Super Fly: the book

In the mid-'70s I was a young vanilla-suburban teenager who was seriously getting into The Funk. Curtis's songs for Super Fly made a serious impression on me and I wanted to see the film, but by that time, a few years after its release, there was no way for someone like me to see it unless Home Box Office (later HBO) were to show it, and they didn't.

I did, however, find the novelization of Super Fly, a mass-market paperback, for 50 cents (front cover torn off) at a great bargain bookstore full of remaindered items. Eventually VHS tapes would appear, but for 15 or 20 years that book WAS 'Super Fly' for me. And in some ways I find it superior to the movie-- more intelligent and analytical, with more fleshing out of the characters and situations, more 'flavor', and a lot of detail about the inner workings of the cocaine business. There are a few short scenes which don't appear in the film but should have (especially when the script was so short)-- for instance, Georgia telling Priest the bad news about Scatter.

It's not clear whether Philip Fenty also wrote the novelization; the credits page merely says that the book is based on his screenplay. In any case, if you're seriously into Super Fly, I'd recommend getting your hands on the book. (I don't think I've seen a copy in a used-book store since 1975, so thank goodness for the Internetz.)