Personally I could have come up with two better flicks to screen in honor of an in-person appearance by Samuel L. Jackson. Pulp Fiction, anyone? Jackie Brown? Heck, even Red Violin would've been nice. But I guess I can understand why they picked Resurrecting the Champ and Black Snake Moan. They're two of Sam's most recent films to date. And I'm not saying they're all bad or anything. Resurrecting the Champ's okay, but a lot of the dialogue leaves you feeling like, "Oh come on!" You know, in writing workshops they always tell you that the dialogue should almost never be on the nose. People should instead say one thing while meaning something else, because that's what humans do much of the time in real life. Who in this room is always speaking every syllable on their mind? Raise your hand. See? No one. In storytelling, that's how you create a little thing we like to call subtext. But in Resurrecting the Champ, everyone's always saying shit that people would never say, always right on the nose, and as a result the story chokes on its own sap. Here's an example. At one point the protagonist's little elementary school-aged kiddie says something like, "Are you a liar, Dad?" And the protagonist is like, "No, son. I trusted someone too much, and he let me down." I'm paraphrasing, but you get the point. It's like, Come on! Who talks like that?! "I'm not a bum. I'm just homeless." Oh really, Hipparchus? Thanks a million for that brain-impaling insight.
Overall, though, Resurrecting the Champ is a very intriguing story. It's based on a true story, and if I were a producer, I may have snapped up the rights to it myself. Here's the background. Back in May of 1997, a journalist named J.R. Moehringer wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times Magazine about this homeless guy who claimed to be a boxer named Bob "Bombardier" Satterfield. Of course it was a total fib, as the Bomber died in the late seventies. But J.R. was fascinated and wrote a story about this guy. Besides selling the film rights to it, he was nominated for a Pulitzer. The movie basically uses the article's premise as a launch pad and then fictionalizes it a bit for the sake of drama. Samuel L. Jackson plays this bum--sorry, homeless person--in Denver who claims to be Bob Satterfield. Josh Hartnett plays the J.R. Moehringer
character, only in the movie his name is Erik Kernan. And unlike in real life, when the homeless guy tells him he's Bob Satterfield, Erik believes him and writes the article accordingly. Then, of course, the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan. It's discovered that Bob Satterfield couldn't possibly be alive. His son steps forward and says his dad's been dead for years, etc. Meanwhile, Erik Kernan wrestles with the legacy of his father, a very famous sports radio reporter who's been dead a while and whose old radio broadcasts Erik listens to on cassette tapes once in a while. You see, Erik's jonesing to be a big-time sports reporter too. He makes it to a certain extent with a Showtime gig, but he only lands that gig because of this huge mistake he made by so willfully believing the bum was the Bomber.
So like I said, it's an intriguing story mainly because it's based on fact. Of course in reality J.R. Moehringer never made the gargantuan mistake his fictional alter ego Erik Kernan makes, but they've got to create conflict somewhere. The film does draw from fact in other ways. A New York native, J.R. Moehringer's dad really was a radio personality. Poor J.R. never got to know him. He only got to listen to him on old tapes. His surrogate fathers were a group of guys at the neighborhood bar. In 2005 Moehringer wrote a memoir about that bar and those guys entitled The Tender Bar. Also like the film, Moehringer does now live in Denver. And he did end up winning the Pulitzer, although not for the Bob Satterfield piece. It was for an article he wrote in 2000 about this isolated river town in Alabama called Gee's Bend. It's a town entirely populated by the descendants of slaves. The article in particular discussed a proposed ferry to and from Gee's Bend and the Alabama mainland that would change the town forever.
Resurrecting the Champ was directed by Rod Lurie. He sort of stormed the scene back in the fall of 2000 with The Contender. You know, that one flick that featured the awesome Joan Allen as Jeff Bridge's nominee for Vice President who then has to go through the ringer courtesy of--who else?--Gary Oldman. Rod then continued that whole thing with women in power with the Geena Davis show Commander in Chief. I didn't watch it when it aired, so I guess I can't complain too much if you never watched it. But there's always Netflix. I finally did watch the first season from start to finish last year and still can't understand why ABC didn't give it at least one more season to flourish.
As for Black Snake Moan, uh, let's just start by saying it's very different. And perhaps that's another reason they showed it back to back with Resurrecting the Champ. Besides being recent, both films demonstrate Sam's range as an ac-tor. Black Snake Moan was directed by a thirtysomething newbee named Craig Brewer, who sort of burst onto the movie map in the summer of '05 with Hustle & Flow. Like Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan is set in Tennessee. Sam Jackson plays this guy named Lazarus, a sort of down in the dumps former blues guitarist whose wife leaves him early in the film. He's a farmer, a man of the earth if you will. He's got a local pub he goes to every night, which is almost always empty. They also feature live blues there when there's anyone there to listen. It's a real dump, but right now in Lazarus's life it's the only place that's comforting to him. Well, the Bible comforts him too. Lazarus is one of those guys with a very solid moral center. He knows the Bible backward and forward and uses it to justify just about everything he does, even if in reality those things might be morally questionable to the audience. For example, in one early scene he nearly kills his kid brother by busting open a beer bottle and using the jagged edge to scare the crap out of him, all the while quoting Biblical passages about Cain and Abel. When his wife announces in front of a diner full of people that she's leaving him, once again Lazarus puts the fear of God in her, literally, by invoking religious scripture.
Parallel with the Lazarus plotline is the story of a young gal named Rae, played by Christina Ricci. Her boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) is enlisting in the Army, which isn't so good for Ronnie seeing as how he's wracked with some sort of anxiety disorder. The thought of being a soldier makes him puke. Literally. Nonetheless he enlists because of the various benefits like education aid that the Army provides. Rae begs him not to go, but of course he does. So now like Lazarus, Rae's kind of depressed and feeling abandoned. There's another thing about Rae, though, that's kind of weird. Well, not too weird, but not something you see on the big screen every day. She's an insatiable horndog. More than that, every once in a while she goes into a sort of state where she could hump anything that moves. No sooner does Ronnie leave than she and her pals go to an outdoor bash where she pretty much does just that: She has sex with other guys. Ronnie's pal Gill sees how drunk and messed up she is and drives her home...only to try and get some himself. She resists, and Gill beats the shit out of her and leaves her unconscious on a dirt road. This is the same dirt road where Lazarus lives.
That's pretty much the film's first act, the parallel lives of Lazarus and Rae leading up to Lazarus finding her the morning after that outdoor bash, lying unconscious and beat to shit on the road in front of his farm. In no time he sees just what kind of lifestyle she's used to leading and decides he'll draw from his trusty Biblical code to make her shape up. No sooner does her
face start to heal from Gill's pounding than she wakes up one morning on Lazarus's couch, where she's been resting a couple days now, to find that Lazarus has chained her to his radiator. No, really. Dude took this huge chain, tied one end of it to his radiator, and wrapped the other end of it around Rae's midsection. It's plenty long enough to let her get around the house, even go outside, but she's stuck on his property until Lazarus can cure her of her wicked ways. That's pretty much exactly what he says, cure her of her wicked ways.
I know what you're thinking, right? It's sounding like a pretty grotesque film. And it is, at least at first, but it becomes less so as the story goes on. You see, as it turns out, Lazarus and Rae are a good influence on each other. There's no romance at all. Instead it's more like a father-daughter vibe. And by the end of the film each of them has gotten over a lot of their personal demons courtesy of their friendship. So it's got an upbeat ending 'n all, but it's kind of rough getting there. And kind of weird at times. Justin Timberlake's okay, but I liked him much better
in Alpha Dog, that ficionalization of the Jesse James Hollywood case. Who really shines in this film amongst the supporting cast is S. Epatha Merkerson. If you know her at all, it's most likely as that tough-as-nails cop on Law & Order. Here, though, she's Miss Angie, a lonelyheart pharmacist who's got an insatiable crush on Lazarus. She'll do anything for him, including giving him prescription cough medicine under the counter so that he can treat Rae's nagging bronchitis. I found myself really rooting for Lazarus to take notice of her at long last, to see how she feels about him, 'cause Lord knows she's far too bashful to make the first move. As their characters befriended each other in the film, Sam Jackson and Christina Ricci became friends in real life. Right after Black Snake Moan they co-starred together in that Iraq War movie Home of the Brave. During the Q&A he mentioned that he'd just seen her a few days earlier.
The way the Q&A with Sam worked was, they showed Resurrecting the Champ first, then Sam came up front for the Q&A for about a half-hour or so, and then they showed Black Snake Moan. The first thing that struck me about Sam was how young he looked. He was wearing a black leather coat and jeans and this black hat, kind of like a beret but kind of different, and glasses. His whole bearing and way of talking was very youthful, which he very much isn't. Dude's 59, which I had to keep reminding myself of while watching him talk and laugh with the audience. That of course means when his movie career finally started taking off in the early nineties, with Jungle Fever and what have you, he was already in his early forties. So take heart, struggling actors! Sometimes it just takes a while.
The moderator kicked things off by asking Sam about his Resurrecting the Champ character, the phony Bob Satterfield. When you see the film, the first thing that strikes you is how high-pitched Sam's voice is. Sam said he based that voice on his grandfather's voice, particularly the way his grandfather sounded toward the end of his life as he was languishing with Alzheimer's. He said his grandfather was also a terrific storyteller, as is the phony Bob Satterfield. Just full of stories that keep you entranced. Another nice thing about playing Champ was that it gave his staff something to do every day. Apparently Sam has his own personal make-up artist and hairdresser or something. Most of the time their work is not very demanding, but as you'll see with the film, they obviously had their work cut out for them every day.
As for why he chose to play Lazarus, the main draw was that Black Snake Moan took place in Tennessee. That's where Sam grew up, Chattanooga to be exact. In fact, he based the Lazarus character on his grandfather's brothers. Sam explained that his great uncles all lived by a strict Biblical code and had a solid moral center. As with Lazarus in the film, they could justify just about everything they did, good or bad, by citing the Bible. They were also lifelong farmers, people of the earth, as is Lazarus in the film.
In general, Sam's methodology for picking projects is similar to Chris Cooper's. Like Chris, he gets tons of scripts landing on his desk every day, and unless he feels a personal connection to the material as he did with Black Snake Moan, he just goes with his gut instinct. I can sort of see where he's coming from. Whether or not a script makes a good film depends a lot on the director and the cast. You can have a very well written script fall flat if it's not in very good hands, or a mediocre script make tons of money if it has the right star and/or a really good director. It's got to be almost like a crap shoot when actors like Sam or Chris pick their next project.
Speaking of directors, Sam never did talk about Craig Brewer, but he said that Rod Lurie only liked to rehearse a little bit. Josh Hartnett apparently doesn't like rehearsing at all. That didn't necessarily bother Sam. Each director is very different in that sense. He said that Quentin
Tarantino loves to rehearse. He puts his actors through the motions for weeks and weeks before the first roll of film is loaded. That helps Quentin because he does so much on-location shooting, and if a location doesn't pan out, it'll be very easy for everyone to set up shop elsewhere and nail the scenes that they've spent so much time getting down pat. As much as Sam likes rehearsing, though, he's not big on going over lines the day of the shoot. If he's there to shoot a scene, he just wants to go shoot the scene. He's prepared, and if you're not, tough titty.
He's also not shy about piping up when he feels a scene isn't working. When reading a script, Sam says he always tries to imagine it from the point of view of the audience. What he's really sensitive to is when the character he plays is saying he's going to do something fifteen minutes before he does it. As Sam said it, "If my character is telegraphing what they're going to do a few scenes later, that's stupid." In general, if the scene is the kind of scene that would make him walk out as an audience member, he lets the director know. The one time where he actually felt like a member of the audience not just reading the script but during the entire making of the movie was Die Hard: With a Vengeance back in '95. Every day on the set, Sam said he felt like his character was basically there to represent the audience going along on a thrill ride with Detective John McLane.
When someone asked him about his favorite directors to work with, Sam laughed and said something like, "Uh oh, this is where I get in trouble." Instead of naming names, he just said that the best directors are those who show up very well prepared, not just prepared to shoot the film but also prepared to be flexible with their actors. Acting requires creativity as well, and the best directors are those who understand that and are accordingly open to actors who may interpret a scene differently than what the director had in mind. The best directors also recognize the importance of story and how constructing a good story should take precedence over nailing that gorgeous shot.
Of course if you're a director, it might sound like Sam could be someone you'd bump heads with now and again. But wouldn't you rather have an actor who truly cares about not only his own work but also stands up for the interests of us moviegoers who cough up $11 or whatever for a movie ticket ($8 for the matinee)? I would. And besides, he wasn't very difficult with the audience on this night. Quite the opposite, he was generally very affable and friendly and laughed easily. At one point, right? This one guy from the Santa Monica College film club stood up and asked Sam point blank if he'd consider giving a talk for them. The moderator immediately cut in and told the guy that such a question was akin to asking Sam for his autograph or picture, which we'd all been told before the screening was a big no-no. But Sam just went with it. He told the brave soul that they'd talk and maybe work something out.
Another very appreciative fan stood up and didn't so much ask a question as just thank Sam for speaking out for young black actors. This guy was young and black himself, in his twenties I'd guess. He was referring to an incident in 2003 when Sam sort of got into a tiff with Mekhi Phifer about the growing prevalence of rappers who were making the transition into acting and were thereby depriving struggling black actors of opportunities. During that 2003 tirade, Sam had
gone on to say that as a classically trained actor, he didn't want to lend credibility to rapper-turned-actors by appearing in movies with them. So this young black guy from the audience just wanted to thank Sam for taking that stand. 'Course, I would have loved it if this same guy had asked Sam why he'd gone on to be in so many movies with rapper-turned-actors. Examples include Deep Blue Sea (LL Cool J), S.W.A.T. (LL Cool J again), xXx: State of the Union (Ice Cube), Home of the Brave (50 Cent), and none other than Black Snake Moan (David Banner).
Perhaps the most recurring theme throughout the night was Sam's theater background, his love of theater. He couldn't say enough about the great times he'd had in his pre-movie star days as a stage actor in New York. It struck him how many actors he works with in the movies nowadays (including rappers, I suppose) who have never in their life done a play. When another young aspiring actor stood up and asked Sam for the best piece of advice he could give to young aspiring actors, Sam said point blank: "Move to New York." The acting community in New York is just that, a community. You don't always feel like you're competing with everyone else, which he said is the vibe he gets in L.A. Not only is the New York stage a great place to cut your teeth as an actor, but it's a place that offers supportive environments for actors. Sam talked about how he and his acting buddies at the time would hang out together, have dinner together, ride the subway together. You weren't competing with them, you were all pals. His movie work, he said, only happened as a by-product of his stage work. Originally he didn't have his sights set on a movie career at all.
That said, he did go on to say that if you wanted to branch out from a stage to a movie career, moving back to L.A. was inevitable. And he of course loves working on movies. A film set, he said, offers a very safe, insular environment where you can use stories and characters to deal with emotions that could otherwise create very messy situations in real life. In that way, movies help equip you for if and when you really do have to deal with such emotions.
character, only in the movie his name is Erik Kernan. And unlike in real life, when the homeless guy tells him he's Bob Satterfield, Erik believes him and writes the article accordingly. Then, of course, the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan. It's discovered that Bob Satterfield couldn't possibly be alive. His son steps forward and says his dad's been dead for years, etc. Meanwhile, Erik Kernan wrestles with the legacy of his father, a very famous sports radio reporter who's been dead a while and whose old radio broadcasts Erik listens to on cassette tapes once in a while. You see, Erik's jonesing to be a big-time sports reporter too. He makes it to a certain extent with a Showtime gig, but he only lands that gig because of this huge mistake he made by so willfully believing the bum was the Bomber.So like I said, it's an intriguing story mainly because it's based on fact. Of course in reality J.R. Moehringer never made the gargantuan mistake his fictional alter ego Erik Kernan makes, but they've got to create conflict somewhere. The film does draw from fact in other ways. A New York native, J.R. Moehringer's dad really was a radio personality. Poor J.R. never got to know him. He only got to listen to him on old tapes. His surrogate fathers were a group of guys at the neighborhood bar. In 2005 Moehringer wrote a memoir about that bar and those guys entitled The Tender Bar. Also like the film, Moehringer does now live in Denver. And he did end up winning the Pulitzer, although not for the Bob Satterfield piece. It was for an article he wrote in 2000 about this isolated river town in Alabama called Gee's Bend. It's a town entirely populated by the descendants of slaves. The article in particular discussed a proposed ferry to and from Gee's Bend and the Alabama mainland that would change the town forever.
Resurrecting the Champ was directed by Rod Lurie. He sort of stormed the scene back in the fall of 2000 with The Contender. You know, that one flick that featured the awesome Joan Allen as Jeff Bridge's nominee for Vice President who then has to go through the ringer courtesy of--who else?--Gary Oldman. Rod then continued that whole thing with women in power with the Geena Davis show Commander in Chief. I didn't watch it when it aired, so I guess I can't complain too much if you never watched it. But there's always Netflix. I finally did watch the first season from start to finish last year and still can't understand why ABC didn't give it at least one more season to flourish.
As for Black Snake Moan, uh, let's just start by saying it's very different. And perhaps that's another reason they showed it back to back with Resurrecting the Champ. Besides being recent, both films demonstrate Sam's range as an ac-tor. Black Snake Moan was directed by a thirtysomething newbee named Craig Brewer, who sort of burst onto the movie map in the summer of '05 with Hustle & Flow. Like Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan is set in Tennessee. Sam Jackson plays this guy named Lazarus, a sort of down in the dumps former blues guitarist whose wife leaves him early in the film. He's a farmer, a man of the earth if you will. He's got a local pub he goes to every night, which is almost always empty. They also feature live blues there when there's anyone there to listen. It's a real dump, but right now in Lazarus's life it's the only place that's comforting to him. Well, the Bible comforts him too. Lazarus is one of those guys with a very solid moral center. He knows the Bible backward and forward and uses it to justify just about everything he does, even if in reality those things might be morally questionable to the audience. For example, in one early scene he nearly kills his kid brother by busting open a beer bottle and using the jagged edge to scare the crap out of him, all the while quoting Biblical passages about Cain and Abel. When his wife announces in front of a diner full of people that she's leaving him, once again Lazarus puts the fear of God in her, literally, by invoking religious scripture.
Parallel with the Lazarus plotline is the story of a young gal named Rae, played by Christina Ricci. Her boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) is enlisting in the Army, which isn't so good for Ronnie seeing as how he's wracked with some sort of anxiety disorder. The thought of being a soldier makes him puke. Literally. Nonetheless he enlists because of the various benefits like education aid that the Army provides. Rae begs him not to go, but of course he does. So now like Lazarus, Rae's kind of depressed and feeling abandoned. There's another thing about Rae, though, that's kind of weird. Well, not too weird, but not something you see on the big screen every day. She's an insatiable horndog. More than that, every once in a while she goes into a sort of state where she could hump anything that moves. No sooner does Ronnie leave than she and her pals go to an outdoor bash where she pretty much does just that: She has sex with other guys. Ronnie's pal Gill sees how drunk and messed up she is and drives her home...only to try and get some himself. She resists, and Gill beats the shit out of her and leaves her unconscious on a dirt road. This is the same dirt road where Lazarus lives.
That's pretty much the film's first act, the parallel lives of Lazarus and Rae leading up to Lazarus finding her the morning after that outdoor bash, lying unconscious and beat to shit on the road in front of his farm. In no time he sees just what kind of lifestyle she's used to leading and decides he'll draw from his trusty Biblical code to make her shape up. No sooner does her
face start to heal from Gill's pounding than she wakes up one morning on Lazarus's couch, where she's been resting a couple days now, to find that Lazarus has chained her to his radiator. No, really. Dude took this huge chain, tied one end of it to his radiator, and wrapped the other end of it around Rae's midsection. It's plenty long enough to let her get around the house, even go outside, but she's stuck on his property until Lazarus can cure her of her wicked ways. That's pretty much exactly what he says, cure her of her wicked ways.I know what you're thinking, right? It's sounding like a pretty grotesque film. And it is, at least at first, but it becomes less so as the story goes on. You see, as it turns out, Lazarus and Rae are a good influence on each other. There's no romance at all. Instead it's more like a father-daughter vibe. And by the end of the film each of them has gotten over a lot of their personal demons courtesy of their friendship. So it's got an upbeat ending 'n all, but it's kind of rough getting there. And kind of weird at times. Justin Timberlake's okay, but I liked him much better
in Alpha Dog, that ficionalization of the Jesse James Hollywood case. Who really shines in this film amongst the supporting cast is S. Epatha Merkerson. If you know her at all, it's most likely as that tough-as-nails cop on Law & Order. Here, though, she's Miss Angie, a lonelyheart pharmacist who's got an insatiable crush on Lazarus. She'll do anything for him, including giving him prescription cough medicine under the counter so that he can treat Rae's nagging bronchitis. I found myself really rooting for Lazarus to take notice of her at long last, to see how she feels about him, 'cause Lord knows she's far too bashful to make the first move. As their characters befriended each other in the film, Sam Jackson and Christina Ricci became friends in real life. Right after Black Snake Moan they co-starred together in that Iraq War movie Home of the Brave. During the Q&A he mentioned that he'd just seen her a few days earlier.The way the Q&A with Sam worked was, they showed Resurrecting the Champ first, then Sam came up front for the Q&A for about a half-hour or so, and then they showed Black Snake Moan. The first thing that struck me about Sam was how young he looked. He was wearing a black leather coat and jeans and this black hat, kind of like a beret but kind of different, and glasses. His whole bearing and way of talking was very youthful, which he very much isn't. Dude's 59, which I had to keep reminding myself of while watching him talk and laugh with the audience. That of course means when his movie career finally started taking off in the early nineties, with Jungle Fever and what have you, he was already in his early forties. So take heart, struggling actors! Sometimes it just takes a while.
The moderator kicked things off by asking Sam about his Resurrecting the Champ character, the phony Bob Satterfield. When you see the film, the first thing that strikes you is how high-pitched Sam's voice is. Sam said he based that voice on his grandfather's voice, particularly the way his grandfather sounded toward the end of his life as he was languishing with Alzheimer's. He said his grandfather was also a terrific storyteller, as is the phony Bob Satterfield. Just full of stories that keep you entranced. Another nice thing about playing Champ was that it gave his staff something to do every day. Apparently Sam has his own personal make-up artist and hairdresser or something. Most of the time their work is not very demanding, but as you'll see with the film, they obviously had their work cut out for them every day.
As for why he chose to play Lazarus, the main draw was that Black Snake Moan took place in Tennessee. That's where Sam grew up, Chattanooga to be exact. In fact, he based the Lazarus character on his grandfather's brothers. Sam explained that his great uncles all lived by a strict Biblical code and had a solid moral center. As with Lazarus in the film, they could justify just about everything they did, good or bad, by citing the Bible. They were also lifelong farmers, people of the earth, as is Lazarus in the film.
In general, Sam's methodology for picking projects is similar to Chris Cooper's. Like Chris, he gets tons of scripts landing on his desk every day, and unless he feels a personal connection to the material as he did with Black Snake Moan, he just goes with his gut instinct. I can sort of see where he's coming from. Whether or not a script makes a good film depends a lot on the director and the cast. You can have a very well written script fall flat if it's not in very good hands, or a mediocre script make tons of money if it has the right star and/or a really good director. It's got to be almost like a crap shoot when actors like Sam or Chris pick their next project.
Speaking of directors, Sam never did talk about Craig Brewer, but he said that Rod Lurie only liked to rehearse a little bit. Josh Hartnett apparently doesn't like rehearsing at all. That didn't necessarily bother Sam. Each director is very different in that sense. He said that Quentin
Tarantino loves to rehearse. He puts his actors through the motions for weeks and weeks before the first roll of film is loaded. That helps Quentin because he does so much on-location shooting, and if a location doesn't pan out, it'll be very easy for everyone to set up shop elsewhere and nail the scenes that they've spent so much time getting down pat. As much as Sam likes rehearsing, though, he's not big on going over lines the day of the shoot. If he's there to shoot a scene, he just wants to go shoot the scene. He's prepared, and if you're not, tough titty.He's also not shy about piping up when he feels a scene isn't working. When reading a script, Sam says he always tries to imagine it from the point of view of the audience. What he's really sensitive to is when the character he plays is saying he's going to do something fifteen minutes before he does it. As Sam said it, "If my character is telegraphing what they're going to do a few scenes later, that's stupid." In general, if the scene is the kind of scene that would make him walk out as an audience member, he lets the director know. The one time where he actually felt like a member of the audience not just reading the script but during the entire making of the movie was Die Hard: With a Vengeance back in '95. Every day on the set, Sam said he felt like his character was basically there to represent the audience going along on a thrill ride with Detective John McLane.
When someone asked him about his favorite directors to work with, Sam laughed and said something like, "Uh oh, this is where I get in trouble." Instead of naming names, he just said that the best directors are those who show up very well prepared, not just prepared to shoot the film but also prepared to be flexible with their actors. Acting requires creativity as well, and the best directors are those who understand that and are accordingly open to actors who may interpret a scene differently than what the director had in mind. The best directors also recognize the importance of story and how constructing a good story should take precedence over nailing that gorgeous shot.
Of course if you're a director, it might sound like Sam could be someone you'd bump heads with now and again. But wouldn't you rather have an actor who truly cares about not only his own work but also stands up for the interests of us moviegoers who cough up $11 or whatever for a movie ticket ($8 for the matinee)? I would. And besides, he wasn't very difficult with the audience on this night. Quite the opposite, he was generally very affable and friendly and laughed easily. At one point, right? This one guy from the Santa Monica College film club stood up and asked Sam point blank if he'd consider giving a talk for them. The moderator immediately cut in and told the guy that such a question was akin to asking Sam for his autograph or picture, which we'd all been told before the screening was a big no-no. But Sam just went with it. He told the brave soul that they'd talk and maybe work something out.
Another very appreciative fan stood up and didn't so much ask a question as just thank Sam for speaking out for young black actors. This guy was young and black himself, in his twenties I'd guess. He was referring to an incident in 2003 when Sam sort of got into a tiff with Mekhi Phifer about the growing prevalence of rappers who were making the transition into acting and were thereby depriving struggling black actors of opportunities. During that 2003 tirade, Sam had
gone on to say that as a classically trained actor, he didn't want to lend credibility to rapper-turned-actors by appearing in movies with them. So this young black guy from the audience just wanted to thank Sam for taking that stand. 'Course, I would have loved it if this same guy had asked Sam why he'd gone on to be in so many movies with rapper-turned-actors. Examples include Deep Blue Sea (LL Cool J), S.W.A.T. (LL Cool J again), xXx: State of the Union (Ice Cube), Home of the Brave (50 Cent), and none other than Black Snake Moan (David Banner).Perhaps the most recurring theme throughout the night was Sam's theater background, his love of theater. He couldn't say enough about the great times he'd had in his pre-movie star days as a stage actor in New York. It struck him how many actors he works with in the movies nowadays (including rappers, I suppose) who have never in their life done a play. When another young aspiring actor stood up and asked Sam for the best piece of advice he could give to young aspiring actors, Sam said point blank: "Move to New York." The acting community in New York is just that, a community. You don't always feel like you're competing with everyone else, which he said is the vibe he gets in L.A. Not only is the New York stage a great place to cut your teeth as an actor, but it's a place that offers supportive environments for actors. Sam talked about how he and his acting buddies at the time would hang out together, have dinner together, ride the subway together. You weren't competing with them, you were all pals. His movie work, he said, only happened as a by-product of his stage work. Originally he didn't have his sights set on a movie career at all.
That said, he did go on to say that if you wanted to branch out from a stage to a movie career, moving back to L.A. was inevitable. And he of course loves working on movies. A film set, he said, offers a very safe, insular environment where you can use stories and characters to deal with emotions that could otherwise create very messy situations in real life. In that way, movies help equip you for if and when you really do have to deal with such emotions.
