The Diva's interview with Samuel L. Jackson One of the Stars of Black Snake Moan (2007)

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, and Justin Timberlake and Directed  by Craig Brewer. Black Snake Moan opens on March 2nd.There are many things that can be said about my friend, Samuel L. Jackson. But one of the best illustrations of his character is a little story of what happened during he filming of this movie.

You see, I'm truly blessed in that, Mr. Jackson will occasionally take my calls. We have quick little conversations here and there. We've been known to make each other laugh with me laughing because he is genuinely funny and with Sam laughing at me because I think I'm the goofiest person he knows.

I've told you that, to tell you this; I called Sam one day frantic. I must have called 15 times. Sometimes the circuits were busy. Other times I would get a fast busy. He was filming a little movie called "Black Snake Moan", but a "little" storm called Katrina rolled through town. Being in Tennessee, I was fairly certain he was okay, but until I heard from him, I was not going to be able to sleep.

Obviously he was fine, but in the wake of the rawness of Katrina, he made a controversial statement about donating. People called him names and swore they would never watch another movie by him. It was awful for him. But also awful for me, I wanted to defend my friend. I knew something "they" didn't know. I knew that he sees survivors and just hand them money. I knew that he would be eating at a restaurant and cover meals. I knew he would buy clothes and necessities. I knew that he would offer words of encouragement. I know that he is the best hugger on the planet and probably enveloped someone passing on strength and courage.

That is the Sam that I know - a man of integrity and strength. A man with strong convictions and stronger opinions, but a man with a heart of gold.

Question:

 I just have to ask, did you run into any mother-f*cking snakes down in the mother-f*cking south?

Sam:
Well, you know in the south there are snakes. I heard there were some around. I didn't see them.

Question:
Did you know you’d have a voice for the blues?

Sam:
No.

Question:
No, because you do.

Sam:
Fortunately Mississippi Delta blues doesn’t necessarily need a silky smooth Luther Vandross type of voice. It's more about making sure the emotion of what you're saying comes out than being a great singer so it helped a lot.

Question:
Did you play the guitar?

Sam:
I learned to play. It was one of the things that I spent the most time doing. Fortunately I had maybe 6 or 7 months to work that out and had a really good guitar teacher in the beginning -- Felicia Collins in New York while I was shooting Freedomland. Then when I left to do Snakes on A Plane in Vancouver, the prop master was an awesome guitarist so he spent a lot of time with me in my trailer every day so it was something that I did daily, constantly for 6 or 7 months until I was comfortable doing it. It actually became something that I looked forward to doing every day. So by the time we got to the film I was pretty fast out on it. I’d actually taught myself to play the songs in a very different way than Scott played them, ‘cause I’d watch him play them and I’d go, ‘Well, I worked it out like this’ and he’d watch me play and go, ‘I never thought of doing it that way.’ Then I talked to all these old blues guys when we were doing our little road tour and most of them had taught themselves to play after 30 and they all had very different playing styles so I created something that was actually my own in terms of how I learned to play and worked my way though the songs. According to Big Jack, ‘That's really cool. You got it.’ And I said, ‘Thank you.’

Question:
Lazarus seems to be to me a man between two worlds because he's a guy that's certainly had his knocks and been through the times in his part of the world where a black man couldn't hold his head up the way he’s able to now. I wonder about his choice of taking in Rae rather than just getting her to a hospital and saying ‘I don't want to have anything to do with this white woman.’

Sam:
Interestingly enough I understand the choice just because I understand the rural south because I spent a lot of time in it when I was a kid and my grandfather's brothers were farmers and I spent time on the farm when I was a kid with them walking through the fields and working and hanging out. But there are instances where you find yourself in a circumstance and if you put her in your truck and you take her to the hospital, there a lot more questions than if you just keep her at your house and try to nurse her back to health and hopefully she'll walk away. That choice that he made of keeping her there very kind of .... He was sort of out of his mind in another kind of way at that point. He'd lost his woman that he had no control over and all of a sudden he has a woman and she's kind of out of control in that interesting sort of immoral way that he pictured his wife and he wanted to control her and fix her in another way. So the only way he could think to do that was to put this chain on her and still give her some amount of freedom and kind of pump this biblical medicine into her. It's interesting that it's not in the film but we shot a lot of stuff where he's reading the bible to her at different times, like when he puts her in the tub for the first time, he's sitting there on the floor and starts to read to her. She's in the tub and then there's times when she's laying on the sofa and he's reading to her and then there are times when she's eating and he's reading to her, but all that stuff is gone for some reason but the time frame seems kind of off. I don't know how you see it, but in our cinematic minds when we shot it, she was at his house for over a month. Now it looks like she's there a couple of days.

Question:
The bible's there, we see it opened up but that would have added a different dimension.

Sam:
Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Question:
Speaking of the bible, how did you enjoy being the voice of God?

Sam:
It was alright. It was fun in the moment I was doing it. It was kind of something that just happened because I actually went there to read something else and all of a sudden, you know, it's like you know, ‘read some of this’ and I did and then we read the rest of it and it just kind of went off.

Question:
Is it easy to act with a beautiful woman who's almost naked and has a big chain on her? Did it add a different dimension? Well you know after about I guess an hour of looking at Christina in those little panties and that shirt you kind of get over it because that's what she had on every day and she didn't put on a robe between shots and hide herself. She just kind of hung out, so you get over it pretty quickly. The great thing was that during the rehearsal period, Christina and I developed this really interesting bond and this interesting trust that kind of allowed her to kind of go anywhere she wanted to and I would support her to the point where as an actor or as Samuel L. Jackson I became another sort of Lazarus figure in terms of... Writers and directors write things and then when they see it on its feet, it takes on a whole other life and then when they see how far two people who put life in it can go, all of a sudden they go, ‘Oh my God, I didn't realize it was that. Well let’s try this’ and then you have to go, ‘No, we don't need to try that because we're already in this place and if you do that, then you go too far.’ Plus there are things in here that are hard and have sharp edges and Christina just kind of goes. If you do that, then she's going to break her toe or something's going to fall and you're going to hit her in the head and then we won’t be able to work, so let's not do that.

Question:
What made you fall in love with this particular character?

Sam:
Well the complexities of who he is and, like I said, he seems to be an amalgam to me of my grandfather and his brothers – you know, guys that I worked with in the fields and talked to and people of the earth who drank hard when it was time to drink and they loved the blues and they sang and they told stories and they did all this stuff. It's just an interesting way for me to pay homage to some men that developed me in that particular way that made me want to be a storyteller.

Question:
What can you tell us about Justin Timberlake? Was he a better actor than what you were expecting? Was he good?

Sam:
That's loaded. The interesting thing to me about Justin is it would have been easy for him to choose something that allowed him to be more Justin Timberlake because guys, especially young guys, don't tend to want to portray people who have frailties and are less than macho. It's an interesting choice for him to choose a character that's so opposite of who most women or guys would want their heroes to be. He wasn't afraid to do it. He stepped in there and gave it his best shot. It worked for me in the film.

Question:
You're doing the voice of Afro-Samurai. Is that a similar process to The Incredibles?

Sam:
Yeah, you just go into the studio and kind of read the stuff and kind of do it and you do it in different spaces in time. All of a sudden somebody will call and it's like, ‘Oh we need you to come to the studio and do some more stuff’ so you do it. Fortunately that project lent itself to me having two different voices and being a producer and doing all this other stuff and I guess it's been relatively successful because they've ordered another season, so hopefully we'll get it done.

Question:
Do you see a lot of yourself in Afro-Samurai?

Sam:
I see more of myself in Ninja Ninja apparently. That’s the most talkative voice.

Question:
You shot The Cleaner in Shreveport is that right?

Sam:
Shooting the Cleaner. I'm going back tonight.

Question:
We’re seeing a difference in the portraits of the South that we're getting in films today, and Black Snake Moan is part of that. We have this stereotype that has been reinforced by the films of the last 20 years. Do you think it's getting a fairer shake when you’re there? Are people more comfortable with the idea that you're going to portray them well?

Sam:
Actually, The Cleaner is set in New Jersey, so they're making an effort to shoot things that look more Jersey like than southern.

Question:
So is New Jersey getting a fair shake then? I guess that's the movie illusion but people are comfortable with....?

Sam:
They're just glad there are a lot of people working. There are about 5 films shooting in Shreveport right now. It's a very busy time in the town and about 4 or 5 more coming in the next month. So apparently the incentives that Louisiana is giving the film companies and the right to work state and not having to worry about unions in that particular way is very appealing to a lot of people.

Question:
What did Craig tell you about this character and then what did you tell him about this character?

Sam:
Craig didn't tell me anything about the guy actually. Once I got the script and I read it and then they went through all the machinations of that's not who you're supposed to send the script to and "Okay. I'll go meet him and whatever.’ Craig saw me on television talking about my life and decided he's got enough layers in his life to be able to play this guy. I'm an actor who shows up to rehearsal with a lot of stuff. I sit down and I work out things about characters and put together biographies and histories and all kinds of stuff so by the time we got there and we started the rehearsal period, it was very smart of him to just sit and watch me and Christina kind of go through what we were going through and figuring out how our relationship worked and what two people who have no idea of what kind of people that they've encountered because she'd never met anybody like me that she couldn't sexually manipulate and I've never met anybody or understood what a sexual dysfunction like that was. I guess a country guy who's a farmer who was playing the blues for a while or been in clubs, you've probably ran into some pretty wild women in his day but when people talk about nymphomania, I mean people talk about it but how many people know that they've actually run into a real nymphomaniac or a sexually dysfunctional person. You don't know how to handle it or exactly what it is. To him she was just somebody who was possessed by the devil or evil. The only thing he knew to do was exorcise it.

Question:
Some actors say that a role scares them or a part scares them initially that they know is right. Do you go through that process or are you beyond that?

Sam:
(laughs) Fear? No, I'm always anxious to jump in there and kind of figure out who a person is, where they're coming from and what they're doing. It’s part of the challenge and part of the I guess fascination of exploring the human condition for me to be able to safely walk into spaces that are dangerous and know that it's a controlled environment and not have to worry about being damaged by it in the end. But finding or looking back and saying, ‘Have I seen anybody like that? Have I talked to anybody like this? What was their process or how did I perceive their process to be?’ Because it's all make believe. You make up anything you can to help make a character fuller for me. Lazarus had a lot of stuff going on. He’d led a pretty wild life and he gave that life up when he got married and became this farmer which was not what that woman married. She married somebody who had a high-life, who's kind of lively and he bored her and she left and he had no understanding of that whatsoever because he viewed himself as a great provider, ‘I kept the house warm and I kept you fed’ but she needed more. He had no conception of that and didn’t understand that his music was what made him a person who was alive in a real sense and once he got back to it, he got back to what made him feel better about himself.

Question:
Is this a misogynist film?

Sam:
I don't know. (laughs) There are a lot of films that you can call misogynist or I think that Christina’s performance is one of the bravest performances I've seen that a young actress would take. I'm sure there are a lot of young women who probably wouldn’t touch this thing. I saw audition tapes for maybe 3 or 4 different women. Like I said, we talk about sexual dysfunction and we talk about nymphomania but we never see what that process is and it's kind of interesting watching whatever this thing is that internally takes her over. The way she succumbs to it all the time rather than fighting it. She says, No, no, no,’ but she always kind of lets go and lets it happen and not realizing that her power is in resisting it. I don't know. It's titillating. It's not often that you see a young actress in that state of undress for two-thirds of a film. It's very kind of early Helen Mirren and that you know. I used to like watching Helen Mirren's young lady films because she was always naked. I don't know. Misogynist, I don't know. Titillating, yes.

Question:
Are you going to pop up in Die Hard 4?

Sam:
No.

Question:
How about Lazarus' reaction when he realizes what happened to Lincoln? It was sort of the way you'd like your father to react if you were in that situation but I thought he really handled it in an unusual way.

Sam:
Well, not in the beginning. He kicked him in the ass and kicked him out of the house and did all that other stuff and then you know when you think about it, you go to the barn and you have this little conversation with him. In fact, there was this interesting little ad lib that Craig had in the first cut and then he took out of the film. It was funny because we had this whole conversation about, ‘Wow, very nice’ and the last thing I said to him was, ‘white girl, too’ which we all thought was funny but then I don't know why Craig took it out. Men talk to their sons differently than they talk to their daughters in an interesting sort of way. You always expect your sons to go through their rite of passage and I guess if they share their first sexual experience with you, you can be kind of proud of them in a way. They made it through that or they crossed that threshold.

Question:
Did you talk to John Singleton about producing movies while you were doing this or afterward? Do you talk about producing or maybe directing?

Sam:
No.

Question:
No?

Sam:
I produced movies on my own already so talking to John about producing while John produces a certain kind of film... I guess he's kind of hands-on. I never watched him and Craig interact when they were talking about what was going on. I knew they were having those conversations, but I was busy trying to figure out what I was going to do in the scene. It's a different kind of animal. Lot of people do it in different ways. Some people do it in a hands-off way; some people are very hands on. I never perceived myself as an intrusive producer. I have conversations with people about time and what we're going to do in a particular day and how much time we plan to spend doing this, that and the other and how it's all going or looking at dailies and talking about fixing stuff. It's all very different.

Question:
In this film, as most of your other films, you have an interesting hairstyle. Was it your choice to wear the hairpiece?

Sam:
Lazarus? Well, yeah. Craig actually wanted me to look a lot like R. L. Burnside who actually died when we were shooting. That’s sort of what he looks like and it's also sort of what my grandfather's brothers looked like. Yeah, it was a conscious choice to have that receding hairline and have white hair to make him older and kind of lived in and walk like he carries a lot of weight around on his shoulders. Kind of like farmers. Farmers are very strong and vital kinds of guys but they don't move very fast ‘cause they’re trying to conserve their energy. (laughs)

Question:
Why do you think his wife left him?

Sam:
Well, she wanted more. She wanted more out of life. She wanted more fun in her life. She wanted more excitement and vibrancy, and Lazarus was not providing that. She kind of felt like she was on that farm stuck, isolated not going anywhere, not doing anything, and she wanted another kind of life and apparently his brother was going to provide that for her.

Question:
Could you talk about other projects you've done since Black Snake Moan through what you're working on now?

Sam:
What have I done since then?

Question:
What about 1408?

Sam:
Oh right. I went from Black Snake Moan ...oh, I did Home of the Brave. Home of the Brave was next. I still don't know when they're going to release it, even thought it was in limited release around Christmas. The story about the soldiers coming home from Iraq with Jessica Biel and 50 Cent. After that, I did 1408 last summer. I saw the trailer for it and it looks pretty good.

Question:
Can you tell us about your character?

Sam:
I'm just the hotel manager who's trying to prevent this guy from staying in that room because he doesn't believe in paranormal experiences even though he writes about them. He's never actually seen a ghost in that room. It's purely evil but he has to go into that to find that out. So that and trying to prevent him from doing that. It's not a big role; it's just sort of expository talking about all the deaths that have happened in the room and why he shouldn't stay in it. Then I went to Jumper. Jumper is still shooting actually, which is a film about kids who can teleport, and I play a government agent that's sort of chasing them and killing them and kind of hates kids that can do that because they leave these interesting rips in the atmosphere when they do it. That's still kind of going on so I'm back and forth still shooting stuff for that. What else is there? Seems like there's something else I'm missing.

Question:
Cleaner?

Sam:
Oh yeah, Cleaner I’m doing now which is about a guy who cleans death sites. Interestingly enough, after police finish with a crime scenes, or people die in a house or whatever, it's up to the family to clean the house up, get the brains off the wall, the blood off the floor and that's something I didn't know. I always thought they did it. But this guy runs a business that does that and he also cleans up other kinds of biohazards with animals and that kind of stuff. It's about a guy who actually gets a call from the police and he goes and he cleans up a crime scene site and a couple of days later he's looking in the paper and the house that he cleaned up, the husband's missing and the wife doesn't know what happened, and he realizes that somebody duped him into cleaning up a crime scene that the police don't know about yet. Now he's got to figure out what to do. Does he tell them, does he try to figure out who did it or whatever? The wife actually comes to him because he accidentally took her key and went back to the house. That's that. I'm supposed to do a film called Black Water Transit after that and after that I'm supposed to do a film called Lakeview Terrace which is about a racist cop who kind of harasses this interracial couple that moves into his neighborhood. I don't know what I'm doing after that.

Question:
Resurrecting the Champ?

Sam:
Oh, Resurrecting the Champ, that's what I did. Oh, duh. Yeah, Resurrecting The Champ was a film I did with Josh Hartnett about a homeless fighter that this reporter discovers and starts writing about his life and telling his story because he wants to be as famous as his father was who was a famous journalist. Nice little story.

Question:
When do you find time for golf?

Sam:
I have a golf clause in my contract. They have to let me play twice a week.

Question:
How long did you say the chain was?

Sam:
How long? 30-40 feet. She could go all over the house chained to it. You saw how far she could get out into the yard with it on, so it's relatively long and Christina insisted on wearing a real chain all the time so relatively heavy too.

Question:
What about the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars? Are you going to do anything? They're doing some big Star Wars convention here in L.A. Have they asked you?

Sam:
Really? No, nobody's call me. Not yet.