Samuel L Jackson Interview, Lakeview Terrace

MoviesOnline had the pleasure of sitting down with Samuel L. Jackson recently to talk about his new movie, "Lakeview Terrace," the latest explosive film from award-winning director Neil LaBute. Old guard and new school clash in this button-pushing thriller that also stars Patrick Wilson ("Little Children"), Kerry Washington ("Ray," "The Last King of Scotland") and Jay Hernandez ("Grindhouse").

Moving into a dream home on a quiet Southern California cul-de-sac becomes a nightmarish ordeal for a young couple, Chris and Lisa Mattson (Wilson and Washington), when they become the target of their next-door neighbor, Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson). A stern, single father, this tightly wound LAPD officer has appointed himself the watchdog of the neighborhood. His nightly foot patrols and overly watchful eyes bring comfort to some, but he becomes increasingly harassing to the newlyweds. These persistent intrusions into their lives ultimately turn tragic when the couple decides to fight back.

It was the role of Jules Winnfield, a philosophizing hit man in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 contemporary classic "Pulp Fiction" that catapulted Samuel L. Jackson’s career with Academy Award, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations and an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for Best Supporting Actor. That role, by the actor nicknamed "The King of Cool," would make the list of Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.

Today, Jackson has 113 feature films, television episodes, series and mini-series and made for television movies to his credit and is one of the most highly respected and prolific actors working in Hollywood. He is one of the few actors whose career has eclipsed from playing supporting character roles as bad guys and drugs addicts, to action heroes in such films as "The Long Kiss Goodnight" and "Die Hard: With A Vengeance," to leading man roles in "Black Snake Moan," "Coach Carter," "The Negotiator," "Changing Lanes," "S.W.A.T.," and "Shaft."

Samuel L Jackson is a fabulous guy and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what the veteran actor had to tell us about his latest film, "Lakeview Terrace," as well as his upcoming projects, "The Spirit," "Afro Samurai: Resurrection" and "Iron Man 2":

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: I’m not sure what you mean. What you talking about Willis?

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Does he? Really? I think Abel has a definite point of view that he’s not afraid to express.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Nah, that’s just the way it happens. Abel says what’s on his mind. He has a real opinion about how he wants the world to be and what he thinks should be going on around him in his neighborhood. He has a definite idea about how he wants to raise his kids, what he wants them to be influenced by, and he’s not afraid to express that opinion and he is not afraid to do things to make the world his way.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Is he a villain? I don’t know if he’s a villain. I guarantee you there’s a couple people sitting there watching the movie that go "Okay. I get that. I’m with you. I’m with him."

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: We worked on it a bit. I guess in the early versions of the script he was just kind of an out and out bully, kind of crazed guy, and as Neil and I talked about it, I wanted audiences to actually have a chance to make a choice between do you want to be on this guy’s side or do you want to be on that guy’s side. Is it okay if this guy smokes and bumps cigarettes in his yard? Is it okay if he has this light on his house because there are bad people that live behind the house and they just happened to move in and his light comes on when there’s movement? Is it okay for his friends to look down on him because he’s a cop and for him to feel that way? Is it okay for them to make love in their pool when they know there are kids next door who may or may not see them? So there are all these questions about who he is and what he does? Is it okay for him to use informants but to tell that informant "Those are little girls and I don’t want to see you with those little girls anymore. Those are underage girls." So he has a moral compass. It just kind of goes another way.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Yeah. Those are things that we kind of refined so that Abel did have a raison d’etre of some sort that made sense to people watching it.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Yeah, I’m familiar with his work. I know his plays more than I knew his movies.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Misogynist to you? Okay guy to me. Guy I might like to hang out with. Misogynist to you. One of my boys, you know?

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: I’m never concerned about stuff like that. I just kind of look at a character and if I like him, I start figuring out ways to make his point of view mine or figure out a backstory that allows me to get there, be in that place and be comfortable in it. So I didn’t care that much about what Neil’s reputation was for writing that kind of stuff. [laughs] Because he’s a very bright guy and he’s open to suggestions so we worked on dialogue. We worked on the character development.

My biggest concern with directors on movies is that when they get to work they’re as prepared as I am, because I have a plan of attack from day to day and hopefully they have a shot list. I know what the shot list is and how much time we’re gonna spend doing this, that and the other. Or if something’s wrong, they can express it so we can get past it and move on to the next thing. He’s very efficient.

We were in a tight kind of zone interestingly enough because we were shooting in Walnut (California) which I’d never heard of until we started shooting. As you noticed, most of this movie is at night so I would get into the car at 3:30 and I’d be in rush hour going from Beverly Hills to Walnut. I’d be in a car for an hour and a half to two hours trying to get to work. Then when we finished, when the lights started coming up, we’d be in rush hour coming back into town so I was spending like 4 hours a day in a car just going back and forth to work.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: I’m not driving. I’m just in the car sleeping if I can get my driver to shut up when I’m in the car.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Oh, it totally helps. We would have times of discussing various scenarios or maybe "Can we change this to be this?" or "Could we fix that to be that?" It could be done kind of on the spot. Or "I’d rather say this than say that." Look at these people and look at me and look at what we’re talking about and how this is working. Sometimes I could surprise him, make him laugh.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: No, I don’t know. It’s probably not a big enough movie for Will. He likes big movies.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: [joking] Oh, that’s that dude’s name that was her husband. Patrick? Nite Owl. Yeah, him. It’s so funny. We all went from that movie to being super heroes of different sorts. I went from there to Spirit and he went from there to Watchmen. It’s kind of cool.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: [joking] No, I’m not going to talk about that.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Well you kind of have to do one rehearsal so the cameras know what you’re going to do. We had done some rehearsal prior to even starting shooting so we could work on the dialogue and what we wanted to do and how some of this stuff was going to be blocked. But yeah, you do one camera rehearsal and pretty much you’ve done it all. Fortunately, for me, he’s a very, very studied and prepared actor. That’s what he does. It’s kind of freeing to have somebody that you trust on the other side once you realize they have the capacity to do the things that are necessary to allow you to not think about his lines or your lines or where you’re going to stand or where you’re going to be, that you can just free yourself and be in the scene. And Patrick always gave me that freedom and I hope I gave that to him.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: I don’t know if he’s a more sympathetic character. We discussed an ending that for me is more realistic, just because if you’ve got a guy who’s a cop that lives in the neighborhood and a whole bunch of other cops pull up and there’s a crazed guy in the neighborhood with a gun pointed at the cop, the cops pretty much kill the guy with the gun. They tell him to put the gun down maybe twice, but not like we do in this. "Put the gun down! Put the gun down! Put the gun down!" "He has a gun!" "Yeah, but I’m a cop. Listen to me, I’m a cop."

Realistically, we know LAPD shoots through babies to get bad guys. Well c’mon, it’s not like it didn’t happen. You remember when that happened? Yeah, that happened. So, for me, a more honest ending… the producers seemed to think that the audience needed some kind of satisfaction with the bad guy getting killed. Well I’m going "Who the fuck is the bad guy? Not me. I’m just Abel. Maybe this kid is the bad guy." But in a realistic setting they might get the gun from this guy and they might charge him with assault and all this other stuff might happen but two weeks later you might come back to that neighborhood and Abel’s out watering his lawn and this kid’s standing there watering his lawn and they’re just staring at each other. His wife may or may not be there because she thinks he’s crazy and they’re both crazy.

But the honest thing is cops take care of cops. They go, "Hey look, put the gun down. I know you lost it a little bit and maybe he did going in there, but you guys need to settle this in another kind of way, so put the gun down." And they’re still there. He’s stubborn enough not to move and Abel’s not going anywhere so you got these two guys who, you know, neighbors that hate each other.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Ah c’mon! [laughter]

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: He told you about that? I always think that when you shoot stuff…we’re actors and we spend a lot of time getting ready to do it and you go to the movie and you go "What?! Where’s my scene?" That was a great scene between us. We had a great time doing it. Yeah, I always think stuff should be in but now with the advent of DVDs, it’s like extra bonus scenes that weren’t in the movie. Sometimes I’ll start being really an ass with the directors when they keep shooting stuff and go "Are we shooting DVD scenes or what? Are we shooting added features now?" Click on the director’s name and see the scene he fucked up. But, yeah, I honestly think that was a great scene. It’ll be fun for people to watch when that happens because it’s kind of sexy and hot and kind of cool. She’s got a nice little robe on and it falls open.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: What’s the point? Even the PG13 kids sneak into the good movies. They don’t want to see a PG13 movie. I wouldn’t.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Yup! [laughs] This is a more adult movie you know. I’m not really shooting and running and jumping and doing stuff until right at the end of the movie. It’s kind of interesting because I had back surgery 3 weeks before we started shooting. The doctor kept telling me when I could actually do the big fight scene. So it was kind of cool when we finally figured it out. It’s kind of like "Can I do the fight scene yet?" "Not yet. No rolling. No bending. No falling." By the time we finally got to it, I was glad to know I was well enough to do it so it was cool.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: It happens. [laughs]

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Well I’ve played cops…jeez, I don’t know how many cops I’ve played. If you do enough movies, you’re going to play cops a lot. You either play cops or you play bad guys because a lot of stories are about bad guys versus good guys. I’ve been trained by the LAPD. I’ve been trained by SWAT team. I’ve been trained by the Secret Service, the FBI, CIA, Navy Seals, the Marines, Army, Navy, so I got a lot of gun training and a lot of law enforcement training. It’s been kind of cool being able to do all that stuff and fire live weapons and see if you’re able to use them and watch police procedure and talk to cops about what they really do and what they really don’t do. You know, it’s kind of fun.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Take care of each other. [laughs] Protect and serve [whispers] each other.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: [joking] We’ll talk about that in November. Actually, no, it’s cool. Frank was very egoless in terms of what we were doing on The Spirit because [it’s his] first film. I’ve done like 113 movies so occasionally I’d say, "Hey, Frank, do you mind if I do it." "Yeah, go ahead, try it, man." He was okay with that and the cinematographer was going, "Yeah, that’s a good idea." "Do you mind if we do this, this way, rather than that way?" So he was very open to things that we wanted to do. And having a playwright be a director, I’ve only had that one other time and that was on Changing Lanes because Roger Michell directs plays also.

It’s really great to have people that are more concerned with character and story than guys who are sitting there looking at a monitor and worrying about the composition of a shot. That’s what the majority of young directors are doing. They’re looking and they’ll say "How can we dazzle the people with our camera work?" To me, the story is important. So the things that I bring to a film are my character development, a little backstory, honesty, some reality, and somebody that’s willing to pay more attention to what we’re doing in terms of getting information to the audience and having them pay attention to us as the actors aside from ‘watch this really slick camera movement.’ It’s very important to us as performers.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Actually that happens to a lot of guys.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: I’m sure he is until you guys finish with him. [laughs] We’ll see what happens. Frank’s made the film that he wanted to make and hopefully it’ll be that and then the film comes out and people talk about him, he’ll either be thick skinned or bruised by it. It even happens to seasoned directors. It happened to Quentin [Tarantino]. [laughs] See, you guys made Quentin go away….

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: It’s a cartoon. The movie is a cartoon to me. I don’t know what everybody else is going to think it is, but to me, it’s a cartoon. We do Wiley Coyote kind of stuff. I hit him in the head with toilets. We got wrenches that are as big as this room. Clang! I hit him with the wrench and he gets up. We’re both pretty much indestructible. I created him so I know he’s indestructible and then I use the stuff on myself and made myself indestructible. We’re the only two people that are like that so we do outrageous things to each other. Even when I get shot, I kind of shake bullets out of my head and just spit them out. It’s a cartoon.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: [laughs] That’s my girl. Scarlett’s my henchman. We’re like "Arghhh!" We had a great time together. It’s so kind of outrageous and crazy and over the top. I get to wear all these outrageous costumes. C’mon! I even dress up like a Nazi in this movie. It’s kind of cool. I got lightening bolt eyebrows. It’s like fun!

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: No, not yet.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: Well at least you know I’m in it. [laughs] No, I haven’t seen anything. I just hope they call me when they do it. That’s all.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: They do? Stranger things have happened.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: He’s gone already. I talked to him the day he was leaving for Bavaria to start shooting. We had a small discussion about it. "Well you know there’s only one black guy in the movie and he’s French." "Okay, well then let me give you the names of those black French actors that I know." So I gave him a list of the guys he should call and he was going to do that and he said "I’ll see you when I get back." There’s no more black guys in the movie.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: What’s going on with it? Second season is pretty much done. I just did the finishing voice over stuff on it last week. Video game is pretty much done. I just finished doing the voice work on that. Hopefully everything will be launching in January. I actually just got the first draft of the live action Afro Samurai script so hopefully we’ll get that up and running.

"Lakeview Terrace" opens in theaters on September 19th