Soon, Priest and Eddie are up to their necks in blow, triggering a product-moving montage set to “Pusherman,” one of Mayfield’s original Super Fly songs. So Priest goes around him, hunting down the head of a Mexican cartel (Esai Morales) and impressing him with his knowledge of soccer. The man who supplies Priest with his drugs, Michael Kenneth Williams’ Scatter, isn’t about to facilitate that big score by introducing Priest to his wholesaler. He wants to make one last huge deal, then retire. They’ve made piles and piles of money, but a violent encounter with a gang called Snow Patrol - not the Irish rock band, but a group of drug dealers who wear white parkas in the Georgia heat - convinces Priest it’s time to leave the gang. More an equal in Priest’s coke-slinging operation is Eddie (Jason Mitchell), who seemingly oversees most of the business while Priest is tending his hair and squinting at people. ![]() ![]() (That scene may be literally steamy, but its cheesy soft-core vibe made the New York preview audience giggle.) In the 1972 film, Priest had two women (one black and one white) who didn’t know anything about each other here, he lives in a happy threesome with girlfriend-employees, treating the black one (Lex Scott Davis’ Georgia) nearly like a sentient human and keeping the Latina (Andrea Londo’s Cynthia) as an accessory, unseen until it’s time for a threesome in the shower. In the next scene, we enter a vast strip club where Priest’s two girlfriends do his bidding without question. If you think this is the beginning of a subtext weaving real-world issues into genre conventions, hold your applause until you see the nature of those jobs. In raspy voiceover, Priest explains that he’s been hustling since 11, building his little empire by knowing what others don’t and giving people jobs. In a hard-to-swallow introductory scene, we watch him confront three men with guns and disarm them simply by airing their dirty laundry. Jackson, sporting an upswept shock of straightened hair, plays Priest, a coke dealer whose success depends on knowing his rivals’ secrets. ![]() So now that it’s possible (albeit difficult) to get a serious film about black characters made, the occasional prospect of remaking one of these movies is greeted not with an indignant “how could you!” but a bemused “why would you?” Some of the era’s most brilliant artists lent their gifts to these cheap films: Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield arranged entire scores for Trouble Man and Super Fly, respectively, while the theme songs by Bobby Womack and Isaac Hayes were easily the most enduring elements of the respective Across 110th Street and Shaft. Though significant at the time for putting black protagonists onscreen, and occasionally in the director’s chair, the movies were often made by cynics who thought their audience couldn’t tell good scripts and acting from bad, and would buy anything containing a few surefire plot ingredients (guns, cash, naked ladies) and music by big stars. “Atlanta is ‘superfly’ because ‘superfly’ is a state of mind.For many of us who discovered blaxploitation decades after its brief heyday, the appeal was not cinematic but musical. Moments before the Center Stage event also featuring performances by Atlanta artists Yung Bans, Nick Grant and Kodie Shane, Mitchell offered his reason why Atlanta and “Superfly” fit. And the city, mostly from I-75/85 to Midtown and West End, is showcased throughout. It is so prominently featured in the film that Architectural Digest wrote about it. His mansion, Evander Holyfield's former home, plays an even bigger role. Rick Ross, a longtime resident, makes a cameo. At the same time, because this is entertainment, we needed a big star.” The opportunity to add Future, one of the film’s producers who helms the soundtrack, came when X filmed a Gap commercial with the rapper and Cher.įuture is not the only Atlanta rapper fueling "Superfly." Underground rap impresario Big Bank Black is Q, leader of Priest's rival drug crew, Snow Patrol, while Outkast's Big Boi plays Mayor Atkins. We needed an artistic vision for the music that could come in and be the commentary for the film. ![]() “With all that madness in the movie, (Mayfield) said, ‘I need to be the balancing voice’ and he wanted to be what they call the Greek chorus and really have a commentary on what was going on in the film,” X explained. That ruthlessness, said X, greatly determined Mayfield’s role in the film. “Priest in the original is not a nice guy,” X noted, highlighting a scene where Priest tells a man who owes him money that he will pimp his wife as a prostitute that night if he doesn’t get it. Trevor Jackson plays Priest in the reimagined version of “Superfly,” when opens in theaters on June 13.
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