I gotta admit it.  I didn’t like John Singleton’s sequel to the original Shaft.  Despite receiving the blessings from Gordon Parks, the director of the 1971 original, and Richard Roundtree himself, the whole affair seemed a little wrongheaded.  Shaft, the character, was a man of a certain era, and he needed those trappings to fully inform the character.  He needed the 1970s.  Classic detectives like Phillip Marlowe or The Thin Man wouldn’t quite work if you dropped them into the early 21st century, and neither does Shaft.

Also, Singleton cast Samuel L. Jackson in the title role.  Simply put, besides being tough, Shaft is a sexy dude.  Isaac Hayes’ classic theme drips with sex.  It’s a soulful elegy to Shaft’s sexual prowess.  Hell, his name is “Shaft,” and that’s so obvious it would make Freud blush.  Despite Samuel L. Jackson’s badass credentials, sexy he ain’t.  Sorry, Sam, but it’s true.  You may be a bad motherfucker, but nobody believes you’ve got the sex appeal to get-down-and-dirty and actually…well, you know.

Now if I were remaking Shaft, I would set it firmly in 1971 and use Ernest Tidyman’s 1971 novel as the template for casting.  Following, I’ll provide a selection of text from Tidyman’s first Shaft novel to describe a major character, show the original actor cast and then provide my choice for the role for a re-make:

JOHN SHAFT – Black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks.

Page 83: “Shaft’s face was…more round than oval, more flat and concave than sculptured and convex.  The eyes and nose seemed to have been cut into it, rather than built into it.  It was almost a Polynesian carved face, cut into stained balsa or some dark wood.  The lips were full, but they lay flat against his teeth.  A mask, but not a mask…Life and strength.  It was framed in a modified Afro haircut, notched with unexpectedly delicate and tightly set ears.”

Original: Richard Roundtree.  I can’t imagine the original, or the sequels, without him.

My Selection:  The Wire’s Idris Elba.

BUMPY JONAS – ( “Knocks Persons” in the novels) - undisputed gangster kingpin of Harlem

Pages 33-34: “Knocks Persons just sat there.  Massive, mountainous, a great brown mound of a man in a black suit completely filling the white leather chair that looked like a vertical bathtub on a chrome base with casters…shaven head gleaming in the soft indirect light, folds of flesh around his bull neck almost hiding the collar of his shirt.  A lumbering giant whose police records described him as a fraction over 6 feet 6 inches tall, weighing 290 pounds with distinct scars in at least eleven places on his massive body.”

Original: Moses Gunn, a strong actor with a great, slow-burning menacing presence, but not exactly “massive.”

My Selection: Who else but Michael Clarke-Duncan of The Green Mile fame?

BEN BUFORD – Black firebrand and revolutionary; an old pal of Shaft’s from back in the day

Page 56: “…Watusi-tall and warrior-fierce in his stance.  So tall and lean with a great bush of tight black curls surrounding his slender ascetic face.  His arms and legs so slim and long that even the suits he affected were not quite enough to cloak the angularity of the body.  He did not look at all like his voice.  A warrior or an inflamed divinity student with gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

Original: Christopher St. John (St. John was actually Tidyman’s preferred choice for the role of John Shaft)

My Selection: This one was kind of difficult, but I would have to go with the Isaiah Washington, formerly of Grey’s Anatomy.  Haughty, and brash, as evidenced by his inexcusable outburst toward his co-star, T.R. Knight, but a skilled and dynamic actor whose bearing fits Buford’s description.

LIEUTENANT VICTOR ANDEROZZI – Shaft’s contact with the New York Police Department.

Page 13: “The lieutenant had a thin, gray face and black hooded eyes.  He was as tall as Shaft, just under six feet, but much leaner, and the way he stood made Shaft think of sharp objects.  The lieutenant looked like a linoleum knife, ready to cut.  The big beak of a nose made it complete.”

The Original: Charles Cioffi.  Good actor, and he had great chemistry with Roundtree, but he doesn’t make one think of “sharp objects,” does he?

My Selection: Adrien Brody (The Pianist, Summer of Sam).  He may be a little young, but that nose, man!  That nose!

HELEN GREEN - (”Dina Green” in the movie) - the wife of Shaft’s accountant, Marvin Green; possibly Shaft’s only platonic female friend.

Shaft and Ben Buford use the Green’s apartment as a temporary safehouse after escaping an attempted hit on Buford.  (I don’t think we ever see Marvin Green in any of the Shaft novels or movies, but Helen is present in at least two of the books.)

Page 87:  “She was the least black negro he knew, possibly the most attractive, possibly the most feminine and womanly as well.  Marvin Green was a fortunate man to have her as a wife and the mother of his children.”

Page 89: “…a Negro girl two or three generations removed from the blackness of skin and soul that had brought Shaft to her kitchen in flight…”

Original: Camille Yarbrough.  She didn’t take any guff off Ben Buford, chastising him for his language.  Even Shaft deferred to her.

My Selection: At first, I was thinking Taraji P. Henson (I was just looking for an excuse to post her picture), but as I looked further into the book for a good description, I found that Ernest Tidyman also described Helen Green as having “hazel eyes.”  Therefore, it became evident that Eva Marcille would make a better choice.

Those are my choices.  Now it’s your turn.  Who would you pick?

- JEP