Gordon Parks: Self - Film Director
Quotes
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Gordon Parks : [to Richard Roundtree] Alright, in this next scene here in the bar, you will discover the Mafia. And you will recognize them by the pictures that you have seen at the police headquarters. When you take over the bar, you're supposed act, you know, in a manner in which they would never assume that you were the bartender. Yet, time that scene very well when you crack him over the head with a bottle and be sure, after you hit him over the head with the bottle, and you see the blood rush out of his face, that you could maintain the cool that Shaft should maintain.
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Gordon Parks : No Name Bar Scene.
Isaac Hayes : Right.
Gordon Parks : A beautiful crowd. The music should be up. Source music from the jukebox.
Isaac Hayes : Dig it.
Gordon Parks : The fact that there's violence at the end and a lot of action and the police coming in and Shaft smackin' a guy across the head with a bottle, makes no difference with the music. Because the music stays right where it is all the time. Right on the level. So that it gives a feeling that you are in a bar. Something has happened. You may hear the change of voices and the atmosphere of the people who watch the action, but the music goes right on.
Isaac Hayes : Right.
[to the band]
Isaac Hayes : Now, fellas, this time we're going source music. The No Name Bar. This is where you - eh - you're featured Mike. You've got the melody. Okay. Now watch the rhythm, man. Let if flow, you know.
[the band lets it flow]
Isaac Hayes : Move it, move it! One mo' time. Now, play.
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Gordon Parks : Now, the sequence we saw this morning, Times Square. Panned off the skyscrapers along 42nd Street over the marquees. And when Shaft *pops* up out of that subway, that's when they should really come on.
Isaac Hayes : Right.
Gordon Parks : And carry him all the way through Times Square right to his... to his first encounter with a newspaperman.
Isaac Hayes : Right.
Gordon Parks : That should be a driving, savage beat, you know, so that
[snaps his finger]
Gordon Parks : right with him, all the time. Something like that. What I heard you working on earlier seems great for that Shaft walk. Can we hear it now?
Isaac Hayes : Yeah. Okay. Let's take it!
[band starts to play "The Theme from Shaft"]
