His Own Best Fan

By Josh Tyrangiel

Of the various lies that actors tell--there are no small parts, it's a privilege just to be nominated, working with Woody is a dream come true--there's one that Samuel L. Jackson simply cannot abide. "Everybody thinks it's cool to say 'I hate watching myself onscreen,'" says Jackson. "Well, that's b_______. We're in a narcissistic business. Everybody likes watching themselves." Jackson, 57, proudly sees every one of his movies in a theater with paying customers. If he's channel surfing and spots an old performance, he puts down the remote. "Even during my theater years, I wished I could watch the plays I was in--while I was in them! I dig watching myself work."

If watching oneself is, as Jackson claims, all actors' secret pleasure, Jackson distinguishes himself from his peers in two ways: he cops to vanity, and his vanity has a track record for dovetailing with popular taste. "My agent is always looking for movies to get me the Academy Award, but I don't think like that," says Jackson, whose films have taken in more money at the box office than those of any other actor in history. "I want the movies I'm in to remind me of things I spent Saturday afternoons watching as a kid and then went home and pretended to be in." The Star Wars prequels satisfied his Errol Flynn swordplay fantasies. Shaft let him be the urban John Wayne. Snakes on a Plane, out Aug. 18, fulfills his love of B-movie suspense and his endless desire to watch himself kick ass. "When I think about it," he says, "a lot of my choices are wish fulfillment."

The story of how Jackson wished and willed Snakes aloft is already a legendary bit of movie lore. After production began, the studio, New Line, tried to change the title from the so-stupid-it's-brilliant Snakes on a Plane to the hopelessly generic Pacific Air 121 while also cutting out the geysers of scripted violence to get a PG-13 rating. Jackson summoned his "Am I the only sane man on earth?" streak of indignation to encourage like-minded moviegoers--who want to see snakes bite people in painful places while they try to join the mile-high club--to voice their displeasure on the Internet. Sure enough, Snakes arrives with an R rating, bad dudes getting their cruel comeuppance, dialogue suggested by fans and ecstatic word of mouth.

Snakes may cement Jackson's status as the multiplex's great populist--a title he has pursued for years. His early career, like those of most actors, was a series of frustrating absurdities. Jackson originated the role of Boy Willie in August Wilson's The Piano Lesson but was shunted to understudy when Charles S. Dutton became available. Jackson also spent two years as Bill Cosby's on-set stand-in for The Cosby Show. (He does a formidable Cos impression.) After Pulp Fiction made him famous in his mid-40s, Jackson settled into his current rhythm of mixing prestige projects with what might fondly be called exuberant crap. For both, his preparation is obsessive. He writes out full character biographies--"Educational background, who his parents were, what he did, where he came from, what kinds of friends he has," says Jackson--then memorizes everything and inserts notes into the script to mark the spots where he plans tiny, barometric moments of character revelation. "Doesn't matter if it's Sphere or Shakespeare," he says. "Acting is craft, and everybody's got to bring it if you don't want your movie to be a piece of s____."

On the occasions when filmmakers don't take their material as seriously as he does (the phrase "best thing in a bad movie" has a way of lingering near him), Jackson is unafraid to get vocal. "The majority of producers and directors do maybe 12 movies in their careers," Jackson says. "I've done over 100 already. I've got a pretty good idea of what audiences want, and when my character dies for no goddam reason"--as has happened more times than he can count--"or we pull punches on the action, or the thing just doesn't make logical sense ..." He stops there in frustration, but Jackson has been known to bring a little bit of Shaft-like menace to the set. David Ellis, who directed Snakes and has worked as an assistant director on four other Jackson films, says of the actor, "Unless the director is a total jerk, he's always very respectful. But he's a tireless advocate for the film he read in the script and pictured in his head. He so wants to entertain people, and folks in the movie business often forget that's what our mission is."

Of course, Jackson mostly wants to entertain himself. So he will make sure to get to a Snakes screening on opening weekend--"I'm looking for a full theater, hopefully where people will shout at the screen," he says--and he remains in the hunt for his personal filmic holy grail. Not an Oscar-winning role ("Uh, have you seen some of the people who have Academy Awards?" he asks, laughing) but a genuine old-fashioned western. "I want horses," he says. "I want to stand in the middle of the street and see if I'm faster than somebody. I want to pick people off rooftops. Doesn't that sound like a good time?"