NEW YORK -- Sometimes, when you get into deep interview mode, a funny response comes right out of left field. And when it's Samuel L. Jackson, "funny" should come with earplugs.

Jackson has just been holding forth about Lorenzo Council, his cop character in the new film Freedomland, someone who's screwed up in the past "but makes better choices 'cause he knows better now."

So, we ask (thinking perversely of recent dreck like his made-in-T.O. movie The Man), does Sam Jackson the actor make more mature choices now?

"Me?" he says, a wicked smile passing over his face. "C'mon... THE NEXT FILM I GOT BEING RELEASED IS SNAKES ON A PLANE! C'MON! HOW SERIOUS IS THAT?"

The fairly-screaming response is funnier in the wake of Dave Chappelle's hilarious Jackson impression, in which he practically screams the paint off walls.

And he is serious about the fact that he's starring in Snakes On A Plane. And somehow, he just can't seem to say "SNAKES ON A PLANE!" without shouting it.

The movie, which is now in post-production and awaiting release, stars Jackson as an FBI agent escorting a protective custody case on a flight. In a bid to kill the witness, a case of deadly serpents is released among the passengers.

Just the scary/fun premise has people vowing to see it. In true clueless Hollywood fashion, though, that so-cheesy-it's-perfect title is in peril. Last we heard, the boring alternative title of Pacific Air 121 was being bandied about.

"The fact is I'll do movies I think are gonna be fun," Jackson says. "I do read scripts (like Freedomland) that are serious in tone that may or may not speak to some social issue. But yeah, I'm still that guy that likes to go to the movies, that sees himself in things that are mindless and exciting. 'Cause I don't like to go home every day and ruminate on human frailties and that stuff all year long."

"I wanna do films like SNAKES ON A PLANE!, where people are gonna come in the movie theatre and hear 'AAAGGHHHHHH!!!!' And people don't wanna go, 'What'd he mean when he screamed like that?' The meaning is 'A SNAKE'S BITING ME! AAAGGHHHHHH!!!!' "

By contrast, the cop thriller Freedomland did not set out to be mindless entertainment. The movie, which opened last week, was inspired by the case of Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who reported that her car, with her kids in it, had been hijacked by a black man. It eventually came out that she had killed the children, but only after police harassment of African-Americans and an arrest of a man who "fit the profile."

Similarly, in Freedomland, an entire New Jersey low-income housing development "fits the profile" and is put under police lockdown after an ex-junkie (Julianne Moore) reports that her car was "jacked," and her son was aboard. Jackson's character is a cop from the 'hood having to break the woman's story and endure "Uncle Tom" slurs as the crackdown ensues.

Has he ever "fit the profile?" "You grow up Black in America, that happens," he says, matter-of-factly. "It hasn't happened recently. There were times in the '60s I was pulled over 'cause I had a great big Afro and I kinda looked like (Black Panther activist) Angela Davis. The suspicion was I was either inebriated or high. And I had 'Fight The War' T-shirts, so I got a lot o flak about that when I was living in L.A. at a time when the L.A. police could do whatever they wanted.

"But I never got roughed up. The worst incident was I was doing a play on Santa Monica Blvd. while I was shooting Pulp Fiction and I was dropped for a month and a half while they were filming Bruce Willis and Uma (Thurman) out.

"I had dinner with four of my friends one night after, we went to Hugo's (Restaurant on Santa Monica) and we stood on a corner talking for a half hour or so. And then out of nowhere, five sheriff's cars pulled up and they had the guns out and shone flashlights in our eyes. And we ended up face down on Santa Monica Blvd. 'cause somebody had phoned up and said there were five black guys on the street corner with guns and bats.

"The cops pulled up they could see we had no guns and bats, but they laid us on the street, took all our ID. One police officer said, 'I think I know you.' I had done Jungle Fever and a few movies, but it wasn't like I was a household name or face. And when a police officer says 'I think I seen you before,' you don't know if they been briefed before they left the station that there was a rapist running around. Black, six feet tall, weighs a hundred and so-and-so pounds.

"What goes through my mind at that moment is don't make any sudden movements, don't say anything smart, continue to say 'Sir' and be as polite as you possibly can.

"I still get jaywalking tickets, though. I got one recently and the cop actually said, 'And now I need your autograph.' I had to sign the bottom of the ticket, and that's what she meant."

So no screaming at cops, nor, as it turns out, at his kid. Though he'd be typecast as a bad-ass dad, he and his wife LaTanya Richardson have a 24-year-old daughter Zoe, who he says had it easy discipline-wise.

"I was sort of a hands-off dad," he says. "I grew up in a very strict household, and it caused me to rebel in a certain kind of way. And I gave her the opportunity to make her own choices. Kids want to feel like they're in charge of their own lives.

"There were consequences for doing the wrong thing, but you had to explain why -- not ''cause I said so,' which was the explanation in my house."


More Artists