There are snakes, 500 or so, from 5-inch vipers to a 20-foot python. There is a plane, a 747 going from Honolulu to L.A. with a witness who will testify against a mobster. But don't let the title Snakes on a Plane, as bluntly descriptive and irresistibly trashy as a Cosmo come-on, overshadow who really is propelling this venomous vessel. The most valuable carry-on in the Aug. 18 thriller, a pre-release sensation thanks to Internet connoisseurs of junk-food cinema, is Shaft himself. The one and only Coach Carter. That holy terror of Pulp Fiction— Samuel L. Jackson.
What other summer star has the right cool insouciance and simmering rage to make this creepy-crawler worth its weight in reptile carnage? "The fans are going to love seeing Sam in this role," says Snakes director David R. Ellis of his human lead. He also has been a hero offscreen, deflecting any suggestion to switch the stupidly smart title to a generic disaster like Pacific Flight 121.
"The title was what got my attention," says Jackson, who plays the FBI agent protecting the witness. "I got on the set one day and heard they changed it, and I said, 'What are you doing here? It's not Gone with the Wind. It's not On the Waterfront. It's Snakes on a Plane!' They were afraid it gave too much away, and I said, "That's exactly what you should do. When audiences hear it, they say, 'We are there!'"
Jackson, in his first interview since the Snakes craze went national, has tracked activity on such sites as Snakes on a Blog — the homemade trailers, the suggested soundtrack tunes, the gently mocking T-shirts. Most intriguing, however, have been the fake movie posters.
"It's interesting how they perceive you as an actor," Jackson says. "A whole faction thinks that I'm a bad (guy). I just happen to be in those kinds of films. I like to do sensitive movies, but they ignore those."
Additional scenes were shot in March with more gore, nudity and profanity so the PG-13 rating would become an R, the better to satisfy fan expectations. Best of all, Jackson gets to say his trademark obscenity in the new line: "I'm tired of these (mother-bleeping) snakes on this (mother-bleeping) plane!"
No surprise that this tough bleeper isn't afraid of snakes. "I grew up in the country. If we saw a snake, the snake was in more trouble than we were." Nor do planes rattle him.
"I fly way too much to be afraid. I plug in my iPod and fall asleep. My wife is a white-knuckle flier. She will shake me and say, 'Oh, the plane is having turbulence.' I tell her, 'Wake me up when we crash.' "
.........
Observed at another site:
"AK-47: when you have to kill every mother-bleeping snake on the plane, accept no substitutes!"
and a possible snippet of dialogue:
"Reach in that overhead compartment and hand me my carry-on."
"I don't know which one is yours..."
"It's the one that says 'BAD MOTHER-BLEEPER' on it!"
......
And an interesting footnote, again from USA Today at www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-29-blogsphere_x.htm :
Lieberman, 'Snakes' and the seductive mythology of the blogosphere
Posted 8/29/2006 8:18 PM ET
By Bruce Kluger
If ever America needed a wake-up call about the mythology of blogging, we got it this month.
On Aug. 8, Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont defeated U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary, a triumph widely credited to the rah-rah racket produced by pro-Lamont armies stationed along the Internet.
Indeed, the bloggers had scored big. They had helped vault a local politician to national prominence and cemented the Iraq war as Issue No. 1 in the congressional elections. Not a bad day.
But their victory was short-lived. Even before the primary, Lieberman announced that, should he lose, he'd still run in November as an independent. This electoral chutzpah effectively rope-a-doped the bloggers and recharged the senator's fabled Joe-mentum. Lieberman's still the man to beat in the general election.
If this wasn't enough to drain the effervescence from the blogger bubbly, America's noisy Web wags were dealt an even more sobering blow 10 days later when Snakes on a Plane opened nationwide to a decidedly flat $15.3 million box office.
Before its premiere, Snakes had been the latest blogger darling, as swarms of online film geeks prematurely crowned it the summer's big sleeper. This hyperventilating fan base even convinced Snakes' distributor, New Line Cinema, to up the movie's rating to R, to ensure a gorier, more venomous snake fest.
But all that clapping and yapping couldn't put enough fannies in the seats. Ticket sales for Snakes' debut barely topped those of Talladega Nights, which was already in its third week.
Although Connecticut and Hollywood are a continent apart, the two events speak volumes about the capriciousness of the blog culture.
Lieberman's boomerang reminds us that voters represent a meager percentage of the total populace — and that bloggers are an even tinier subset of that group. Consequently, what appears to be a coast-to-coast juggernaut on a 17-inch monitor is, in the real world, simply an elaborate PC-to-PC chain letter — enthusiastic, but not necessarily the national mindset.
"There isn't much point in detailing the chest thumping of the various blognut extremists," wrote Time's Joe Klein in his analysis of the Lamont victory. "Their reach is minuscule."
For those who think Klein is underestimating the power of the blog, I have four words: Howard Dean for president.
But it is the underwhelming response to Snakes that reveals the real peril in relying on bloggers to take the nation's pulse.
"There were a lot of inflated expectations on this picture, with the Internet buzz," New Line's David Tuckerman told The New York Times after Snakes' lukewarm bow."But it basically performed like a normal horror movie."
Tuckerman hits the problem squarely on its blogging noggin. Ever since the first smarty-pants posted his first unsolicited opinion on the Internet, Americans have become captivated by blog-o-mania — for good reason. For once, we own and operate our own public medium. Power to the people. Vox populi. Yadda-yadda.
And yet, as the scrambling suits at Lamont headquarters and New Line Cinema now know, it's easy to be seduced by one's own hype, especially when that hype is preceded by a "www." Now it's time to play catch-up ball. Lamont's handlers will have to face a candidate who will surely try to have it both ways on the campaign trail; New Line will have to sell a boatload of popcorn. That's the way the blog bounces.
As an occasional blogger myself, I'm still wary of the phenomenon. On one hand, it can be liberating to log on and spout off, unencumbered by editorial oversight.
On the other hand, as August 2006 clearly demonstrates, bloggers can just as easily get it wrong. That's worth remembering.
The whole thing reminds me of child-rearing. As the parent of any toddler can tell you, the younger the child, the louder the screams for attention — and quite often, the degree of the crisis is in reverse proportion to the decibels of the bellows.
To that end, it's important to remember that the blogosphere is still in its infancy, and like any kid, it needs to be watched very carefully.
