Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Favorite SLJ bits? There are so many of them!

"Out of Sight" did justice to an Elmore Leonard story that was full
of larger-than-life characters. Each twist in the movie was toward
something more outrageous than what we'd just seen. Soderburgh
sandbagged the audience by ringing in an unbilled Samuel L. Jackson
as the final topper. The surprise gave the scene an extra edge.
  

    
>Why is SLJ so motherfucking cool?

Wanting to figure that out is one of the reasons I wrote the book! I
think it took Jackson some time to figure it out for himself too. He
always had the self-possession and savoir-faire necessary for cool,
but after Pulp Fiction, moviemakers figured out it was a quality he
could deliver as needed. If cool is a mask that we wear in public,
as I say in the book, then an actor like Jackson finds that the mask
fits more naturally every time he puts it on.

Or let me quote the man himself: "I'm comfortable in the skin I'm
in. For so long I was uncomfortable being who I was. I did drugs,
drank, and did all that other shit to keep the world off me, keep
myself from feeling the stuff I was feeling. I was insecure,
worrying about my stutter, about not having a job, about not being
as rich or successful as the next guy. Those things don't bother me
anymore. I've been fortunate enough to play some characters people
perceive in a certain way. That's rubbed off on me, so people
attribute those character traits to me."
  

    
>Jackson's lessons on acting in Master Class are really good.

Isn't that a blast? I particularly enjoyed the sessions where they
bring in young actors to do scenes from Pulp Fiction and The
Negotiator and he coaches them through it. It gets really good when
they're making their own choices and not just mimicking him.
  

    
>He went to be in the Morehouse play to meet girls though, right? 

Well, he went (filling out the cast of The Threepenny Opera) to get
extra credit in a public speaking class (which he was taking to help
with his stutter). He stuck around because of the girls.

(And then later, he committed to theater as an artform, but that
wasn't the initial draw.)
  

    
>"Out of Sight" did justice to an Elmore Leonard story that was full
of larger-than-life characters.

I =love= that movie. I enjoyed it when it came out, but rewatching
it for this book, I found that every scene sparkled. It's a modern
classic. And there's so many heavy hitters in the cast, they needed
somebody in that final scene who could really bring it home: Jackson
showed up the day after he wrapped =The Negotiator=.
  

    
>I've always had a fondness for his final scene in DEEP BLUE SEA.

Jackson originally had a multipage monologue before the shark showed
up. He =hated= it, wanted to die as quickly as possible, but Renny
Harlin wouldn't budge. It wasn't until the movie bombed with test
audiences that it got recut with a lighter touch. The result, as SLJ
put it: "Best. Death. Ever."
  

    
That's great. It seemed almost self parody.
  

    
"Best. Death. Ever."

Another reason I love Jackson is because he can pull off meta while
playing his character straight. Every once in a while you see a
moment where multiple other characters he has played flash through
his face and body without affecting the existing character or its
place in the movie. I think some of this is purposeful. He is larger
than life onscreen and he knows it.
  

    
You know what movie I particularly think of where that's in play?
It's not a good movie and I don't recommend that you watch it: THE
MAN, the action buddy comedy where he's teamed up with Eugene Levy.
They're both cast very much to type--Levy is a nebbishy salesman of
dental equipment, while Jackson is a Detroit cop in a leather
jacket. 

But even though Jackson is playing a variation on a character he's
done multiple times before, most obviously Shaft, he visibly finds
ways to make "Derrick Vann" distinct: in his physical appearance, in
his attitudes, in the way he carries himself. I was impressed with
how he challenged himself in a role where nobody else was asking him
to stretch, even a little.
  

    
I enjoyed his turn in Die Hard with a Vengeance. Watching him spar
with Bruce Willis was great fun.
  

    
Gavin is taking care of some family concerns over the next few days
so will not be available to respond much, but he is excited to
continue the discussion. So be patient if you have a question or
comment.
  

    
(Thanks, Peter! The beauty of asynchronous conversation is that I
can drop in at unexpected free moments.)

"We drive a lot, we run a lot, we duck a lot, we curse a lot, and we
bleed a lot. And occasionally we stop to act." -- SLJ on Die Hard
With a Vengeance

I agree that he and Willis make for a great team. They barely
interact in Pulp Fiction, but they match up extremely well in
Unbreakable and here. Jackson said that he figured out the secret to
being in a movie like this: he was the audience's on-screen
representative, giving them a sense of what it would be like hanging
out with Bruce Willis (or John McClane, depending on how you look at
it).

Jackson thought he was pretty famous after Jungle Fever and Pulp
Fiction, but said that Willis told him that it would be the movie
that took him a whole different level of celebrity--and that he was
correct!
  

    
I get the feeling that Jackson carries that feeling of repping the
outsider in most parts of his life. It certainly goes back to two
very different groups, the Block Boys and the Concerned Students at
Morehouse. Any thoughts about that?
  

    
I nodded in agreement regarding Tarantino's concept of "hangout
movies". For me Hard Eight and Jackie brown are both hangout movies
and I rewatch them both to enjoy the company of the characters.
Ordell Robbie is part of the hangout, Jimmy is a brash reminder of
Seymour's previous life who doesn't fit in to the hangout at all.
  

    
(By the way, "taking the unconscious fears and desires of the humans
and making them reality" is the central element of Solaris, and both
Lem and Tarkovsky do a good job with it.)
  

    
>I nodded in agreement regarding Tarantino's concept of "hangout
movies"

If memory serves, Tarantino would buy copies of Dazed and Confused
as he traveled around the world, knowing that even when he was in a
foreign land, he would have his Texas buddies to hang out with.
  

    
>"taking the unconscious fears and desires of the humans
and making them reality"

Ha, I didn't recognize this as my own sentence at first! I've always
wanted to see Solaris, and I have to imagine either version is a
more successful exploration of this theme than Sphere is.
  

    
Tarkovsky's is a hard SF masterpiece, a faithful realization of the
second half of Lem's book. Soderbergh's remake is more about
personal relationships among the characters. I'm glad to have seen
both of them.
  

    
(Gavin, you may have missed <38>.)
  

    
>Gavin, you may have missed <38>.

Just letting it age like fine motherfucking wine!

>I get the feeling that Jackson carries that feeling of repping the
outsider in most parts of his life.

Although Jackson makes a very fine living playing cops and secret
agents and other action heroes, his childhood was lived very much on
the interior. He was an avid and precocious reader from a young
age--and crucially, he had a serious stutter. That stutter made him
not talk for most of fourth grade, and helped turn him into an
observer of life in segregated Chattanooga (and a reader and a
moviegoer and a lover of radio drama).

Even after he overcame the stutter (fun fact: he discovered that the
word "motherfucker" was a reliable way to break through his speech
impediment), I think he gravitated to people outside the mainstream.
So hanging with the block boys outside the Morehouse campus instead
of the aspiring Morehouse men was definitely part of that. Yes, he
was a cheerleader at Morehouse (mostly so he could meet girls), but
the groups that he identified with more strongly were a step outside
of college life (for different reasons, political radicals and the
theater crowd).

Like many of the best artists, he was able to live in mainstream
society but the distance he had from it made him a keen observer,
which made him a stronger chronicler of the human condition.
  

    
He's been appearing in various commercials for the last few years,
including those for Capital One (what's in your wallet?). Does that
reinforce or undermine his reputation as "the coolest man alive"?
  

    
Biden should take lessons from Jackson.  "Big Fucking Deal" came
across pretty well, no stutter there. He's halfway to
"motherfucking" already. 
  

    
Those Capital One commercials make me hate him these days.
  

    
I don't think the Capitsl One commercials make him cooler: that's a
pretty straightforward transaction where he's renting out his cool
to a large credit card company in exchange for some large checks
(over $10 million a year). "Sometimes they make you an offer you
can't refuse," Jackson said. So at the very least, it puts a number
on exactly how much it's worth to be the coolest man alive.
  

    
I was wondering more whether those could diminish his "cool," but it
certainly hasn't done that for me. I think one of his strengths is
that, even in that context, he doesn't come across as inauthentic.