绿蛇和萨姆（《首映》）

Green Snakes and Sam (Jackson)
The incorrigible Samuel L. Jackson on Freedomland and why he wouldn't do Snakes on a Plane unless it was called Snakes on a Plane!

By Fred Schruers

(This feature was originally published in the March 2006 issue of Premiere.)


Sam Jackson's film career began some 34 years ago, and early progress was slow. (Let's face it, playing Gang Member No. 2 in 1981's Ragtime and Black Guy in 1989's Sea of Love was not all that encouraging.) But Jackson's role as the frighteningly wasted Gator Purify in Spike Lee's 1991 Jungle Fever marked both an end to drug addiction and the start of a career taking on probing, troubling roles (A Time to Kill, Changing Lanes), convincing action turns (the second Star Wars trilogy), and the voice of Frozone (The Incredibles). He's also served notably as Quentin Tarantino's go-to cool guy, as Jules in Pulp Fiction, Ordell in Jackie Brown, and Rufus in Kill Bill—Vol. 2.

The coming year promises much from the versatile Jackson, 57, beginning with the sometimes bleak but ultimately redemptive drama Freedomland, followed by August's unabashedly campy Snakes on a Plane and this fall's Black Snake Moan (hey, the man digs on serpents), from Hustle & Flow phenom Craig Brewer.

When Joe Roth began directing Jackson in Freedomland, he found that "he was gonna know his lines and the lines of the person he was opposite that day; he's a first-take guy—he walks in with an idea and delivers it immediately."

"He was right about that," says Jackson. "I said, 'Tell me what the work is, I'll be ready to work.'"

Arriving for an afternoon interview in his golfing outfit, complete with a stylishly broken-in bucket hat, Jackson, warm, open, and ready to provide a laugh or share one, proved to be a winning conversationalist who made the session feel like anything but work.

PREMIERE: Freedomland is such an actor's showcase for you—what made you turn the project down twice over the years?
I ran away from this script, I don't know, five, six years. It kept coming back. I would read it every time it came, you know, and it would change subtly. But for so long, Lorenzo was just a facilitator, his character wasn't fully fleshed . . . more of a passive role. I like dark scripts, but I didn't want to be part of something that was that dark and not have an active role.

By the time this version of the script that Joe had came around, it's more of a two-hander, and you actually get to kind of travel with Lorenzo and be inside of who he is and this particular place he came from.

He's a veteran street cop who is, in effect, the sheriff and secular priest to the impoverished denizens of the Dempsy housing projects.
He feels like he's the king of the projects; he's disassociated himself from his personal family and taken on these two other families, the projects and the police. That made for a much more interesting character for me to play, not to mention having somebody like Julianne [Moore] on the other side.

And when you were reluctant to take the role, it was partly because you didn't know who you'd be working with?
[nods] Because all those other times, they never said who they wanted on the other side of that story, who that woman was going to be. And it always needed to be a very delicate yet strong and kind of well-studied actress to do that.

Julianne is incredible in that she prepares so well. We're very similar in that we come to work to have a good time. And when Joe says "Action," then we get serious. When he says "Cut," then we're back having a good time. It was so refreshing to be around somebody that worked almost like I do.

With the amount of work you do, constantly keeping in character would be exhausting. Do you have a technique to avoid all that?
I don't hold onto it. I mean, you figured it out before you got to work. You don't have to sit in your trailer, look in the mirror, and make sure your face is right and all this other stuff. You get to set and you're there with the other person, and when director says "Action," you know the emotional intent. You know what you're trying to accomplish in these few seconds of film. You accomplish it and you come out of it and everything's fine.

I suspect there's more preparatory work to it than we think.
Being able to go through a script that way comes totally from my theatrical background, because that's how I learned to break things down and learned how to analyze my particular character. Who he is? Where did he come from? What are his intentions? What will affect him? What will cause him to change? And what will cause him not to change—what will put up a brick wall? What will let that wall down? There's all kinds of things that happen in the journey of two actors inside a story to make real people say, "Wow, I know who those people are" or "I know how those people feel."

Your character has so many layers, and his role as a detective figuring out what became of Moore's character's son is intermingled with a protectiveness toward her, as well as with his ambivalence about how his own family life has worked out.
I think Lorenzo's basic tenet in that whole thing is trying to figure out, is she capable of killing her kid? No matter what she says, is she capable of doing harm to that kid?

She makes some bad decisions, including the key decision—I'll put it this way to avoid a spoiler—that triggers the entire story.
She's been in a dysfunctional family dynamic all her life, so she only knows how to be a dysfunctional person. And when Lorenzo starts talking to her about his kid—I don't know if he's ever sat down and had that kind of conversation about who he is with anybody, and this may be the first person that he's open to that way. To tell [her] what a fucked parent he was and how he was everybody's father but his own kid's father.

Joe Roth has preserved so much of the edginess of Richard Price's novel. It's first and foremost a family drama, but with social commentary about racism and class, and thriller elements woven in. But the trailer seems to sell it as a straight-up thriller.
Yeah—somebody told me the other day when I was at the gym, "Wow, I saw that scary movie you're in." I was like, "The trailer for what, Snakes on a Plane?" They said, "No, Freedomland." [leaning back with a mystified tone] "Oh, really— uh, okay." So some people do think it's a thriller of sorts.

Women with kids will be interested in what her dynamic is. It's an interesting mystery, an interesting thriller, because you do start to think, well, what really did happen? Maybe something otherworldly is going on here that we don't know about, because she sticks to that story for a long time. Is it a murder mystery? She is the bad guy to those Dempsy projects people. She's the catalyst for a lot of bad things happening.

Lorenzo's the moral center of the film, but that doesn't mean he's not questioning himself. Between that and his asthma attacks, he is a very vulnerable hero who admits to his age, Clint Eastwood-style.
I'm not going to be chasing down 25-year-old guys and punching them out. Because like any other audience member, I'd be sitting there, going, "C'mon, give me a break." I don't want to run that far or that fast. I [laughing dryly] don't run after anything anymore.

Yet you're developing a martial-arts film called Afro Samurai that would require some physical shenanigans . . .
But I'm actually, you know, having those kind of thoughts now about [that] project, the longer it takes to come along— do I really want to get in shape to do that? Or do I want to let somebody else do it? You've got to be honest with yourself about where you are and what you're doing.

I've wanted to do a sword epic since I was a kid, from the Errol Flynn days. There are older masters that do that kind of stuff, but that's not who this character is. So I've got to give it some serious thought.


Which brings us to your upcoming sensitive human drama, Snakes on a Plane, for which you lobbied the producers to stick with the title rather than change it to Pacific Air Flight 121.
They had already changed the title when I got to Canada to start shooting. I let it go for a while. Then one day all the producers were standing there, and I'm saying, "So are you seriously going to leave this name like this?" And they're going, "Yeah, we don't want to give too much away to the audience." I'm like, "Yeah you do. That's the way you get them in here. Nobody wants to see Pacific Air Flight 121. People want to see Snakes on a Plane." When I picked up the script and I saw the title, I didn't even read it and I said, "I want to do it." You know, before I opened the first page, Snakes on a Plane. If this is what I think it is, I want to be in this. I want to be on a plane full of poisonous snakes. And I want to see other people on a plane full of poisonous snakes. You say Snakes on a Plane, people who don't like snakes are intrigued. The people who don't like to fly are intrigued. The people who don't like both are totally terrified now. People who just like seeing mayhem are ready for that. They want to see, you know, people enclosed in a big tin tube getting attacked by poisonous snakes. Come on! What could be more exciting than that, you know? What do you do? What do you do until the plane lands? Come on, Snakes on a Plane, that's the title. And, you know, somebody heard that comment, people on the Internet got behind it. "That's right! [pounding the table, with gruff voice] We want Snakes on a Plane!" So now, there's, I don't know, five, six websites, you know, that are dedicated . . . There are T-shirts, there are bags, there are jackets . . . Snakes on a Plane. [pauses, then looks wide-eyed] And by the way, you get some good snakes too!

Why am I guessing you're not the airline steward in a tailored blue outfit?
I'm an FBI agent transporting a witness from Hawaii to L.A. in a murder trial, this big gangster, and he puts a crate with leis on the plane and it's full of snakes. And it time-releases halfway across, so we can't go back. We got to go forward. And the snakes get loose in the wires and everywhere. They're all over the place, about five hundred of them, all kinds. And all kinds of characters on the plane— a rapper with his bodyguards, a Paris Hilton-type girl with a dog . . . There's the asshole passenger that everybody hates, the woman nursing the brand-new baby . . . all those stock kind of characters that, you know, are victims. That's what I always told them, "Look, you've got to have great snakes and you've got to have great victims." That's the formula for success for making a movie like this. If you've been to the movies anytime in your life, you know.

Do you think that's one of the keys to your long-lived success? That you kept making films that you wanted to see? You're a guy who probably can't walk through the airport without dozens of people coming up to you.
I love movies. I love all kinds of movies. And I think it's my duty as an artist to please myself by doing the kind of films that I want to see, and that I feel like doing. You know, my wife tells me I am too approachable— contrary to what people say about me, and I have this kind of off-putting look or this stare that I can give people, people still feel like they can just walk up to me whenever . . . you know, quote Pulp Fiction or you know, talk about a particular film. And that's pretty much right, because I enjoy them. I answer the "I don't know what's in the briefcase" question like six times a week. People quote Ezekiel to me eight, ten times a week. People say,

"You know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in France?" like, thirty times a week. And I try to be as cordial as I can possibly be and let them know that I'm just an ordinary guy who has an extraordinary job. I really appreciate them enjoying what I do, which is another interesting, you know, phenomenon— that people very seldom go, "Oh, I just love you." They always go, "I really love your work. I thank you for all that you do." And that's a lot more satisfying than being some matinee idol [with] people ignoring what I'm doing and looking at me as a personality.

I had a musician once tell me, "I want to stand behind my handiwork, not in front of it." Perhaps that's what you've done in your career.
I try so desperately to disappear into characters the majority of time that my agents and managers tend to think, "Okay, can you do this one this time with your face? Without some kind of hair or putting a scar on yourself?" I go, "Oh, okay, I'll do one for you and then next one I'm doing for me, okay? I'm going to disappear." Trying to inhabit a character in my own particular way gives people sort of a charge to go to the movie and say, "I wonder what he's going to look like, or do, this time." I'm always trying to take them away from who I am, because they can see me anytime. They can pick up a magazine or look at any old film. It's that challenge of saying, "Wow, I can accept him like that." It helps them get away from the normal "Okay, that's Samuel L. Jackson" thing. And I like that.

Witness Craig Brewer's upcoming Black Snake Moan, where you're an aging bluesman locked in a psychological tangle with a young nymphomaniac.
That's one of those movies you're going to go, "Damn, is that him?" I'm, like, totally off the charts. Old, gray, bald, gold teeth, moles on the face. I walk differently, talk differently. And I had to learn to play guitar. One of those kind of roles where you can just disappear and have fun every day. It's one of those kind of things where if actresses . . . If good-looking actresses make themselves ugly and get Oscar nominations, then maybe I'll get one. [laughs] It's like, "Wow, did you see what she looked like?" Yeah, but that's makeup. That's not acting.

Between the action parts and the quirky indies, you must have a pretty big pile of scripts to read each month. And here's this offbeat one.
Craig was chasing Morgan [Freeman]. And Morgan was already doing that Jet Li movie where he was a blind pianist, blues player or whatever, so I think he was thinking he had already done that thing. So there I was.

Do you ever feel like you're two large presences in a relatively small room?
Morgan and I? We've known each other since we used to do plays together in New York. I was his understudy and all that kind of stuff. I think that this may be the second script that I have ever read that somebody has said that they wanted Morgan to do and I ended up doing. The first one was The Red Violin. And he actually told the director, "Call Sam Jackson." Because he didn't want to do it.

And there was a time, when I first got to Hollywood, every script I got had somebody's fingerprints on it. You know, Denzel [Washington]'s fingerprints on it. Laurence Fishburne's, Forest Whitaker, somebody, and it was a filter-down process. And then there was a time when people started getting scripts that had my fingerprints on it. Ving Rhames used to jokingly say, "You turn down any jobs lately?" Because it seemed like every time I didn't do a script, Ving did it, you know, and then kind of Delroy [Lindo] did it for a while.

That's a natural part of the progression of the business that they go to certain people first. . . . All of a sudden, I stopped getting scripts that had Denzel's fingerprints on it and I started getting scripts that had Mel Gibson's fingerprints on it or Bruce Willis's fingerprints, John Travolta's fingerprints. So I'm still getting hand-me-downs, but they're better hand-me-downs. And people are getting very color-blind about the things that I get. I don't think about it; if it's a great story and a good character on the inside of it, I don't care who touched it first.

I think most people who haven't looked it up would presume you've had more Oscar recognition than the one nomination for Pulp Fiction.
I just keep going to work. You know? In the end, it's all about going to work and nothing else. The rest of that stuff . . . it's kind of like icing on the cake maybe, sometimes just an intrusion. I mean, you get nominated . . . okay, I got nominated, I'll show up. I have no expectations of winning or losing because it's not something that you can predict. There are no locks. There never have been and never will be. Just be glad that you did that particular job, you did a great job, and somebody else thinks that you did a great enough job that they nominate you for an award, and you keep going.

Jungle Fever was a turning point in your life. . . .
It got me here.

And there had been substance abuse questions before that . . .
There weren't questions. [laughs] They were reality, yeah. It wasn't a coincidence, I guess. Spike told me he was doing this Marvin Gaye-like story and he wanted me to be the kind of junkie son. And it just so happened I was smoking crack at the time. I was killing myself and I ended up going to rehab right before it happened. And they were like, "No, it's cool, you'll be out in time." So everything worked out. The success I was having before that versus the success I had after . . . I was kind of flatlined in a certain place and doing drugs, but when I stopped, I did Jungle Fever, which was, you know, cathartic. Once Ossie Davis killed that character, it gave me a chance to kill that part of my life and start on an upward kind of path. It's very clear to me that I was in my own way. And once I got out of my way . . . it was all right. Yeah.