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Samuel L. Jackson at the premiere of "Snakes on a Plane" held at the Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on August 17, 2006. |
When a young man (Nathan Phillips) witnesses a brutal mob murder, it falls to FBI agent Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson) to escort his charge safely from Hawaii to Los Angeles to testify, in New Line Cinema’s action thriller Snakes on a Plane. In an effort to prevent the witness from giving his testimony, the crime boss facing prison smuggles hundreds of poisonous snakes onto the commercial aircraft in a crate timed to release its deadly cargo half-way across the Pacific. Flynn, along with a frightened flight crew and passengers, must then band together in a desperate attempt to survive.
Acclaimed veteran actor Samuel L. Jackson told MediaBlvd Magazine that he decided to do Snakes on a Plane because it was the kind of movie he would have gone to see when he was a kid. “The Internet rumor about me taking a job without reading the script is sort of true, just not in the way they say it,” he explains. “I read in the trades that they were doing a movie called Snakes on a Plane, so I emailed them to see what it was. They told me that it was a horror movie about poisonous snakes on a plane. I said, ‘Oh, wow, can I be in it?,’ and they said, ‘For real?’ That was the beginning of it all. New Line didn’t believe it. They called my agent, and my agent told them that they didn’t know if I’d said that. But, my manager told them, ‘Yeah, he probably said yes.’”
{quote_top}With a resume that includes memorable performances in such films as Pulp Fiction, Shaft, Unbreakable and Star Wars: Episode I, II and III, one might wonder what someone like Jackson might get out of a taking on a film like Snakes on a Plane. “All movies aren’t fun,” declares the 57-year-old Washington, D.C. native. “Some are hard work. You try to convey a set of emotions that have to do with some real life stuff. This is a popcorn movie. I don’t have to go in and worry about my motivations. There are fucking snakes all over the plane. That’s scary!”
“It’s an entertainment film,” he continues. “It’s in the category of Deep Blue Sea and The Man, and a lot of those movies that didn’t make a lot of money, but people discovered on video and liked. But, I think people are going to go and see this movie. People go to movies on Saturday to get away from the war in Iraq and taxes and election news and pedophiles online, and just go and have some fun. I like doing movies that are fun.”
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Samuel L. Jackson with one of his snake co-stars at the premiere of "Snakes on a Plane" held at the Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on
August 17, 2006. |
Once Jackson was set to do the film, rounding out the supporting cast, which includes former E.R. star Julianna Margulies and Saturday Night Live star Kenan Thompson, was an easy task for director David Ellis. “There were some people that said, ‘I would love to do it. I would love to work with Sam Jackson, but I hate snakes. There’s no way,’”the 53-year-old former stuntman tells MediaBlvd. “There were some people that we went after that weren’t interested in doing it. But, when you get Sam on a picture, everybody wants to work with him, so it was pretty easy to attract a good ensemble cast.”
Since the original concept for Snakes on a Plane came into being, the Internet has played a huge part in getting the film attention, allowing the fans to advise changes and additions that were later made, when the film went from it’s original PG-13 rating to an R. “We realized the buzz was building really early on,” says Ellis. “When people started talking about it on the Internet, I started to follow it.”
“I knew about the interest in the film from maybe the first week of shooting,” adds Jackson. “I was aware of the online posters and the blogs. I talked to my managers and agents about it, and everybody started tracking it.”
{quote_middle}With the Internet buzzing, the filmmakers had to be careful not to run the risk of over-saturating fans. “We kept a steady flow going, and we did that by not having a trailer and giving the entire movie away,” says Ellis. “We did little teasers so that we could keep giving the audience fresh stuff that they hadn’t seen before. It was up to us to just keep working hard until the release of the film, to keep the buzz going. The expectations were split between the fans that really wanted to see the movie, and the people who think it’s going to be the best worst movie they’ve ever seen. People know they’re not going to see an Academy Award winning picture that’s going to sweep the Oscars. They’re going to check it out to see if we deliver a thrilling, exciting movie about snakes on a plane, with a hero like Sam Jackson, that takes itself seriously. There’s a lot of people that die on the plane, and there are a lot of people that are in a really screwed up situation, but they bond together and fight for a common goal, which is survival. And, at the same time, you’ve got some fun humor in it.”
{quote_bottom}Although Jackson is the star of Snakes on a Plane, the film could not have been made without his slithery co-stars. “We had 500 real snakes, and we had a lot of CG snakes,” says Ellis. “You can’t really train snakes. When you work with a dog, they do specific things. When you have tons of snakes on the ground, and all over the place, and all over people, we would use the real snakes. But, when we had to kill a snake or chop its head off, or whatever, we had to use CG snakes.”
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Director David Ellis at the premiere of "Snakes on a Plane" held at the Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on August 17, 2006. |
With all of the warnings to actors about not working with children or dogs, where do snakes fit in? Well, if you’re an actor the caliber of Jackson, you don’t have to worry. “I never really had to do anything with them,” he reveals. “We had all the rubber snakes and CG snakes. The second unit had the real snakes. Plus, real snakes are kind of lazy. You bring them on set and they don’t want to be bothered with the light. They’re always trying to crawl somewhere where there’s no light, like inside a seat cushion. There’s really no such thing as a snake trainer. You cannot say, ‘Action!’ to a snake and have them do stuff. You can’t make them sit up and roll over. You can’t make them do anything, really.”
Ellis admits that working with the snakes didn’t really help improve his opinion of them. “I can honestly say I’m not crazy about them, but I could handle a lot of them during the filming, so I’m not afraid of them. My son has one, so we have one in the house. We live in the hills in Malibu where, every now and then, you’ll find one coming through the front door. But, I’d rather have my dog.”
Depending on the success of the film, Ellis has already given thought to possibilities for a sequel. “Initially, I wanted to do the spoof at the same time we did the movie, with the same script, the same characters, and all that,” he says. “It would have been really great to just tweak it a little bit because there were so many opportunities in the film for really funny stuff. I also think Snakes on a Submarine would be kind of cool, if the submarine was trapped so they couldn’t go up. You can’t jump out the door because you’ll flood the submarine, or if you go into one of those compartments, you’ll blow your ear drums out, so you’re stuck. It would have to be a scenario very similar to that, where there’s no escape, for it to work.”
