had spread around the movie at this point and the fact that they only let him like the fact this movie is only getting greenlit because of the tarantino like buzz. And he was like, they kept on telling me to do the Tarantino thing. And I'm like, that motherfucker writes movies from outside the fishbowl. I'm in the fishbowl.

And yet and yet I feel like this movie, if you did not tell me John Singleton wrote this, I wrote, I guess, and directed. wrote, I guess, and directed, there's no way I would have guessed it. Because I guess my cultural understanding of John Singleton is someone who is so much more, just has things to say about the way the interplay between black people and the police in this movie feels like it fumbles it in a way that I'm just like, no, this was a movie made by a white guy, which is awful to say, because he's not a white guy but i'm just like i think the difference between what is luke cage would have been and what this is is the police aspect of it and i think that's where it becomes a thing where i'm just like what is shaft doing making him a cop is a strange decision and obviously he retires from the police like halfway through the movie twice and by the yeah so many times and he he does throw his

badge at a judge but like he he retires from the police in the same way that the jerk says he only needs one more object before he can leave but like by the end of the movie he's kind of shaft like the shaft we know and love right he's gonna's going to be a private dick. It's a weird origin story for a 55-year-old man. And it's like, he retires, but still keeps a fondness for the police and like their tactics and has like a- Right, they nod at each other. A rapport with like the good cop with Vanessa

and has this one- Right. He has this one line where he says like, one more for the road in reference to him using like extra judicial brutality to get information. I'm like, so you're admitting that cops do this, but you're doing it in a way where it's like, and that's fine.

I think I like this movie a lot more than you guys do. Although I obviously acknowledge that it's deeply flawed. I'm mixed on this movie. It's very watchable. I think it's really, really fucking watchable. And there are things I find very interesting in it.

But that is the fundamental issue of the movie is Shaft's relationship to these institutions. Yes. Which it feels like goes against everything that Shaft was originally about

was like he's kind of this guy who's stuck in between these two worlds. Yes. And there's... Oh, I... Okay, let me just plainly say i i i think it's extremely watchable but i also i think the like themes and whatnot in this movie do make it like

my first response upon finishing it was i think this movie is evil but like mostly because like in the original shaft there is an entire scene about how shaft would rather work with drug dealers than with the police because they are both treated in the same way and he's like no i am not he's like i like he has like a sort of uh rapport with a guy on the police force but he's like i do not help you i do not work with you you guys can go and fuck yourselves uh and in this one uh he is not only a cop that retires multiple times but when he does retire he beats up a black drug dealer on the street for like no reason kind of and then there's a cop driving by that as this is happening and he sort of like nods to them is like hey this

is the job and the cop nods back and you're just sort of like what okay so this is gonna be subversive they're gonna comment on this it's like no he's using police tactics and it's like pro-brutality in a way that i'm just like, this isn't Shaft. That scene is so bizarre because Singleton makes such a moment out of it. He goes to these extreme close-ups of their eyes as they're giving the nod to each other. Right, and it's like, he clearly does want to call out the weird interplay of this moment, but he doesn't really want to dig into it. That Shaft is essentially weaponizing the systemic racism of the institution to get away with beating the shit out of a suspect yes by getting the white cops to approve because they're like

well we feel the same way and he pretty much only brutalizes black men in this yes yes so it's just like what and christian bale what's and christian b Yes. Although that feels like, it's like, I don't know, he slaps Christian Bale and then Christian Bale's fine for most of the movie. And then it's like drug dealers and just like fucking black henchmen and all these things

where it's like, the amount of black death in this movie that is caused directly by Shaft is psychotic. It is wild how violent he is as a character. Look,

all the Shafts have gunplay like they all it's like because i was watching this movie and i was like god they're really like shooting the shit out of each other in this way there's lots of like you know squibby bloody death in this movie and i was like i had just watched the other shafts they do always shoot each other it's not like it's not there but for some reason they just feel a lot less intense or whatever a lot less visceral i think it's because in the originals it's mostly defensive and when it like goes wrong they have a moment where he sort of is like oh my god all of the damage that's been done to this community and like the score gets solemn whatnot and this one it's none of that it's sort of like uh i did what

i had to uh and then they move on they're just just like, we don't have time for resting on this. And also that it's all done with this fucking kind of like wink and a smile, like 90s action hero, quippy one-liner kind of like irony and distance, you know? That's definitely part of it, just the general 90s action hero thing of like shoot first, ask questions. Like that is obviously just like a prevailing mood.

But it's also this like Giuliani era kind of like, well, we have to clean up the streets somehow attitude that is like boiling away. Yeah. It's a weird thing. This movie, like you said, Griffin, there's this Singleton script, which I think he wrote with Salerno. He brings on Salerno, who at that point is like a big spec script guy, but also had spent time like in the nypd blue room was known as being like a good crime writer so he plucks him he's 24 and says like i want a white co-writer i want to be able to get some different perspectives on this they give the script to rudin rudin says this is a fucking mess i'm bringing in richard price to rewrite this right because like this their script, I think, is more, as you say, the generational

shaft, like whatever, crime movie, two shafts. And Richard Price, who is obviously a celebrated crime novelist, and he wrote Clockers, which had just been turned into a hit movie or whatever, but he's a white guy, gets brought in,

and Singleton hates Richard Price. They did not get along. And Sam Jackson hates him too. There's this weird thing where it was like Jackson and Singleton weren't getting along. Neither guy was getting along with Rudin and neither guy liked the Prince script. Yes. Like they were unified and having the same enemies, but also were fighting with each other.

Jackson and Singleton. Yes. same enemies but also we're fighting with each other jackson singleton yes uh basically you know singleton's like he price knows all the cop stuff and he would write that in fine but he doesn't get shaft he doesn't get like the attitude he doesn't get the flavor like he wasn't interested in like spicing the movie up or whatever and so i think sam jackson and singleton just come up with a lot of like riffs which you can feel in the movie like there are just times when jackson's like i'm gonna do a line like the famous instance though but this is what i was reading is that like jackson hated all of that shit that he didn't like shaft being so quippy so like price had taken all of that out

of the script right and gave it like sturdy bones but then the character was gone and then singleton would overcompensate and then jackson would go that's corny i'm gonna look stupid saying that so like the key example of that is the bar scene after the surprise party when he's talking to the bartender i believe how price had written his son yes from you know the The Wire or any other, she's great. She hits on him and in the script, the Price draft, Shaft goes, I'm tired, I have work in the morning and walks out of the bar.

And Singleton throws a fit and he's like, Shaft would fuck her. Shaft will fuck everybody. You can't have him not fuck her. Shaft is never too tired to fuck. Which is not true. Which is not true! in Shaft's big score there's a great scene where

someone's just like I get off at four and he's like just trying to get information and she's like upset that he's like I thought your attention was on me he's like I'm doing an investigation not right now but this like doesn't that feel like Singleton seeing this movie when he is single digits and Shaft sleeps with two different

women in the first movie and it's like oh my god two two sex scenes shaft fucks everybody to be fair he is described as a sex machine he is described as a sex machine yeah so you know a machine he's literally a machine there is there's like a a weird over sexualization to the character of Shep that is like clear but I just think yeah he adapted it in a way that uh makes it feel wrong but the thing I read is that so like Jackson on the day is like I'm not coming out of this trailer I'm not shooting this scene the the way Price has written it is dumb it's like lame and then Singleton comes to his trailer try to appease him and he he's like, don't worry. I fixed it.

I rewrote the scene. Here it is for you. It's my duty to please that booty. And Jackson's like, that's also wrong. And he didn't want to leave his trailer. And he didn't want to say that line either. Like Jackson was trying to find some middle ground between the two. And by all accounts, it was like they had to drag him out to say that

line he was so embarrassed he hated that it was the trailer line he still winces i read some interview with him after singleton's death where the the interviewer like said like that's a cool line he's like really i'm on his side i think it it is such a tonal like it's a scene that feels like you should cut it out like they were just like well Shaft is horny we need him to be horny him flirting with the bartender is just fine him saying that it's like I want her to

like turn to the camera and be like are you being filmed right now? why did you just say that? did you write that? were you writing that in that other room before you came here? he pretty much like wiggles his eyebrows at the camera I mean here's the thing i've got we like there's all these quotes like it really it boils down to john singleton scott rudin samuel jackson jackson richard price all

had tension with each other in various directions you have a lot of people with you know like sort of input on this movie who have a lot of influence who are all disagreeing with each other post-production was a nightmare apparently like because rudin is like breathing down people's necks um richard here's the richard roundtree's quote i will say we were just defending that Shaft is not that horny. And Richard Roundtree told the National Post, he doesn't have any sex. He was mad that there wasn't more sex. Oh, my God. It is wild that the opening credit sequence is just this James Bond style, but it's not Samuel Vance. Very odd.

What? Okay. Who is? What the fuck is that? It's so weird. They added it like months later and he was off shooting one of 18 movies Sam Jackson probably shot that year. So it's just a woman and some body double who you can tell is not Samuel Jackson. Yes.

So you're watching it and you're like, is this supposed to be Shaft? Or am I just watching two strangers have sex? just watching two strangers have sex let's get into the movie because the credits like the opening credits to the original shaft are a top 10 of all time opening sequence in a film i like the uh i actually like both of the round tree sequels neither of them have the isaac hayes song as the opening and the big score one is very good though the song on the big score the big score music is so cool so yes and the song is fun but but but let's also acknowledge once again like talking about how it's kind of skewed everyone's memory of the original shaft is or just from osmosis what they think it is the awesome

opening credit sequence of the original shaft is that super fucking cool logo and then just shots of him walking down a real new york city street there's there's no crazy stylized you know like that's the thing and like i don't know who made the decision on these opening credits but they're like okay the theme song is back and you're like oh yeah cool and they're like money right so how about like a sex montage over police siren lights right i'm like well why would that what i don't know it does he is he in the car why just right off the bat being like that's not yeah yeah just it feels like that was added because of the whole like this there's not enough sex in this thing yeah in this movie

but it it is it immediately sets a tone of like okay this is gonna be a sexy movie and then yeah the first scene you're like what the fuck why would you do these back to back and then right the and then the first scene is this sequence that is kind of a fun you know opening to a mystery you know to a cop movie right like it's like okay there's been this assault mechai pfeiffer is lying there dead christian bale like what happened here tony Collette is the waitress. Like, by the way,

my first thought was, did he literally call Makai Pfeiffer and ask him to show up and just lie on the street? Like before they cut to the flashback, I was like, that's a big favor to cash in. I was like, Oh,

he must've not been anyone at this point, but no, but he is, he would been in clockers. He'd been in like soul food. He'd been in a, what's it called? He's in, I still know what you did last summer. Yes. Right. He'd been in Soul Food. He'd been in, what's it called? He's in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.

Yes. Right? He's in the second one. But I am immediately like, why is Shaft here? Shaft's not a murder, a homicide detective. This is not what Shaft does. First sign that they might have miscalculated this movie a little bit. There's a lot of signs in that scene where I'm like, oh, I think things are off here.

Like there's a moment where he looks at Toni Collette and I'm just like, oh, no, is Shaft going to fuck Toni Collette? Is that why she's here? But I will say this, like this is what I do like about this movie. I do like the central mystery of this film and especially like in relation to watching the other Shaft movies and a lot of movies of this ilk, you know, even in all three eras we're talking about here, right? Like the 2010s, the 2000s, the 70s, where it's like the kind of overcomplicated web of figuring out how to follow the chain and who's actually at the top and what's the thing they're actually trying to do. I like that it's a very kind of like human crime at the center of it.

And the thing he's trying to solve is like systemic rot. You know, I do like that. I like that there's not a mystery for him to untangle as much as there is sort of like him trying to figure out how to write this situation. I know who did it. Right. Yeah, go ahead i was gonna say i wish that there was more of a mystery because i think the way that they handle the rot isn't very good and it feels like it's sort of i don't know they have they have several moments where they sort of

like show okay these cops are racist and then they have the moment where like the the case sort of it gets fucked and christian bale is let go and he's sort of like he throws his badge into the wall but from then the way that they proceed makes it seem like his problem is not with policing as much as just like with the courts and by the end of it you feel like even though he's still not a cop he's like very much in support of what the cops do and it's just sort of it's very few bad apples and it doesn't sort of get to the heart of the idea of police handling of racism or why. Like, I think just him leaving the police system is more about him just leaving the justice system. And if there was a way that he could still be a cop and not have to go to court, he would, which is his way of just being like, I would love to just kill the bad guys.

I'm like, that's not Shaft. That's not what you're doing. No, this weird sort of like vigilante aspect to him when when he has the badge, it all just starts feeling really uncomfortable in terms of abuse of power, you know? And like, David, you were pointing out just how much gun shit there is in the original Shaft movies, too. It's like it's not like these are recent issues, right? It's not like these are things that just have sprung up overnight. But, you know, especially at the time we're recording this, these things are being discussed a lot on a daily basis as more and more of the country gets vaccinated. Suddenly there are once again mass shootings every single day. And we just you know, the derek chauvin trial like just you know he he was found guilty just last week uh i do also just find the more i'm thinking about these things the older i get

i have very much hit a point where i just at getting more and more uncomfortable with this kind of like just kind of extreme gun violence and extreme let the cops do whatever the fuck they want sort of movie making even especially when it's framed as like oh but he's cool yes framing uh this guy is a cool cop who's real the reason he stops becoming a cop is not because he disagrees with the police system as much as it is just like he's upset that the courts uh presided on this case wrong because then i'm like well then that's not you being, that's still sort of an abuse of power of you being like,

I like the justice system only insofar as I can use it. So like when I can go out to the streets and beat up a guy and say shit, like lawyers are for punetas or like abusing his power to punish criminals as he sees fit. I'm like, then you aren't like you're you like, that's the thing that I'm like, okay, dig into the problem. Yes. Or you're you like that's the thing that I'm like, OK, problem. Yes. Or are you're parallel to the issues? I also feel like you're right that it's weird that the ire of this movie is like, well, this kid's so rich and his dad's so well connected that they're going to be able to hire good lawyers and get him off.

And also the like, well, they're bad apples everywhere. But almost every cop he deals with is a bad apple. He is also a bad apple. Yes, he's also a bad apple. And he doesn't really recognize the rot of the system itself. He's like, well, so many individual bad actors here. The main thing that Christian Bale has against him to get off is that Shaft punches in the face yeah at the crime scene which is not police procedure not that i am a defender of all forms but like he literally brutalizes him at the

crime scene this is this is a little bit on you john shaft i really didn't like that moment because i was just like that is so like that's so obviously the thing that they should dig into and like also just immediately makes you go like well I guess he Bale does sort of have a defense in that and like just I think even just using it as like the way that the case goes when like a black cop punches a white guy

a cop at all punching a black person and just like how just there's so many different things in this movie where it's like if they had dug into that that would be interesting there's one line where a cop says something to Shaft like how about you pick a color black or blue and i was like okay let's follow that let's follow that and it was just like someone wrote a fun line and then we're like all right now move on right he he has a quippy comeback he says how about i make you both like it just becomes another way for him to threaten someone and show how

powerful he is i i i do think like i god i would love to read what the original salerno singleton draft is because i wonder if there was an angrier more coherent more political movie here that rudin was just like make this a summer blockbuster just make about a badass right and but the other problem and i think this was is that the there was some decision i've read some interview some interview with Jeffrey Wright, who is in this film playing a character called Peoples Hernandez. And we will talk about it. Where they kind of beefed up Jeffrey Wright and beefed down Christian Bale. Because they were like, Bale is not compelling in this because he's guilty from frame one and he's just a jerk. frame one and he's just a jerk so let's have the plot be like that he meets this you know local drug dealer and that hires him to kill a witness and like and then we're immediately like that like

then bail is just a non-presence in the story and it becomes shaft you know being about shaft invading washington heights to kill a dominican drug lord like that's yeah what the movie is 90 about yeah again thematically literally the opposite of a crucial scene in the original yes like i do not work with cops i will work with drug dealers instead so just i was like what what is this plot what is this plot and like jeffrey wright's being told like just like as big as possible but like fill the room so we know you're bad i also right i mean as you said i think they cut down bail and they shot more stuff with right apparently right just like popped in the test screenings and they

were like this is the character that everyone thinks is fun as much of a focus on this guy as possible which i get yeah because he's like entertaining i mean this is a classic jeffrey wright performance in that you're like too much but then you're also kind of like i mean it's kind of it's it's pretty watchable like i love jeffrey wright he's a great actor he is often way too much paprika on the sandwich and it's no problem i think i said in some previous episode that he is the one actor where it's like, I enjoy eating his sandwich over paprika. Like, it's part of the spice for him. He's able to give naturalistic performances, but he tends to go too hard.

And that's a little bit of a fun with him. You know, I mean, him in Source Code, the one that Paul Tompkins makes fun of, you know, where he's like got, you know, the crutches and the big hair and the glasses. Oh, the Source Code, you know. Right. Just not big hair and the pipe the sauce code you know right just not enough business bring in more business i love i love it when he and then even in westworld where he's playing a robot who is quiet you're kind of like anytime he's on screen you're like this is this is way over the top jeff yeah and he's not even saying anything he's just furrowing his brow and mumbling here's another thing with jeffrey wright right he makes mumbling feel like overacting he also stop yelling jeffrey he's also a guy and i want to make it clear i love him he's one of my

favorite character actors but he's a guy where it feels like any time he affects any sort of voice for a character which is almost always he he kind of wants to show the work like it never is like oh look how well he disappeared into this character like even westworld where he's like my guy's kind of gravelly he's sort of it has the same amount of effort as christian bale doing a batman voice yeah well it's also crazy that this is christian bale like right before um american psycho or whatever right around this they're the same year aren't they i think american psycho comes out this spring and like these are arguably the two performances that get him batman like that's the most insane thing is he has american psycho and shaft this

year and then he becomes the internet's fan casting choice for batman because they're like look he plays such a good bruce wayne it's like what are you revealing about yourself that you're the guy who's this guy's crazy like psychos insincere like generational wealth brat psychos to be your bad you just see that he can be rich and crazy and yeah they're like oh his hair slicked back well yeah yeah um i also like looked around because i'm like so jeffrey wright's just like doing his thing he's playing a dominican guy he's doing an accent i googled like to find like so what's up with that like guzamo uh yeah well obviously the role was written for john leguizamo and he was cast and he left i think for moulin rouge moulin rouge ran over schedule yeah and

obviously john leguizamo would be a delight in this role john leguizamo has never not you know enjoyed hamming it up like i'm sure he would be just what the film is looking for but i like found some interview jeffrey wright where he's like yeah i like just knew a guy who sounded like that that's what i was doing oh and i was like okay okay jeffrey that's all i could find i I recently rewatched Game Night, and Jeffrey Wright has a small role in that. And even in that, he's playing like... He's very funny in Game Night.

He's so funny. But he's playing an actor who... He's playing an actor, and so he overacts the scene. And then even when it drops down, he's sort of overacting in a different level. And you sort of get the tears of how his overacting works in his brain, which is like, all right, overact, bad.

Now overact the Jeffrey Wright way. And it's so like interesting to see that. And then also watch something like this. That's another modern Jeffrey Wright where he's doing the weird forced gravel voice. And I'm like, look, it's fun. But I wonder if you could just like maybe give your throat a break for one movie and just talk like yourself.

Because everybody's like, listen, I want to tell you something like every performance. He's like doing this. I almost wonder if he was cast specifically to do that to a level. And cause it feels like him making fun of himself when he's just like, listen up, man. Yeah.

Oh, okay. And then he asked people like what their allergies are. I love, did you have a nice time rewatching game night? I just, anytime I watch game night, I have a great time. Iwatching game night demi i just anytime i re-watch game night i have a great time i think it's fantastic i think it holds it's the best uh he's yes so

good in that i was just thinking even rick and morty like they brought him in he's the episode where they're fighting over the toilet right where he keeps on using rick's toilet and rick's trying to get revenge on him and the bit they're doing is sort of like when they cast Werner Herzog where it's like cast someone with too much innate gravitas to talk about something really silly and even then he's like overplaying it but none of this is a criticism I think he's

always good. No I think he has such a strange career in which like if you say Jeffrey Wright immediately I think you think of certain roles that would be considered like dramatic and strong and like important roles but also he has a lot of certain roles that would be considered like dramatic and strong and like important roles but also he has a lot of silly things that he does in his career yeah we're like he seems like he could be a goofball I also think this point in his career like 2000 is when everyone was like Jeffrey Wright might be one of the best actors of his

generation like I do feel like there was this Basquiat. Right. Right. And like he's he's going to top dog underdog on Broadway the following year. Like he's just sort of getting talked about as like this might be like a real, real major guy. And then he didn't have that exact career that I think people were anticipating for him. Yeah. I wonder. I mean, with things like that that i always wonder how much of it

is them wanting to specifically be a certain kind of actor because i feel like there are a lot of actors where people like they're gonna blow up and then it just feels like they really just want to do certain types of acting or like do character things or do things where it doesn't feel like they have to like carry a movie based on being someone who's so adjacent to themselves because i can see him being like i'll do basquiat where i can sort of change it up a bit but i don't want to do a movie like i wouldn't want to do he's like i wouldn't want to do west world full time or like a feature right well and basquiat was like his breakthrough and then he kind of doesn't really play a leading man like ever again in that sort of like no i mean he played martin luther king in that tv movie boycott which was

kind of a you know big deal tv movie or whatever you know but like but that was that and then like obviously he wins the emmy for his angels in america which is him just doing the role he did on broadway but he's amazing in that i always contend if that had been theatrically released he would have won the oscar for that yeah it's such a good role i mean and then but then like in the manchurian candidate when he shows up with the big beard mumbling you're like oh oh this is like what he's gonna do in casino royale and then on and like when he plays colin powell he doesn't have a beard but he's just like i don't know if we should you know like you know that that's just that's what he's good the lead the movie he's a lead in is cadillac records and he's phenomenal in that yes he's incredible records yeah that movie is such a good great i think

beyonce is very good in that movie beyonce is amazing that's her one like transcendent acting performance where you're like beyonce should have been a movie star yeah and it's weird because she's playing uh what etta james right yeah and it's like she's playing a singer i'm like okay i'm gonna just see beyonce but there is a point where i just went oh oh right that's beyonce and she's just great yeah uh that movie is really good amon walker's fucking great in that movie most def's great in that movie everyone's fucking good in that movie amon walker is incredible in that movie when he shows up and he does the first song is howland wolf and he's like freaking everyone out it's the best it's so cool yeah just electric shit and that's like one of the best movies about like this sort of weird tension of white label uh makers and black artists like

anyway whatever we're not talking about cadillac records we're talking about shaft there's another crazy thing that i guess we should say i i'm sure this played some small role is that isaac hayes had become a huge deal again because he was chef like that is kind of he really because isaac hayes really had like 10 plus years doing nothing like kind of just escape from new york he's kind of yeah and now he's like everyone loves isaac haze again like that must have been another reason a studio's like yeah we'll give you 50 million bucks to make a hard r shaft remake or shaft sequel whatever shaft reboot yeah with sam jackson that's like about him as a guy like it'll have isaac haze up at the top like i'm sorry I just forgot about that no no look it's fine you're just talking

about Shaft I can dig it alright no but I do think that's true and I do think just like I remember there being a lot of Shaft parodies especially things using the song ironically around this time

in the years leading up to it like it felt like it had become a cultural meme to a degree that like to like 10, 11 year old white boys like us, David could see the trailer and be like, oh, yeah, I know what this is. I think my introduction to Shaft was it being a runner on the Fresh Prince and me being like, oh, I get the idea of who Shaft is. Right. But but all that stuff is this weird abstraction of what Shaft actually is. But all that stuff is this weird abstraction of what Shaft actually is. And this movie is reacting to that and also fulfilling John Singleton's boyhood interpretation of what Shaft is. But yes, I do think this – I understand what you're saying, Demi, that you wish there was more of a central mystery for him to solve. to solve i guess what i want this movie to be in its best form is him figuring out how to navigate this fucked system without just barging into people's apartments and shooting them right like i do like that the movie kind of just lays all its cards out in this opening scene right you

have this thing where you're like starting like deep in media res here's a guy lying on the ground he walks in here's a bartender with blood here's this clear asshole who's guilty right yeah and then you get these flashbacks like i do think the pacing of this is interesting the structure of this opening is interesting with him casing it and then how quickly he cannot control himself punches bail like gets himself on thin ice there's something interesting of the setup to me of just like the whole thing's laid out cleanly and now he needs to figure out how to make sure justice is served but the problem is that it doesn't feel like this becomes look he's a guy who's willing to break the rules for a greater good it feels like it becomes shaft does whatever the fuck he

wants and then he turns to the camera and winks and goes i'm cool right yeah it feels very much like he's not trying to peacefully solve this or like it's not like i i don't want to see any more blood it's him being like don't worry i got this i'm like cocking a gun and being like what are you gonna do it's like i'm gonna kill people it's like so not uh a detective film he's just he's a revenger basically right he's like he's like charles bronson in death wish yeah uh but also like all of the revenge is it's on a guy who's sort of adjacent to christian bale like it's not it's so like they bring in this secondary thing because it's so they have the the like the case the the main case but then they bring in people on both sides to be like corrupt cops and like

corrupt criminals and whatnot just to sort of like uh pad out the movie with people that shack i keep i almost call them shack uh that shaft can just fight and it's like so it isn't about the case at all it's just about like all right now that shaft has like a a reason let's give people to like let's give let's put bodies in this movie that can act as like villains and it's just like you just put basically put a superhero skin on top of this noir thing that you had right and once again rather than a movie that

feels like it's designed to be like Shaft fighting against institutional power it becomes Shaft fighting against inner city thugs yeah you know in a way that is not upsetting to white audiences that feels like it's very cognizant of trying to appease the weird sort of bloodlust that an audience would feel watching this movie if you're trying to make it something that could

cross over in a fucked fucked way um it's i i don't know, it's even like the Vanessa Williams character is bizarre to me because this is her period where she's actually like a movie star, right? Like Vanessa Williams, someone who had just been very famous for a long time, is Miss America, then is like stripped of her title because of scandal of her nude photos being sold to penthouse and published then she has this like second wave as like a pretty successful musician and then like 1997 she does soul food she did first she does a racer racer don't forget a racer right so she does like a racer 96 soul food 97 like suddenly it's like, oh, wait, is Vanessa Williams a movie star now? Yeah, she's in Hoodlum, which the Bill Duke movie she's in. Well, she plays the Queen of Trash in The Adventures of Elmont Grouchland. Great performance. Actually, actually great performance.

Good movie. I like that movie. But then post Shaft, she's I mean, what's she doing? She's she's chilling. I don't know. She does a lot of TV movies like when she when she's an ugly betty it's sort of a comeback for her she kind of and then right she has ugly betty and she does uh desperate housewives and it becomes like oh now vanessa williams is playing this camp sort of ice queen character is her stock and trade this is the end of her like sort of real movie star run.

And it feels like when she's introduced in your movie, you're like, oh, she just does have a real kind of steady presence and integrity to her. And it's interesting to present her as a counterpoint to him where it's like this is a kind of like more by the book cop who also isn't square. As you said, Demi, she's sort of presented as being the only good cop in the entire movie but then it doesn't ever feel like they ever have anything to do with her she's just kind of there yeah this is a sad character in a way because right she's around she's sort of the second lead or whatever but like she's second build i couldn't

tell you she's got a lot of screen time does yeah she's just kind of there i have a sneaking suspicion that they wanted some romantic thing between her and shaft that's what it feels like and then it sort of changed and i don't because i just feel like she's there for no reason but then also has certain scenes where uh yeah she's supposed to be the anchor like the good cop and i'm just like i don't have any faith that they didn't put her in place as like the good black cop that can also be like and shaft will fall in love with her right it's weird that there's no interiority it's weird that there are no like heart-to-heart scenes like i i weirdly want this movie to have the dumb studio notes like there has to be a scene where her and shaft bond

and she talks about why she joined the force in the first place you know and what her trauma is that made her decide that she needed to try to maintain justice there's the middle of this movie is uh very messy and strange like post him resigning from the force and then when we're just in this sort of muddled kind of like it's also this movie is short like this movie is 90 minutes maybe 100 minutes like it's pretty fast the weirdest stat in the world is that the Tim Story movie is the longest of

the five shaft movies it is the only one that tickles two hours sounds bad I gotta say it's like 155 or something when you got three shots in a movie that's true and also wait but also wait but also regina hall right like is regina hall plays the mom okay she plays the mom but she does not get into the action it's a bummer because the poster very much makes you think that she's gonna be the fourth shaft and she is not she shows up and says like i hate you

you're a bad dad yeah uh no but like so in the middle of this movie, it's like, okay, here's like Ruben Santiago Hudson and Dan Hedaya as like crooked cops. Here's like Lee Turgison, who's in Oz at the time, is like not a crooked cop, but a racist, but a good cop or something like that. Whatever that character. But also not that good. He couldn't blow that lock yeah he would he's a wait for the guy to open the door and then they're like and then of course buster rhymes as like shafts like comical like sort of sort of sidekick tech guy is valid what is like and like i and which is this is the time like i i just watched halloween resurrection which

buster rimes is the lead of i did not realize he was the lead i don't know if you guys have uh and he he karate kicks um uh michael mike michael myers and says like you know booyah motherfucker or whatever uh buster rimes is kind of everywhere let's also acknowledge that in 1998 he was the voice of the reptar mobile and rugrats that is true right he was he was working i think on a cartoon show uh at the time he was true buster rimes i think was really like yeah he was working on a cartoon series with missy elliott at the time which i guess never came to fruition it's like he's he's just like i'm to be everywhere. Like it's going to be Busta Rhymes all the time. And Singleton had already used him in Higher Learning.

And this felt like him being like, I think maybe Busta Rhymes could be a movie star. I'm going to give him a real part. And they like set him up in this movie as if he's the fan favorite character. Down to the fact that he gets the last lines. The end of the movie is just him ADr-ing a bunch of riffs and you're just like i don't know he's okay well just like these scenes in the middle where like shaft is dragging tony collette and one of her like big beefy italian brothers or whatever to buster rhymes's house and then there's like a scene where it's like oh you live like this and buster

rhymes is like don't worry about it like you know and he's like cleaning up his house he must have tested well look it must have right people must be like hey like this is funny because like this is a weird complicated movie that's mostly glancing off of things like shaft says juliani time which is what like you, cops had supposedly said before torturing someone in a famous like 90s crime case. Like,

but then like, it's just like you say, it's just a drop in. It's just like a weird joke. But once again, I would just want to repeat. He says it at the Lennox lounge before walking into

a surprise birthday party to Gordon Parks, right? Is it Gordon Parks? The one he says it's Giuliani time? No, he said,

he says, I'm just remembering that he says it's giuliani time no he said he's misremembering that he says it after shooting the two crooked cops and then like putting like just like uh fucking oh right hocking his gun again yeah he says it when he's gonna do some violence right doesn't he say something weird to gordon parks though i think he does he calls him mr p or mr i know he calls him mr p yeah i can't remember uh he does say something to him but i that the lennox lounge scene which we already talked about is another weird scene where it's weirdly drawn out like where it's like a surprise birthday and he's i don't like there's scenes in here where i'm like strip this out and put more meat into the central thing yeah i like the act

of the fake out is like oh that's a fun way to do but i was also just like why what's the act of the fake out as like, oh, that's a fun way to do it. But I was also just like, why? What's the point of just a way to get the uncle cameo in there or dad cameo? I guess so. Yeah, it's odd. I mean, I was right. Just because we brought it up. I was stunned by that Giuliani time moment. Just I was like, well, that sounds awful. And then I looked it up being like, I'm sure people have written about this.

And then I was like, oh, I didn't know that this is what they said while torturing a man. So it feels like almost like actively endorsing police brutality in a way. Like it's sort of, it's a reference that I feel like they wanted people to cheer at. I mean, this is a thing I find kind of inherently thorny about this movie. Right. And especially when you consider that,

like so much of the tension stemmed from like Richard Price and Rudin, who had felt like we're trying to maintain the ability for this film to be as mainstream as possible. Right. Because it's like you are making a $50 million ostensible franchise movie that's going to be released in the middle of the summer right like this is a july release this was set up to june june june june 16 june i remembered it being july i i guess i was applying sort of uh sully goggles onto thinking they should have done

in july thank you but um but it feels like you know one of the many many things that have come out in all of the Justice League brouhaha is that in executive boardroom, Warner Brothers meetings after Snyder screened his original Snyder cut and saw how much Cyborg was positioned as the lead of the film and how much cyborg was like tortured and not avuncular in the movie that apparently the head of warner brothers said this is disastrous we can't have an angry black man at the center of our big blockbuster which i 100 believe they said in those words right didn't they have like a dinner where they were like if he doesn't say booyah i mean like what are we even gonna do like that's millions in merchandise like they had like, if he doesn't say booyah, I mean, like, what are we even gonna do? Like, that's millions in merchandise. Like, they had, like, some awful presentation where they were like, he simply must say booyah. And their thing, I think they said to him was,

can you play it less like Frankenstein and more like Quasimodo? And he's like, what's the difference? And they're like, well, Frankenstein's bummed out, but Quasimodo's got a good heart. Oh, I guess so. Quasimodo's pretty bummed out, isn't he? Yeah, I don't know but

just whatever they literally were like giving him notes like walk more like quasimodo than frankenstein who's scary all this shit right super fucked up but i do i do wonder if there was a calculation here on this movie where it's like you kind of need from the from the white executive standpoint and rudin and everybody if they're like if shaft acts like an abusive white cop does that make him more palatable to white audiences rather than being threatening because it is odd how often he veers into the worst behavior that like that mirrors specific incidents and stuff but there are like stories about how mad the cops were that he said giuliani time it's such a 2000 is a crazy different time in terms like like and they were just like how could you even bring that up how could you even mention

that like you know we you know don't even bring that up it feels like a line that they write thinking okay well people will recognize it as a reference and that's enough for it to be a joke we don't have to talk about the meaning behind it but for shaft to be a cop who says julie it's juliani time feels like an inherent endorsement of that even though it's just like he comes off bizarrely yeah and i think in their best like my best interpretation of it is it's him killing two cops who have been like brutalizing people and him saying it's giuliani time almost is like a oh it's giuliani time on you guys but he also he says it afterwards as he's loading a gun as if he's like all right now time to do

some police brutality and i'm just like what a what a huge misfire exactly i think as you say like but that also the the characters of these corrupt cops are bizarre where they're kind of chummy and they're kind of like hey what are you gonna do and then they're like dan hadaya is a crazy casting choice for this by the way i mean this is another reason where i why i'm just kind of like against better judgment a little bit in the tank for this movie. Is it just like a, it's nice to just watch like a big summer blockbuster movie that was squarely aimed at adults, right?

This sort of like highbrow popcorn sort of shit, like trashy pulp, but also not meant for children. Totally. Uh, the, the other part of that is this movie is just fucking stacked. It is so crazy cast.

I mean, like Elizabeth Banks banks did you spot her like as one of the friends in in the the dinner scene i think it's her first film performance yes on andre royo the guy from uh who plays bubbles in the wire was a doorman at the cheetah club and singleton like came to the club and royo parted the Red Sea for him, you know, and was like, yeah, hey, like, let me get you around. And then said like, hey, I want to be in Shaft. And Singleton was like, you got it. And that's like the start of his career.

It's wild. Yeah. But then you have like you have Philip Bosco and like Daniel Van Vargen and Hedaya. Ruben Santiago Hudson, who then writes Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. Right. Like, it's just a wild grouping of people, but it's also just such a pleasure

to watch a movie like that where you're just like, oh, every scene, someone's a ringer or someone who goes on to become a ringer. And it's just someone getting to have fun,

like, not being burdened with having to carry expositional weight as much as being like flavor you know um but it is a film that feels like it's very much at odds with itself which makes sense when you hear how much everyone was fighting about what the movie should have been i think it's just a mess i just don't know what i'm supposed to take away from the ending where shaft does all this kills all these people kills lots and lots of people to get tony collette to safely you know safely to justice and meanwhile

we've got you know christian bale gets like an ice pick through his hand just so like he can get hurt because like the whole point of the movie is that shaft is working really hard to put christian bale in jail right but nothing about the movie's tone suggests that they want it. It wants Christian Bale to like get his head chopped off. Like, you know, this movie is lurid and this movie is like kind of angry. And this movie is like,

take justice into your own hands shaft. And so at the end, we got this kind of like ironic twist of the, the, the mom shoots him. Lynn, Lynn Thigpen. Okay.

Great actor. Yeah. Best known as the chief from where the World is Carmen Sandiego, especially at this period of time, is this sort of like supposed to be a kind of emotional linchpin of the movie where she is Mekhi Pfeiffer's mother. And that's it. Shaft is kind of like holding her at all of these hearings, promising her that justice will be served in some way and then you get this ironic twist ending where she just despite the fact that he's leading her up the stairs and going like it's finally gonna work this time i promise you i have the witness it's all good right right she just shoots christian bale like six times in cold blood and it's just like well that worked out and it's like at that point you realize

like oh she hasn't really spoken this entire movie no it feels like it feels like such a twist because you also kind of go like oh i remember her now because they just sort of did away with her they didn't really actually give her enough real estate no and i think it's a very good and like a complicated ending but it feels like the ending that goes, uh, at the end of a better movie, a movie that also doesn't sort of, that's exactly right. It's like, this is the ending to a movie that is not about shaft like mowing down

motherfuckers so he can get the witness. Yeah. Like, like, and also it just like the entire idea of him being like, I don't believe in the courts. So I'm throwing my badge against the wall and spending the rest of the movie being like I have to protect this witness so she can testify in court

so we can do this properly and it's like then you do believe in the court system what is your game here it's like he wants to operate outside the law but he also operates he still insists that proper punishment is doled out by the justice system in this one case in every other case he's like I will just shoot the guy and it's

so strange it's funny that the badge throw is probably this movie's biggest special effects shot and i really remember that being the money shot in the trailer huge in the trailer it's the only instance of style yes yeah because the movie's kind of glossy and like has like i think singleton consciously was like it shouldn't look like the original which like okay but the original looks really good and this kind of just looks you you know, slick and whatever. It looks okay. I kind of wish that if they were going to adapt

the cultural perception of Shaft, they sort of should have adapted it visually as well. Just like in, not even like it being like a 70s or funk thing, but in just sort of like having a very special way to shoot it. Like using just like analog zooms or something or just fucking like the badge throw is such a stylistic choice that i'm like well that's the shaft movie i want to see something that has like a flair to it where you're like that shaft baby like if you're gonna do that with the character just do it with the whole thing it is weird i mean like they do shoot

this movie in new york right like it has it's got location stuff yep right of real locations of real new york city and whatever whereas the fucking tim story shaft is shot in atlanta and feels like it was you know shot in a ziploc bag but um yeah it's it's funny also in particular to me because uh singleton is two years away from doing too fast too furious which is the most fucking stylized movie in the world right which is a movie that turns people off at the time because they were like do less dude like calm the fuck down and i mean i'm excited to re-watch that movie for this because i think weirdly culture has perhaps caught up to too fast too furious and whereas that was the black sheep of the franchise now the franchise has sort of come back around to where Too Fast was, where it sticks out less.

But that was very much him being like, I'm going to take this like kind of gritty, like boilerplate crime drama and turn it into like Speed Racer. drama and turn it into like speed racer i wonder what i wonder if before he died he got to talk about the legacy of the fast and furious franchise and how it's sort of like i wonder if people sort of re uh what's the word just sort of we had a culture cultural re-evaluation of that movie and he gets to go like yeah all right so fuck you guys or what i think it must have happened and like i mean he still had to deal with most people saying like well that's definitely the worst but also it's like ludacris and tyrese become like two of the biggest characters in this whole fucking franchise so much of what he establishes in intrinsically in the dna of where it goes although jaw rules out the

flashiness of it and and like the yes but but like that movie it's weird because it was a huge hit and yet no one really cared for it people kind of hated it right it was immediately seen as like well you ruined a fun thing because there's no fucking vin diesel here right to the degree that they're like okay let's make a third one that only costs like 30 million dollars and has no returning actors that it felt like singleton you've killed the mainline franchise and now fast and furious is just a brand name for cheap actors and cars and yet when they bring back the whole gang in you know fast five like it's like yeah too fast and furious is a linchpin for us like that's that's crucial to what we're going to set up here and it's like it's a you're as you say, it's like a weird 10 years later, like, yeah, actually, thanks for that.

Like, you know, you actually put a lot of stuff in the water that we actually needed. But I also, I mean, I remember reading interviews with him. We'll talk about this movie so much in two weeks. But I remember reading interviews with him where he was so defensive about that movie where he was like, I don't know. defensive about that movie where he was like i don't know people thought that i had lost the plot because i didn't make what they imagined when they heard john singleton does too fast too furious which is probably a harder edge fast and furious movie and he was like no i was just like really into anime at the time and i wanted to make a movie that looked and felt like anime crazy um but that's why this movie being relatively uh i don't know, restrained stylistically is odd because he also I mean, even when I go back and reading interviews from the beginning of his career after Boys in the Hood, he always talked about like, I'm very afraid of being pigeonhole as the sort of like small budget social issues drama guy the kind of kitchen

sink guy like i want to make big genre movies i want to make blockbusters i want to make everything that he very much felt like he wanted to prove to people that he could do these types of movies where this movie is like an audition for him to continue doing that in his career. Also a like reclamation project for his career up until that point in time, but then kind of dooms the rest of his career. It's a hit too. It's like an unambiguous hit, but no one wants to touch Shaft.

I don't know. It's weird. By the time it comes out, Jackson's doing interviews and he's saying, I'm definitely going to play Shaft again, but with a different director. Ooh. Like he's like, no question. This is my franchise. I'm going to keep doing it. Jackson's so interesting to me because he's like such a straight talker. And I feel like when you read interviews with him, he's very much like, I'm the least pretentious guy in the world.

It is ridiculous that people pay me millions of dollars to act. I'm never going to turn down a job. My career didn't take off until I was like 40. I'm a pro. I know how to make anything work. I like popcorn, you know, like he always talks about like, I don't love making dour, serious movies because that's not what I like to watch. I'm ready to do heady, heavy theater. But in a movie, I want to make something that people enjoy and want to go see on a Friday night. And he's like pretty good at most of the time delivering above his weight class and not feeling like he's phoning it in. I think weirdly Shaft 2019 is one of his most phoned in performances. Like that's the one that feels really cynical to me.

It's very cynical, but I do recall watching it and feeling like I think I'm having fun watching him do this. But I think it's because it's so it's like it's an adaptation of what we know of Shaft. And it's an adaptation of what we know of Samuel L. Jackson, but sort of subverted in a way. Like it starts with here's what we know of Samuel L. Jackson but sort of subverted in a way like it starts with here's what you know about Samuel L. Jackson so you know that the arc he has to go through is like well maybe that's not who he should be and it is sort of like fun to watch in a way

because it's just it's him having fun with his own image but under this sort of guise of we have to tell a story about Shaft and I'm like it's not this isn't a Shaft movie. This is a this is a what you know of Samuel L. Jackson movie becoming. Well, that's the actual Samuel L. Jackson. Other fucking weird thing about that movie is it's like, OK, now we're going to do the generational family legacy Shaft movie, except we're going to retcon Roundtree into being his dad instead of his uncle.

There are six years difference between Jackson. Six years? Six years age difference between Jackson and Roundtree. That's actually crazy. Yes, Jackson is 72 and Roundtree is 78. That's psycho. But you know what? I could see Shaft having a kid at six years old.

He's pretty cool. I don't know. I can see him being 24 and just adopting an 18-year-old, being like, I'm going to get this kid out of the system. I'm going to take... Your name's John Shaft, too. It is? Yeah.

All right. I had a name. I've had a name for several... Okay. No, you didn't have a name and you didn't have a game, and now both are Shaft. But yes, the age difference is slight i feel like you know sam jackson is someone who's kind of always played younger

especially because it took him a while for his career to take off culturally people think of him look 72 yeah he always seems like he's 45 years old yes he does not look like he's 72 at all the tim story movie is weirdly i would argue the oldest he has ever looked and seemed on film. And I think a lot of it has to do with that movie just being bad. But that's a movie where you're just like, him and Roundtree are the same age. Like, they're giving Roundtree gray hair and they're dyeing Jackson's goatee, but they're the same age here. And they, like, Roundtree's only in the last 15 minutes of the tim story movie he unsurprisingly is the best part of it this sounds like the worst it's so bad it's

so bad it plays like they want you to be like whoa twist cameo but then they it's like in every trailer and it's on the poster and you're like just to have him there for more of them i don't know the marketing it felt like the hook for the movie was he's gonna be in the whole thing he's not gonna be just the uncle at the bar like he was in the singleton movie and then he's kept till the very end like he's fucking Bruce Willis and G.I. Joe

retaliation but the whole movie's about how Shaft was this fucking deadbeat dad and then it's like well now you're introduced to the other deadbeat dad who is the original shaft and they make this joke where he's like don't be so hard on yourself you were a good dad once you stopped pretending to be my uncle and it's like once he stopped pretending to be your uncle so when when you were 60 he's still your uncle in this movie and you're close to retirement age but is he how how old is shaft supposed to uncle in this movie. And you're close to retirement age. But is he?

How old is Shaft supposed to be in this movie? We don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And also the timeline of the fucking, the other Shaft, the Tim Story Shaft, is that he has Jesse T. Usher, whatever his name is, like 10 years before this movie, I think. That kid's born sometime in the 90s. Yeah, the way that it tracks, Shaft has a kid in this movie. And also just we don't hear about his love life or the fact that he is a father.

Right. Well, it is because it's his duty to please the booty. And, you know, so like that's getting in the way. David, David, he repeats the line. He repeats the line. They make it as casual. That's true. Right, that's like the Expendables

where Bruce Willis is like, yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker, or whatever, and you're just like, God, how much money did you demand? Stallone yells out Adrian in the middle of a scene. That would be good. That would be straight up good if he did that. The very first, I'm remembering,

the very first scene of Samuel L. Jackson's in Shaft 2019, I'm realizing, is him opening the door to his private investigations office and there's glitter on his face. And then you see that there's a woman who has glitter on her chest that he's been motorboating, I guess. So they just like, Rathgate wants you to know like,

Shaft, you know, Shaft has sex. Don't worry about that. And it's like, okay, but what does that have's just it's they it's still so much an adaptation of what we know of shaft that it gets in the way of proper yeah it's also just so bizarre that that movie is ostensibly a fairly hard r but it also has the aesthetics and energy of a 90s tim allen family comedy yes like it it feels like jungle to jungle it feels pg-13 right uh and it's so much about like fatherhood and shit but that's this weird thing is like well when they announced that and you went like oh modern shaft that that sounds cool make a modern shaft then when sam jackson was announced you're like so it's a sequel to

the singleton, which weirdly was unsequelized, which kind of felt like they could have just made three more of these and maybe they would have figured out the formula at some point in time. I also think I vaguely remember that they remixed to the theme song. They don't just play the theme song as normal,

which, that's the easiest part. Don't do it. Just hit play. just go to iTunes theme from Shaft there's also a big gun shootout set to Be My Baby but that weird fucking thing it just all sounds like a bummer

it's such a bummer but that it is a sequel to this movie that is totally so disconnected from that movie that retcons the relationship between the two previous shafts in that and that it's like a sequel to a movie that no one remembers which is more trying to comment on the cultural perception of what shaft is but as you said also more than anything is just making a comedy using samuel jackson's persona

as if it's like analyze this and it's like well you've seen this guy play these types of roles before it's right along with shaft yes right it's right it's it's anodyne versus this movie you're like oh my god like this movie has so many hard swerves and it's like yeah so weirdly charged and doesn't land a lot of it but whereas this movie you're describing just sounds lame did you guys know that samuel jackson was in seven movies in 2019 okay can we try to guess the seven movies please go ahead in 2019 2019 so so he's in shaft that's the gimme yes yeah avengers end game he is in avengers Endgame he walks along a porch

is Captain Marvel that same year yes okay so that's three okay okay um oh Rise of Skywalker he is thank you I thought you might not get that does a voice he tells Rey that she's the one

or whatever they all tell her at the end there okay David is there another franchise film in the mix or have we knocked out the franchises where he had obligatory? There's another franchise film that you are forgetting. Spider-Man Far From Home. There you go. He did three of them that year. He did three of them that year.

Of course he did. They're all kind of super different performances, I will say. One of them, he's playing a parody of himself. He's playing an alien impersonating him right yes uh you have two more to go awesome okay one is a big movie that we covered on this podcast and one is a movie that no one ever heard of it's a big movie we covered on this podcast glass yeah where he's glass wow of course what are we and then the last movie is it's a war movie oh is it the what's the last full measure that's right that's okay oh where

you're like oh i was samuel jackson was in a war movie yeah oh this is the thing i'm busy man this is the thing i was going to say before i got distracted by five other things i was going to say so so he has this very unpretentious attitude of like people offer me a part i'll do it right and he's also known for just being the most prepared actor like that's the thing everyone says about him is he just shows up the first take is perfect and he is like he got three takes and he doesn't suffer fools gladly and he gets really frustrated when people aren't professional and there was some new york times piece on him that's really fascinating where it is a lot of it's talking to his longtime agent or manager and just saying that they have to call him once a week

and like calm him down and go like sam you can't expect everyone to be as professional as you are you will never be happy with that expectation but he's a guy just like hits his marks gets his lines knows his relationship with the camera nails it like from the get-go and then wants to go play never be happy with that expectation. But he's a guy who just like hits his marks, gets his lines, knows his relationship with the camera, nails it like from the get go and then wants to go play golf. Right? Like, it's just like,

this is my job. I clock in my clock out. Let me go play golf. Um, but, uh, he, there are interviews where he clearly gets kind of defensive about the ways in which he feels like he has not gotten enough respect in the industry.

And when he does, he goes like, I don't know. You tell me. Like he sort of refuses to acknowledge the thing. And so there's a famous one I remember when after Django came out and that movie was clearly kind of designed to be like maybe a supporting actor play for him. And then he got no precursor noms and christoph waltz wins the fucking oscar and i remember him doing some oscar season thing and they're like well this is sort of like an oscar play for you and he's like i don't know no one's nominating me

so i guess it isn't like sort of like bitter about it and then i found i some youtube rabbit hole watched the interview he did on howard stern right after this movie came out and the movie was a hit right it opened at number one it opened big it kind of dropped off quickly but like opening weekend it seemed like an unqualified hit uh and now it was a hit right jackson has his franchise here's a big summer. He's the only guy above the title. He's playing this iconic character. He'll get to keep on playing these. And, you know, Stern is asking these questions where he's like, well, this is like huge for your career, right? And he's like, I don't know. You tell me. poster you get like the girl you're like getting the action you're gonna make a ton of these sequels like that has to change your perception in hollywood where you've mostly been the like supporting guy or the second lead or the funny dude or whatever and he's like i don't know we'll see and he had this very kind of like i'll believe it when i see it kind of attitude but it is interesting to think about that like he was kind of proven right that this like didn't really bear out into other films

like this. You know, he's got a couple others, but he pretty much goes back to shit. Like, as you said, like rules of the game and basic where it's like he's one of three people. He's one of two people. I think a lot of that is him being a longtime actor in Hollywood, but also recognizing that even like as a lead, he's still like a black man and he, he'll have to like audition for the rest of his life and have to do all these

things where it's like, I'm not, he doesn't want to go on the radio and be like, hell yeah, I'm a star now. Cause as soon as he says that people will be like, this guy seems like he's full of himself. We can't,

we don't want to do that. I think that's also just how he's maintained such a professionalities. Like he's like, I have to be the kind of guy who shows up and people like he's going to deliver and that's the only way i can continue to work you know i think that mentality also gives him this thing of like i can't turn down a job because i at any point my career could be over right the only movies i can think of that he is the lead snakes on a plane lead are snakes on a plane and coach carter like there's really like almost nothing else like where it's like samuel jackson that's it damn yeah and snakes on a plane obviously became this kind of like parody of samuel jackson

being in movies or that's what people wanted it to be and then it's actually just kind of lame but like that was the fun of that it's whatever that market experience demi you're you're 100 right that is the subtext of all those interviews there are also times where he does go off in that way you're saying he can't do where i know like he's done interviews where he's like i should have won the fucking oscar i feel like he's very playful when he does it though yeah he's playful he jokes about it but he's like yeah like fucking Pulp Fiction's on t-shirts who talks about Martin Landau and Ed Wood uh you know a statement of a guy who clearly has never listened to blank check uh where I talk about Martin Landau and Ed Wood constantly but but he's like he has that attitude and he also loves to flaunt the fact that I think

he is now especially with all the Marvel movies the highest grossing actor of all time, like by, by leaps and bounds. By so much because of the Marvel movie. I mean, that's, I think he's someone who only wants to comment on public perception or what is like publicly accepted. It's like, no one would fight him on this.

Like he'll, he'll say like, yeah, Pulp Fiction was one of the biggest fucking movies of the, of that year, but he's not going to say it the year it comes out. He'll be like, and it's like,

and it's because of me and Travolta was the one who got to be the star for years and years after that, you know? I mean, I feel like he does often sort of say like, I maybe should be paid more. I maybe should have gotten nominated for more Oscars. Like he kind of has that vibe to him, but it's true. It's like, I don't know. It's such a weird, fascinating career. I feel like in lieu of an Oscar, he's accepted what may be a greater like award, but just sort of being like one of the only actors who's sort of his personality is as castable as him as an actor. Like you can put him in a slot and he'll be like dependable

and he will nail the thing but you can also write a thing where you're just like this is a it's only can be samuel jackson or it's like like his role in the other guys are just such a parody of samuel jackson where it's like you can there's like so many people you can put in that role but it's like it's got to be samuel jackson or like a Samuel L. Jackson type where it's like he is a bankable star but also can play himself and it's just like you will cast him being like we just need himself or you can get him and have like a

fucking glass type role like or old boy or Django Unchained it's like he can do so many things but he doesn't need to get like awards recognition for it because culturally I think he's already gotten that. He'll definitely get an honorary award at some point. He will.

And he might eventually do some prestige-y movie where the Oscars are like, oh, we'll shake off the dust and be like, we've decided it's time for you to win an Oscar. But that's that annoying Oscar thing where they've decided. Exactly. That just kind of comes off terribly half the time it does feel to me like both jango and especially hateful eight were designed to try to get him an oscar like tarantino was like enough's enough now jango that's a really fucking tricky character it was unlikely that was going to work even though i like think he he should have gotten nominated possibly one for that, just because the character is so off-putting. But that's an example

of what you're talking about, where he was just like, I'm going to drop the Samuel Jackson shit and give you full investment into a character in the reality of this movie. And then Hateful Eight feels like it's a movie designed just to showcase everything he can do, but the movie doesn't connect. His movies have made

$27.5 billion worldwide. That's crazy. It's pretty good. He's the number one. but the movie doesn't connect his movies have made 27 and a half billion dollars worldwide it's pretty good he's the number one number number two is robert downey jr yeah number three is tom hanks and number four of course we know her we love her scarlett johansson i don't know the marvel movies have thrown everything off you know yeah I how how many people of the top 10 are not in the MCU great question I'm I'm looking now I'm looking now and it's two it's Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford that sucks that's I'm honestly shocked Harrison Ford hasn't been in the MCU honestly I know that's actually a good I actually had to think for a second I'm like wait does he play like a space cop or something like i did i forget like in my head

he's he's uh tommy lee jones's role in first avenger but right he might as well be not that tommy lee jones didn't rock the house but uh yeah tom cruise is now 11th that's behind chris pratt and i'm sure that kills him it's the number of marvel movies and the fact that everyone's in so many of them that that fucks this stat up but then you have to think that samuel jackson was already number one before the marvel universe started because he also has fucking jurassic park and three star wars movies and like yeah it's just it fucking and like the incredibles and like you know like all kinds of shit but But it is, it is fascinating. Yes.

I mean, I think we sort of have been talking about like this movie feels like it's among other things, trying to be the culmination of here is what the Samuel L. Jackson movie star persona is codified into its own franchise. And then, uh, 19 years later, they make a movie that's essentially just parodying that

and both of them become weird non-starters for his career which is wild because i do think they could have made a movie like an original character that was just it's samuel l jackson and that might have done just as well i think samuel jackson is maybe as if not more recognizable than Shaft yeah at this point though it's like the right moment culturally to combine the two things even though it probably would have behooved him better to just be like let's create our own Shaft type character

oh I mean by the point of like 2019 when that one comes out oh by 2019 it makes no fucking sense especially when you're just like wait a second it's a movie about legendary character john shaft the second being a deadbeat dad i forgot what that guy's quirks are the last decade of this industry has been such a panic of them trying to be like we just need some sort of recognizable name to get 10 of the audience and then from there on we'll trust that

you can get more it doesn't matter how connected the property is or how big the audience might be. Can I say one final thing about this movie before we get to the box office game? That's a thing I both like about this movie and find frustrating but I always get roped into it. Few things get me more excited when watching a film

when I feel like, oh man, this story is branching out. It's getting expansive. I feel like the most man, this story is like branching out. It's getting expansive, right? Because like, I feel like the most satisfying thing to me is when a movie is able to set like 15 plates spinning at the same time narratively and somehow make them all convene in a satisfying way. And that weird second act we sort of talked around, that sort of formless of this movie,

I do get a charge from it because it's when the talked around. That's sort of formless of this movie. I do get a charge from it because it's when the story starts to unfold, even though it ultimately has no idea what to do with any of the things it's setting up. But when it's like, okay, you've set up people's as this alternate track, then the two of them get put in the cell together. Then there's the weird thing of like,

Bale trying to hawk the jewelry to hire him to kill Toni Collette, the search for Toni Collette,ette bail being beholden to him and needing to sell his heroin because also they paid off hadaya like there's this moment where the movie feels like it's becoming the wire and trying to show the entire spider web and it's like yeah as you said the lynn thigpen ending is interesting in and of itself. It's the ending to a movie that this film is fundamentally not. And it also makes this film feel kind of unsatisfying because it's just like, well, the movie was just about a lot of shit ramping up and never really happening.

While this one guy just flew to Switzerland and tried to skate by. Yeah, I feel like if it even I mean, it wouldn't be a fix, but if it had ended in some way where it's like either Tony Collette does not testify or like something goes, something happens that makes it clear that Christian Bale is going to get away with it. And then the like, like Lynn Figpin stuff happens. You kind of get the sense of like, oh, well, that all tracks. But for that ending to come after you're like well shaft got got his man it's just like oh what's the what's this then it's also weird that tony collette's like the mcguffin of

the movie and here she is like a year after the sixth sense she's such a fucking good actor she's just been nominated for an academy award you feel like she's going to be the secret weapon of this movie when she comes in and she's got like one scene where she's good why is her character still in town they just find her playing basketball some kids in the park they're like she's gone makes no sense they paid her a hundred thousand dollars to get out of town and she's like cool so i'll just like not go home that often right wild i just love when when the two giant italian guys show up to like protect her like it's anyway we have to talk about the box office griffin please june 16th 2000 shaft opened to 21 million dollars yeah which is pretty big for again a hard r right movie made 70 domestic 107 worldwide like it was a you know it was a hit off of what budget it was 50 and yeah like a 48 million dollar budget

which is high like this movie doesn't look that expensive i don't know why it cost that much money uh but but but it made like 100 million worldwide yeah everyone's happy it did what 70 here yeah yeah yeah like this this should have been a franchise starter uh and i you know i the reviews were mixed but it felt like it was like enjoyed enough passively by people that they could have put one of these out two years later and everyone would have gone to see it right they would have just gone like yeah cool i'll see sam jackson in a trench coat again who gives a shit i really don't know why a sequel didn't happen until 2019 i don't i don't know what the story is there it is also just funny to think about how radically the summer

box office has transformed where you're like june 16th r-rated shaft opens to a robust 21 million dollars is sequel on the way right now it would be like you know head of paramount commits public suicide as apology for terrible opening of movie right well now you have like solo opens to disappointing 106 opening yeah justice league makes shameful 700 million worldwide uh okay number two at the box office is another crime thriller okay um with an a star of the moment uh where i think i imagine we're all fans uh you know he's uh he's there's nobody like him and then a young a newer star who just won an oscar or he's gonna win an oscar this year um the it's not the bone detective is it no well for one that's called the bone collector you nailed it angelina jolie is in this movie

it would be funny if the bone collector was literally called the bone detective. I guess that's just what bones is. It's just, I'd be into that. It's a good movie. Shaft 2000 and the bone collector were both movies that were in my parents' DVD collection where I'd see them all the time and just be like,

I don't really understand what that is. And now I'm like, why do my parents love these movies? Or how did they feel about these that they're so etched into my mind did they just love crime thrillers of the late 90s and early 2000s but also demi you grew up in a household with those two dvds and never watched them it doesn't sound like your parents were like putting them on again like they bought them and kept them on the shelf all the time there were movies that i would see around and just be like i don't know

what that is because my parents weren't watching these movies i think my parents are the kind of people who either buy movies thinking like oh i might watch that which i do a lot or they buy a movie being like i liked that movie i would like to watch it again one day but they don't because they don't they never watch movies demi am i misremembering are you the person who every time you went to visit your parents put one more copy of click on dvd it it was it was really that i uh at one moment put 57 copies in their dvd collection uh for a video and then a slow death by a thousand no it was it was here's immediately this um and then i uh it was like while i think i was in college and I went back to college and I came back like seven months later and they were still there

and they hadn't mentioned it what you guys don't see this they were working through it they were probably like number 22 or whatever right yeah we're waiting for one of them to be different yeah David the answer to this movie is gone in

60 seconds is it not it's gone it's gone in 60 seconds i i will i do want to shout out producer ben for chiming in two hours in to say that the bone collector is a good movie extremely on brand yeah uh thank you ben of course but sadly we are talking about gone in 60 seconds the car boosting movie with Nicolas Cage and Angelina. Is this movie? Is that Fast and Furious or it is the year before? Got it. OK, it's a year before.

An interesting thing to think about. Yes. The year before. And John Singleton's career changed really in this weekend. Yeah. Yeah. And also gone in 60 seconds feels like the type of car aficionado movie that dies the second Fast and Furious takes over, you know, where it's just like car cultures. People like cars. You can make a movie with a bunch of nice cars in them versus like it's a superhero franchise based around drivers.

It's like, do you want to see nice cars or you want to see people just fucking drive? Gone in 60 Seconds, of course, also a Disney movie. Yeah. Gone in 60 Seconds is a Disney disney movie yeah gone six seconds a disney movie yeah hmm brockheimer number three uh it's a comedy uh another comedy in which uh a major black actor well not another movie in which a major black actor plays a policeman um but it's a comedy this big mama's house comedy big mama's house big mama's house i believe oh i saw it three times in theater i saw it one time in theater but it's a comedy this one. Big Mama's House. Big Mama's House. I believe I saw it three times in theater. I saw it one time in theater. I don't think I've ever seen it.

My dad loved it so much he called up my grandfather and was like, you gotta take the boys to see this movie. You're gonna love it. Did your grandfather love it? He loved it. He loved it. It was the one scene where my dad was like, you're not gonna believe this scene. He talked it up as if it was like the most iconic scene in comedy history. And it's the scene where Martin Lawrence gets trapped in the shower while he's trying to case Big Mama's house and she starts pooping and he's in the shower and she's pooping and their poop sound effects and he's reacting like it smells bad. Oh, I also forgot, that's a scene in the 2000 shaft

in which Jeffrey Wright stares down Christian Bale while taking a shit. That's true. And they drop the sound effect of one turd plopping into the toilet at the end when he makes a dramatic point. Well, the man knows how to, like, you know. You didn't talk about a shiv.

Oh, yeah, he's big. He's got's got this ice pick yeah and he stabs himself okay the moment where he stabs himself they have this funk music that drops and it's so uh not the tone like i think it wants you to be like whoa this guy's really weird but in my head it's like any other score and they'd be like this guy's a psycho and you should this like the escalation scary what he means as a villain but it's not scary it's just sort of like whoa weird because of the funk music that scene yes is it feels like something jeffrey wright tried out and they were like holy shit and as you say they completely undercut it in the moment and it's kind of like the yeah drowned out in the mix as well it's a weird scene yeah um it's as close as they get to making him a uh developed character yes because his brother is dead and he's suddenly charged up but then yeah you're also like at the end of the

day your your job is that you're as an assassin for christian bale why didn't christian bale just hire someone else why did he hire this random guy it doesn't matter you've never seen Big Mama's House Demi you were saying I have not but I think that's another movie in my parents DVD collection I feel like my parents just got a box of DVDs in the year 2000 and then never again I I've done this riff before but it's just one of the most fascinating like sequel approaches to a movie where the first one is nia long is like a witness they put her into uh she's on the run from her ex-husband who's terrence howard she goes to hide out at her big mama's house so martin lawrence specifically needs to impersonate her big mama in order to keep her safe and then the sequel is like there's an incident

at a college we need someone to go undercover and he's like cool I'll take out the big mama costume big mama means nothing really there's two more movies where he assumes the role of big mama and no one knows big mama as a person and in the third one isn't it he has a son and the son

also has to dress like I guess you're a little mama now what the fuck what is this you i believe the poster of the third one is literally martin lawrence is holding up the wardrobe his son is gonna have to wear it his son is like why i don't want to do this yeah this seems overly complicated can i just put a mustache on we don't have any ideas for how to do a sequel after it's been five years past they got a kid now yes they always it's like they have a secret kid and it's actually a hot 25 year old yeah which is which is what the third shaft is uh yep okay number five at the box office so number four where are we number four is a sequel it's one of the most successful films of the year mission

possible um it's mission impossible two i think it is the highest grossing film of the most successful films of the year. Mission Impossible 2? It's Mission Impossible 2. I think it is the highest grossing film of the year. Or Grinch. Yes. I always forget. I think maybe it's highest worldwide and Grinch is highest domestic or whatever. Yes.

It's the John Woo motorcycle Mission Impossible? Correct. With the great character of Sandgun, of course. Sandgun. A gun that Tom Cruise kicks out of the sand to shoot someone. Greatest scene in the movie. That's the only Mission Impossible movie where I truly don't remember anything besides. Well, okay, I remember the rock climbing in the beginning, and I remember the motorcycle crashing.

No, that's the thing. It is almost impossible to remember. There's a middle two hours there. Two hours? That's tough. That's tough. Wild. Doing that's tough wild doing that commentary really solidified that where whenever people defend that movie i'm like i agree with

everything you're saying now re-watch the two hours in between everything you just described to me because it's there there's that scene where like brendan gleason is like sweating on a hospital bed for like a while and yeah like it's just one of those classic movies where like when you're watching it you're like i can't remember why they're doing this like the movie leaves you as you're watching it anyway number five at the box office is it is a shame it's the one bad one uh number five is an animated film griffin we will cover it on this podcast one day it's not dinosaur okay but if we're gonna cover seven if. If we're going to cover it one day. Animated 2000.

It's not. Correct. It's a science fiction animated film. Oh, it's Titan AE? It's Titan AE. Don Bluth's final movie. Titan AE weirdly has become one of our longest held promise episodes. I feel like it just comes up so much where it's like some like that's become the hulk for us now why

it just feels like such a weird artifact and don bluth has such an odd career trying to like destroy disney and almost making it work and then really not making it work and that's sort of like such a peak example movie yeah that's the one that kills him yeah yeah it doesn't kill him but it's you know that's it kills the career yeah yeah uh titan eight wow yeah number six i just want to shout out is the um romantic comedy boys and girls uh starring of course freddie prince jr., Claire Forlani and Jason Biggs. Yeah. Yeah.

Wait a second. I'm trying to remember what the tagline is for boys and girls. OK, I want to tell you the entire poster. Let's do it. OK, I'm looking at the poster. Yes, this is what I remember because I remember the trailer doing the same thing with the warning said in voiceover. You have the two girls, Claire Forlani and Amanda Detmer, and you have the boys, Freddie and Jason.

Freddie versus Jason, but with those two guys. Just a pitch I'm throwing out there. The top tagline says, opposites attack. So I guess it's like boys and girls are opposites and they're gonna like but yeah below boys and girls is the second tagline warning sex changes everything yeah that's it that's just that no other explanation of why they might be warning you about this i i remember like don lafontaine or whoever saying that in the trailer and the stamp like went over the screen and it felt almost like that was the full title of the movie like it was called boys and girls warning sex changes everything um my my brother jamesy past and future guest of the show went to see

that movie in theaters and was like it sucked But there's one line that is so funny. And James is going to come back on the show to talk about Space Jam, a new legacy, an episode that will be happening very soon. And so I just want to put a pin in that because I want to see if he remembers what that line was. Because for months he would be like,

that one line Jason Biggs says is so funny in that movie. All right. Do you guys have movies like that where you're just like this is from decades ago but i distinctly remember my response to this one line yes i i especially trailers like maybe movies that i never even saw oh yeah but i and then i finally will watch then i'm like oh i forgot that that trailer line was burned into my brain forever and ever and ever

honestly it's my duty to please that booty. Vividly remember several lines from the Bringing Down the House trailer, including the iconic, you got me straight tripping, boo. Well, that's right, right, yes. But I remember seeing Chicken Run in 2000 and they have, someone says where there's a will, there's a way

and someone else says, and I will be going this way. And I was just like, yeah. Wow. That's the only joke that's ever been made. That one. It is a good joke. way. And I was just like, yeah, that's the only joke that's ever been made. That one is a good joke. Demi, I was not anticipating because the one I feel like from the trailer,

I remember being played to death and I love Chicken Run is, I don't want to be a pie. I don't like gravy. Yes. It's a good line. Well, that's a good one. But something about that one line,

I was just like, oh, you tricked. I knew that. I know the setup, but this is a different punchline. So I was just like oh you you tricked i knew that i know the setup but this is a different punchline rocky so i was just like what the hell dirty rooster um incredible i i re-watched a shanghai noon for the first time in a while recently for patrick williams uh infinity pod and a big line in my family which then watching it again in context was like that's weird that we just said this all the time because everyone in my family found this movie so funny but i'll just say the line completely out of

context now you said wet shirt don't break not piss shirt bend bars what what that's my point you said that all the time all the time we were like remember that funniest line ever in any movie ever wait wait wait wait a second wow you you said wet shirt don't break not piss shirt been bars we just were like that's the job funniest we all thought that was the funniest why is that funny i don't even know why that's funny i i can't i i can't get into it i can't get into it we don't have the time i will say this i'll say this is a final thing i was watching shaft 2019 which has as we've said a great many issues right many of them conceptually from page one uh but uh you know it wants to do

this thing of like oh shaft is like a guy of his time he's not pc anymore here's his son who's this modern man one of the many issues with the movie is i can't decide if shaft is uncool for being antiquated and sexist or shaft's son is uncool for being a modern man and much of the movie is him calling him like a pussy soy boy yeah um so much of the marketing for the movie uh was definitely in the former because a lot of the marketing was just movie was definitely in the former because a lot of the marketing was just sort of like, why don't you take your avocado toast and shove it up your dick hole? And then in the movie,

it's just sort of like, what's the, so much, what's the point, right? It's, it really feels like they wanted to market it to boomers and to like people just like,

I don't know, right wing people whose entire perception of millennials is, uh, they're too PC. And I'm just like, I don't know, right wing people whose entire perception of millennials is they're too PC. And I'm just like, I. It's so depressing that like a shaft movie is about shaft cucking millennials. The other thing is like, I agree with you, Demi, that that movie works best when it's sort of about the weirdness of Samuel Jackson and the sadness of this guy still existing in 2019, acting like nothing's changed like that. I think it should have been an Austin Powers type take where it's just like shaft is unfrozen out of the 70s. And everyone's like, what the fuck is wrong with you? You can't just shout to get laid.

You can't just shout to get laid. So I was doing the thought experiment while watching it because Jesse T. Usher, who's one of these guys who's sort of been positioned as like, oh, is he a new leading man? He'll play Will Smith's son in Independence Day, you know, resurgence. Like, he can be your legacy actor. He's not inherently a comedic actor, right? And that role is designed as like the funny, young, modern Shaft. Right. Like he's not supposed to be a cool movie star guy. He's supposed to be the one who can banter well with Samuel Jackson. And I was doing the thought experiment of like, look, obviously, I'd want this thing to get a fucking page one rewrite. But like, who is the actor you could cast as John Shaft III that would make this movie funnier to me? And I was like racking my brain and genuinely, genuinely, the answer I came to is, I want to see Demi play young Shaft.

Oh God. I don't know. That's a zero box office movie. I mean, but you know what else was a zero box office movie? Jesse T. Usher and Shaft. That's fair. But I was thinking,

if it was you with Samuel L. Jackson, I would have found that funny. I don't know if the movie would have worked I would have had a blast you would have had a good time everyone would be like Demi's having so much fun everyone's review would be Demi's having so much fun which is their way of being like this movie sucks it seems like you had a lot of fun

that's what people would say to you at parties you can just tell they're enjoying it they had a nice time the dinners every night after they wrapped must have been delightful yeah i'll show up to set and wear a red coat and just be like oh man i got my my gotta go to the apple store and have samuel jackson be like you kids oh podcast so much app confusion in that movie oh good that's great yeah it's it really hidden hidden all the hallmarks of what studios want to say about people now, which is just they love apps and avocado toast or some shit.

I several times had to pause the movie to double check that it did in fact come out in 2019 because it feels like it's 10 years old. It felt like a 2004 movie. Yes, yes, yes. Demi, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. Let's talk about Shaft. Always a pleasure. We're just talking

about Shaft. Anything you want to plug? Watch the Amber Ruffin show. Great show. It's really good. Very good. Yeah, that's it. Got nothing else. Peacock. I'm just sitting here. Peacock. Yeah, else. Peacock. I'm just sitting here. Peacock.

Oh, yeah, sure. Peacock. But it doesn't, you don't need the premium. It's on the free tier. It's on the ad tier. And I know they've been doing some bursts of also broadcasting the show on NBC, so sometimes it's airing. I have no idea

if it's still the case. I think we were syndicated on NBC for 10 weeks I don't know when that was it might be over but you know turn on NBC and maybe you'll see a thing I wrote and maybe you'll just see New Amsterdam instead hey watch out

that's every time I turn on my TV Logan from Gilmore Girls is a doctor that's what New Amsterdam is isn't that the resident that's the resident we can't get into this we'll be here for another hour simmed it up um demi thank you again for being here and folks great thank you all for listening please remember to rate review review, and subscribe. Ben, don't correct me.

I don't want to say the thing. I want to say subscribe. It's not right. What's the real thing? They've changed it. Now it says follow. Oh. So you can follow a show.

You don't subscribe to a show anymore on Apple Podcasts. They changed the button, but I'm going to be like shaft. I'm going to be anachronistic. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, it should be follow. follow go to patreon it shouldn't be follow it should not uh go to blank check go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features where we're talking twilight we're covering the twilight movies uh movies that have a very very chill relationship to sex much like like the Shaft franchise. Shaft is the anti-Twilight.

Yeah. I've always said this. In so many ways. Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit and go to our Shopify page for some real nerdy merch. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. Alex Barron, AJ McKeon for editing help. And David,

we got a new member of the team. Yep. Research. We got research on this episode done by JJ Bursch and Nick Loriano. So thanks to them. And thank you to Lane Montgomery and The Great American Novel for our theme song.

Tune in next week for Baby Boy. And as always, I am legally obligated. No, I should just let you. That's how it should end. No, do the legal obligation. What was that? I'm legally obligated to let you know that's my duty

to please that voting there we go oh my god wait that ah Thank you.