Episode 235: SUPER FLY (1972)

The reasons why some critics decried SUPER FLY on its release aren’t ours to criticize (but we make that mistake on this episode a couple times anyway), but they’re important to understanding its long-term impact. The bone it picks with the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement – that many of its victories were pyrrhic, and that America still has far to go before it can claim racial equity – makes it feel ahead of its time and very much of its time. Its actual function as a movie may have aged less than beautifully (it’s not actually that much fun to watch or follow along with), but its combination of style (hello The Curtis Mayfield Experience) and cynicism give SUPER FLY an outsized cultural influence that precedes itself. Listen to an episode of Jason’s other podcast, CrossFade, where he and Matt Helgeson discussed the music of SUPER FLY (and Rush’s 2112) with video game composer Jason Graves: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/curtis-mayfield-vs-rush-feat-jason-graves/id1501267072?i=1000524248893 “I’ll Let You Trip for Awhile: Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly” by Jay Ditzer for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/07/07/ill-let-you-trip-for-awhile-curtis-mayfields-super-fly/ Five Super Fly Hip-Hop Samples” by Matthew Tchepikova-Treon for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: “https://www.perisphere.org/2023/07/07/five-super-fly-hip-hop-samples/ Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Music throughout from the SUPER FLY soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 235: SUPER FLY (1972) 3:26 - The episode actually starts 5:56 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary 9:13 - The sound of SUPER FLY, moralizing, and Priest’s self-determinism 29:42 - Contextualizing the 1972 critical response 39:47 - Was Sig Shore hip enough? 44:01 - Scenes that have no place in this movie 50:01 - The Junk Drawer 55:26 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!