“The wig was Quentin’s idea, because he likes these blaxploitation movies. So what is up? Just an odd balancing act that’s right up Jackson’s versatile alley.
“I had to remind these people,” continues Jackson, “to tell Spike that he was the first person to put that wig on me, in ‘School Daze.’ ” Of course, in Lee’s golden oldie, Jackson was supposed to be ridiculous, not just look it. and then, to top it off, stuck America’s coolest black actor in the attention-flagging equivalent of a fright wig: a full, incongruous set of Jeri-curls. Spike’s speaking, of course, of how Tarantino wrote Jackson a highly theatrical part that demands he be the most intensely violent and frightening figure in the film and the one who must convey an unlikely sense of redemption at the end, a balancing act that dare not be seen as ridiculous. “It was kind of funny,” says Jackson, “because somebody told me Spike (Lee) had seen ‘Pulp’ and said, ‘Sam was great in the movie-but what’s up with that hair?’ ” The great thing about film is they can bring the camera right into your face and people can see all that emotional stuff happening, whereas on stage you do it larger than life so you can hit that person in the back row who couldn’t get that really good seat.”Īh, the actorly dignity of it all. It’s a great flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants feeling. You don’t have to depend on another actor being able to carry his emotional weight with yours. Watching ‘Jaws,’ and seeing that shark story that Robert Shaw does, I always wanted to do that,” he remembers. Jackson is as grateful for this writerly roughage as an actor who took the all-too-typical path from serious leads on the New York stage to bit-part bad guys in Hollywood blockbusters ought to be. Says Tarantino: “If you think about what Sammy does in the last scene, he’s doing this almost Richard III storm sequence kind of thing-except he’s in a coffee shop, bent over, sitting in a booth.” (Albeit wielding a gun, of course.) “He’s dominating the entire room while never getting up from that booth.
Even though-this being a Tarantino picture-the speeches are delivered while Jackson is revving up to blast holes through someone, there’s the rush of good theater as well as good cinema: These are honest-to-Godot monologues.
#Jules pulp fiction series#
As the hit man Jules-given to unexpected bouts of introspection between mob rub-outs and chats with partner John Travolta about the finer points of fast food-Jackson gets to deliver a withering series of speeches that momentarily halt the movie’s ensemble feel, fiery diatribes that invoke the wrath of the biblical prophet Ezekiel.
#Jules pulp fiction movie#
“Oratorical” hardly begins to describe what Tarantino wrote for Jackson in “Pulp Fiction,” giving him the showiest part in the most buzzed-about movie of the year. “They’re both very literary and expository in getting ideas out there and eliciting a feeling and moving an audience in a certain way oratorically rather than visually.” One shoots, the other doesn’t, but the trigger-happy Tarantino “tends to write quite theatrically too,” Jackson enthuses. Jackson, who has as good a right to render judgment as anyone, having worked with each of them more than once. But since we’re asking, “actually, they compare quite favorably,” says Samuel L. Playwright August Wilson and filmmaker Quentin Tarantino haven’t heretofore gotten lumped together in the same breath too often.
0 kommentar(er)
