I was just a kid with a dream and a vision. I loved entertainment. I loved movies. I used to go see all the old movies with my daddy—like Stir Crazy with Richard Pryor. On the weekend my daddy would take us one of two places. We’d either go to the high school football game and go to McDonald’s afterwards, or we’d go to the movies and then get some pizza.
We always saw the black movies. Every Eddie Murphy movie, every Richard Pryor movie, every black movie, we’d go see. I would sit in the movie theater and be fascinated and just feel so good. I used to look at the screen and say, I’m gonna do that one day—I’m gonna be up on that screen. I used to go home and sleep and dream about being in movies. So from a young age, I had a passion for entertainment and movies.
People know what’s funny. When I’m in a movie, I’m a comedian before anything else. I know people, all people, and I make sure I can relate to everybody. I thought about this throughout my career. I said, I don’t want to be a comedian that just gears toward black people or just gears toward white people. I want to be a universal comedian. I want to take my comedy and make it broad so everybody’ll laugh and I’ll never be just in a box. I thought about it when I was young. And to this day I say, when I do a movie, I want everybody to be able to enjoy it. I don’t know how I do it, but it’s part of my consciousness when I work.
I like a lot of comedians. Eddie Murphy is a genius. He can just laugh and be funny. One of my favorite movies is 48 Hrs. ’cause he was real; he didn’t do slapstick. That’s my whole thing. I never wanted to be slapstick. Eddie Murphy wasn’t slapstick; he was just straight funny. He was naturally funny, and that’s what I always wanted to be. I modeled myself a lot watching Eddie Murphy, just the way he did it. You could feel that he was real. You thought you’d go out of the movies and he’d be standin’ right there.
When you make films in Hollywood, you experience everything. I prepared myself for it and I maneuvered around it. Whatever you do, there’s gonna always be somebody who don’t like you or somebody saying you ain’t good enough, or we want to do this or we want to use you for that. My whole thing is, try not to get caught into it. If you spend too much time in it, that means they got you. My thing is to just maneuver right around and step right over whatever it is and keep going, because you’re gonna experience a little bit of everything, whatever you do, and not just in Hollywood.
You have to separate this entertainment business from your real life, because if you don’t have your life right, and if you’re not together, then it’s gonna be real difficult to be creative and to make that creativity go over into movies. I knew from the start that when you get successful, when you get famous, you sometimes get unfocused. A lot of new people come into your life, a lot of big decisions. My thing was, okay, I knew it was gonna happen, so let me prepare myself for it. Let me separate myself so I can keep my creativity, so I can keep fresh ideas, keep my vision, keep renewing myself. So I live out of town, outside the star system. If you soak yourself all over in the Hollywood thing, then you just do whatever, because you listen to everybody. Especially because I’m younger, I knew I had to do something to keep myself focused.
I gotta thank God for my parents, because I’ve always been around spiritual people. My mother’s very spiritual, and my father is very spiritual. My spirituality comes from my upbringing, and from Atlanta, Georgia. It comes from being raised in the church. Even though I was sleeping in the church half the time when I was young, it’s still there in some way. It’s a part of me, just who I am. I’ve met a lot of people in my life who come to me because I could tell them something, because I’ve been raised a certain way and can say, when times get hard, get on your knees and pray. I think before anything— before church and everything—you’ve gotta be spiritual and have a relationship with God. The higher you go, you’re gonna have more decisions and bigger decisions to make.
What motivates me is people. I think that’s why I know people, and I know what makes them tick. I know what makes them laugh, I know what makes them chuckle, and I love people. That’s my thing, my shtick. I study a person in a minute. When I go to the movies, I don’t watch the movie. I look to the side. I watch people and see what makes them laugh and what bores them. When they’re bored, I say, well, I know I ain’t gonna ever do that! And when they start laughing, I say, I can do that; I could take that to another level when I do a movie. I watch people, I listen to people, and then I just do it. People are my thing.
If I look at something and I know it ain’t cool, because of the way my mama and daddy raised me, it hurts me more than I think it hurts other people, ’cause people just want to see me do movies. They’re just like, do a movie! Do a movie! Do a movie! But I gotta think about the little kids—about all kids, ’cause I got little white kids come up to me, and Chinese kids, everybody comes up to me, and they’re my fans, and I don’t want to mislead them, no matter what. I don’t think a movie is that important compared to these kids. I think movies are good. I love them. They’re fun and they’re entertaining. But I want to do something that’s gonna motivate, and maybe even change people’s lives. My expectations are big. I want to go to the next level. I don’t just want to make movies. I want to do movies that change people’s lives— movies that affect even my life, learning and traveling around the world. I’m always excited about the next thing I’m gonna do. Lots of times I don’t know what the next thing is, and that’s the good thing about it. That’s the point of being alive: don’t know.
The movie companies have seen what works, so they keep doing it. What people gotta realize is—and I understand it, and it’s fine—movie companies want to make a lot of money. People gotta understand, the studio heads can get fired. Any day! If they make a wrong move—make two, three bad moves—they’re fired. Then they gotta go to another studio, or if that don’t happen, they might not have work. So they’re saying, okay, what works? If Chris Tucker opens big, get Chris Tucker. And they offer me anything, a movie doin’ anything. They just want to know it’s gonna open, it’s gonna make money, and they’re gonna look good on the balance sheets. And then there they go; they keep their job. They’re fighting for their job, and we’re fighting for our job.
Seriously, I definitely see myself as having a particular responsibility for black people out there. I’ve got a responsibility and I’m real hard on myself, harder than anybody. We are blessed here in America, but that brings a lot of responsibility. If you’re blessed, you have to help others. That’s why we’re put here on this earth—to help others, not just to be well off and not help others and say, that’s not my problem. It is our problem, if that’s our brothers and sisters. If we know about it, then we need to do what we can to help. Going to Africa changed my life, and it motivated me, ’cause it’s more than just doing movies—more than just going to get an award. It’s people.
When I went to South Africa, that was special, but nothing like my trip to Ethiopia and Uganda, because I saw real Africa! Especially Ethiopia, because it was spiritual ground, the home of ancient history. The Ethiopian people claim descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and Menelik was the Ethiopian son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. There were originally lots of Jewish people in Ethiopia, then Muslims and Christians. The Bible was written there, or close by, and I’m like, whoa! That’s like big, you know.
People looked up to me in Ethiopia like I never dreamed of. They thought I was Menelik comin’ back home or something. The people I met are very spiritual, and they have dignity. Everybody there is royal—royal people. Be broke on the street, still royal! When I was in Ethiopia, they treated me like royalty, so I think I got some Ethiopian in me. I think it’s my Ethiopian eyes. It was like, we just loving you all, keep doin’ what you’re doin’! And I felt that, ’cause in America we can get a little materialistic sometimes because we’re a rich country, and that happens. In Ethiopia you could see that they were a loving people, but there was a lot of poverty. Fortunately, there isn’t that level of poverty here
in America. But the Ethiopians are just nice people, and they don’t care too much about all that stuff. They care about other stuff because they have to live life, survive it. They’re not materialistic people, ’cause there ain’t too much material over there! It changed my life, seeing it.
They’ve watched my movies out there, and mostly all of them said, I love you, Chris Tucker—with passion. In America most people come up and say, you funny, man, you funny! Rarely somebody says, I love you. Everybody in Ethiopia, that’s just a natural thing—I love you. I love you, Chris Tucker. And I was like, man, these people are just nice, beautiful people, and the movie means the world to them; my coming there meant the world to them. It really affected me, ’cause they couldn’t care less about me being a star; they just appreciated the fact that I was over there.
I was invited to go to Ethiopia and Uganda by Bono, who’s a big activist on poverty and AIDS in Africa. We met in D.C. through a mutual friend. He said he was setting up a special trip with Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill to look at poverty and AIDS in Ethiopia and Uganda and help publicize these problems to kids and grown-ups in America so more can be done to help. And I said to him, I would love to go when you get it set up.
So I went with the treasury secretary and Bono and a couple of college students. We toured villages; we went to people’s homes and to hospitals where kids were being treated for AIDS and to orphanages with little babies left behind when their parents died of AIDS. We traveled in motorcades everywhere. We visited a lot of schools and we visited places where they were producing coffee, cotton, sugar, and other things they grow for export and for themselves. Paul O’Neill wanted to see what was making the economy so bad and why they weren’t capitalizing off their natural resources.
We saw a lot of bad stuff, a lot of sad stuff that I’ll never forget, a lot of deep stuff. It changed my life, because it showed me not to take nothing for granted. I’ve seen a total difference from America. I’ve seen poverty at its worst, but I also saw a beautiful country. I saw beautiful people. Traveling to Africa let me get another outlook on life, another perspective. Everything ain’t just glitz and glamour, and we take a lot for granted, like water and other basics.
I don’t know that we’re on the verge of great things happening for black people in Hollywood, though I’d like it to be so. For people who make it big, the paychecks keep getting bigger. And there’s a broader audience now for black people in Hollywood. But Hollywood is still a tight niche. You flip in through the door to get a movie, and then getting a hit movie is like trying to get into heaven. Even to this day, I see movies that I would’ve liked to get. I sort of wonder, why didn’t I hear about that? Maybe it just wasn’t right for me; they didn’t think about li’l old me. You gotta be faster and quicker and maneuver better, I guess, ’cause it’s real narrow. That’s why there’s only a few black comedians you can name, a few black actresses you can name. You can name a few white actors at the top who are really making a whole bunch of money, really doing good. It’s just tight, tight, tight, so you gotta be the best at what you do, and you gotta know exactly what you want to do.
It’s hard for everyone but it’s harder if you’re black, ’cause there aren’t that many good movies being offered. There’s a lot of creative black stories out there, but it’s hard to get to the studios. It’s hard for the studios too ’cause they have to decide, is this gonna make money? That’s a great story, but it’s kind of sad, they’ll say. But it’s a true story, and it’s uplifting and it’s powerful. Well, yeah, we don’t know, it might not make money. So it never gets done. And we never see it; the actors never see it. I put myself on the other side, on both sides. I’d like to be in a position where somebody could bring me a script and if it’s good and I can do it, I would get it done, or take it to the studios and get it done. But it’s hard.
We depend too much on the studios to bring us what we want. We’ve gotta start opening doors; we gotta open them for ourselves. But to begin with, you gotta get through a narrow door. Some of the black women here in Hollywood say that if you’re black and female, you gotta look like Halle Berry to get a good part, but black men can be dark or have medium brown skin or be light-complexioned and still get a part. They’re right! Hollywood likes certain looks and they only go with what works. But my thing is, people give Hollywood too much credit. Hollywood and the movie studios are made up of businessmen. There’s a couple of creative people up top, and you have a lot of creative studio-head people. People who want to make it here have gotta understand, Hollywood is looking for us to be creative and for us to open those doors and to break through. We have to bring more ideas to the studios, or do it independent to get it out there, because we just can’t look to the studios to produce projects for different-type people. The studios go with what works. People around the world like Halle Berry. She works. But we gotta stop depending on the studios.
It’s time for us to look forward and start inspiring ourselves to greater heights—but never forget. We need to tell the stories from back then, but don’t just tell the stories where we got lynched and we got killed. We know that happened—we know that. The movies have been done. Tell the story of Frederick Douglass. The guy came from nowhere and was one of the most brilliant minds of all time—became a great speaker and wrote his best-seller and became the most famous black man on the face of the earth. Put it on the big screen. Motivate me.
You got people like Dick Parsons, president of AOL Time Warner, the biggest media company in the world. That’s a great story. You got Bob Johnson. He started BET, and a lot of people think he’s the first black billionaire, but I heard he’s not. I heard there’s a lot of other black billionaires. They just don’t say anything #8217;cause they don’t want anybody messin’ with them, asking them for money. They don’t want to get in no trouble. Oh, man! There are lots of billionaires you’d never know about. There’s so many different stories, success stories that we should tell. And the more black entertainment there is, the more black writers, the more different stories will be told.
Sadness and grief are part of our history. We’ve seen too much tragedy and sadness. Sometimes black people don’t go to see a movie like One True Thing because it’s too sad! It’s time to move on, though not to forget. Without Martin Luther King and other heroes putting their lives on the line, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to become an actor or a comedian.
The first time I ever watched the Academy Awards was when Halle Berry and Denzel Washington both won, and the only reason I watched was because they had been nominated. They’re great actors, and there’d been a lot of political pressure about them getting the awards. I was surprised they both won, and I was happy for them. But I don’t think that Halle and Denzel getting the Academy Award means anything significant has changed in Hollywood for our people. Maybe that’s ’cause I don’t judge awards to be giving you credibility. I think your fans give you credibility. I think your peers give you credibility. And I think when people come up to you and say, you changed my life, and man, I loved that movie—it was something, that one little thing you did, it made me think about something when I walked out and I’m still thinkin’ about it—right there, that’s the award you want. It don’t matter how prestigious the award is. An Academy Award would be nice, but I’ll take that other award too. That’s the main award I want.
In the future of black America, and the future of black Hollywood, there’s gonna be bigger and better stories. The story of Gettysburg, the story of the American Revolution, the stories of men like Frederick Douglass. There’s gonna be black stories. We want to see the biblical stories of black people instead of just slavery, like that’s all our history. That ain’t all black history. History—black history—goes back thousands and thousands of years, and I think black America is gonna tell stories like those, stories that are on another level. We have a culture of our own here in America that’s bigger than just doin’ a cookout.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
In Characte
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Actor-producer Samuel L. Jackson is convinced that the broader social circles of today’s younger-generation producers and studio executives will translate into more and better parts for African Americans. “When the studio heads look at a script now, they can see their friend Juan or they can see their friend Kwong or they can see their friend Rashan,” he told me. “We’ve been successful in roles as doctors, lawyers, teachers, policemen, detectives, spies, monsters—anything that we have been able to portray on-screen in a very realistic way that made audiences say, I believe that.”
I’ve been very fortunate. All my films have been moderately to wildly successful. I’ve been lucky enough to be in films like Star Wars and Jurassic Park. So when studio heads start totaling up my box office figures, I can go, hey, man, I’m in Star Wars II. And they go, yeah, but that’s a George Lucas film. And I say, yeah, but I can guarantee you a lot of people came to that movie to see me. I have a whole new fan base now. It’s totally cool to walk the street and see little kids go, “Mace Windu!” People call me and tell me their kids want my action figure. They’re glad their kids now have somebody to emulate in another kind of way. The kids come home and put pillowcases on and become Jedi Knights and say they’re Mace Windu. It’s a good feeling to be the guy they want to emulate, because when I was a kid, I went home and wanted to be Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and Errol Flynn. All of a sudden kids want to go home and be me. It’s like, right on. Totally.
It never occurs to me now to think about whether parts are race neutral, because my managers and my agents know they can send me anything and I think I’m capable of doing it. Unless it says a character is specifically not black, then it’s fine for me to do it. I’ve chased things that were written as other ethnic groups because I guessed the people that wrote them thought in terms of those ethnic groups or the producers hadn’t made up their minds what the character was. Most times when people read things, they read them in the mind-set of the culture they’re part of. When I read parts, the character automatically becomes black, but that’s not an issue for me. It’s just a fact that if I want to be that character, then we assume the character is black and everybody’s dealing with that fact. In terms of The Red Violin, François Girard had always perceived my character as African American. The only reason I got the part was ’cause Morgan Freeman didn’t want to do it. So after Morgan, Girard came to me, and I was so honored he put me in the same sentence with Morgan that I just couldn’t refuse doing it. Not to mention the script, which is gorgeous.
America Behind the Color Line Page 32
