{"id":14,"date":"2008-05-05T13:33:14","date_gmt":"2008-05-05T17:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=14"},"modified":"2008-05-05T13:33:14","modified_gmt":"2008-05-05T17:33:14","slug":"signature-samuel-l","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/signature-samuel-l\/","title":{"rendered":"Signature Samuel L."},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night The Missus and I watched 1408<\/em><\/a> on DVD. If you’re not familiar with the film’s plot — or that of the Stephen King story on which it’s based — and don’t want to follow that link to the corresponding IMDB page, here are the tagline and plot summary from there:<\/p>\n

Tagline:<\/strong> The Dolphin Hotel invites you to stay in any of its stunning rooms. Except one.
\nPlot:<\/strong> A man who specializes in debunking paranormal occurrences checks into the fabled room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel. Soon after settling in, he confronts genuine terror.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The man in question, one Michael Enslin, played by John Cusack, is determined to stay in the room over the objections of the hotel manager, Gerald Olin — played by Samuel L. Jackson. Olin says although he does a good job as a hotel manager, he has no training as a coroner and is tired of cleaning up the “mess” which inevitably results when people stay in 1408. So he no longer books people into that room.<\/p>\n

Enslin doesn’t get it and requests more details. What sort of spook, spirit, ghost, long-legged beastie is supposed to be responsible for all the death and destruction?<\/p>\n

“You misunderstand me,” says Olin, “I didn’t say there was a spirit or ghost.” It’s the room<\/em> itself, he insists. And then, in classic Samuel L. Jackson form, he sums up: “It’s an evil<\/em> f*cking room.”<\/p>\n

I noted the line at the time but didn’t think much more about it until watching a couple of the “special features,” which in this case were mini-documentaries (“webisodes,” for cripe’s sake) on the making of the movie. The scene is excerpted in both of these featurettes…<\/p>\n

…but in both, what Jackson says is, “It’s an evil<\/em> room.” No F-word at all.<\/p>\n

It does make one wonder if the scene was re-shot in neutered form for release in the mini-docs. That wasn’t my first thought, though. I actually prefer to think that the re-shooting took place for the scene as it appeared in the final version. I picture a handful of screenwriters sitting around in a bar, congratulating one another on the great job they did with the script. (They didn’t do a great job, but in the post-production afterglow, it’s easy to imagine, they may <\/em>have.) Suddenly one of them stops in mid-sentence and slaps himself in the forehead.<\/p>\n

“What?” they all ask him.<\/p>\n

“I just realized,” he says, “we’ve got Samuel L. Jackson in a key role… and he never once says ‘f*ck’! We can’t do<\/em> that!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night The Missus and I watched 1408 on DVD. If you’re not familiar with the film’s plot — or that of the Stephen King story on which it’s based — and don’t want to follow that link to the corresponding IMDB page, here are the tagline and plot summary from there: Tagline: The Dolphin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53],"tags":[9,54,55,56,57,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-14","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-movies-media","7":"tag-language","8":"tag-54","9":"tag-samuel-l-jackson","10":"tag-screenwriting","11":"tag-dialogue","12":"tag-the-f-word","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}