GODS AMONG US

The absolutely, positively, unequivocal king of cool

In our regular series, we pay tribute to the towering, mega-watt stars who still roam Hollywood

WORDS PRISCILLA PAGE

ILLUSTRATION CHRISTOPHER LEE LYONS

“HOLD ON TO YOUR butts.”

Backlit by electric blue, Jurassic Park’s chief engineer Ray Arnold shuts down the system, talking around the cigarette eternally dangling from his mouth. As disaster unfolds, he’s not terrified but annoyed, as if he’s seen all this shit before. He offers to journey to the other side of the compound to reset the power like he’s just making a run down the street to pick up smokes.

We don’t see him again after that — or at least, not all of him — but Ray Arnold leaves an impression.

Though it’s a small part, Samuel L. Jackson transforms it into one that feels lived in, his charisma already at full potency. On paper, “Hold on to your butts,” may not have been the screenplay’s best line, but Jackson’s pitch-perfect, world-weary delivery makes it one of its most quoted. In an interview with The Times this year, Jackson put it simply: “I’m the guy who says shit that’s on a T-shirt.”

Ray Arnold contained within him the nucleus of Samuel L. Jackson’s cool. In Gavin Edwards’ biography Bad Motherfucker, screenwriter Matthew Aldrich explains, “I never feel like he’s going to run up against somebody that he doesn’t have the guts to confront. But it’s the fearlessness that comes from experience, as opposed to bravado, which is the opposite.” It was Pulp Fiction that officially made Jackson the coolest motherfucker on the planet, but he isn’t Jules Winnfield — he’s something better, with his own singular brand of charisma. “It was no burden to be cool,” Jackson told The New York Times in 2012. “I just present myself as I am.”

Though Jackson makes everything he does look effortless, the title ‘King Of Cool’ was hard-earned. He’s an enthralling storyteller, a consummate professional, a universally beloved persona. A showman through and through.

With Samuel L. Jackson’s distinctive, sonorous voice, he can make anything sound like poetry — his line delivery is downright lyrical. When he utters it, there is no word in the English language more beautiful than “motherfucker”. With over 20 years of experience on stage before his star-making turn in Pulp Fiction, much of Jackson’s potency derives from his background in the theatre. In his movies, he projects like he’s still on the stage, commanding the audience, inviting us to join him.

With Ruby Dee in Jungle Fever (1991)

Whenever he’s on screen, we pay attention. His magnetism draws us in, but we also know he’s going to deliver the monologue, whether it’s Pulp Fiction’s semi-fabricated Bible passage, or his Quint-in-Jaws moment just before his demise in Deep Blue Sea, or Major Marquis Warren’s fatal anecdote in The Hateful Eight. And if the lines weren’t essential before, they become essential once Jackson speaks them. He convinces us in Coach Carter that he’s the only guy who could turn a basketball team around with an inspirational speech. Black Snake Moan showed us he has the power to save our soul, and we’d implicitly trust him to save us from some motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane. Through the years, Samuel L. Jackson exponentially increases the cool quotient of everything he touches. He is a cinematic shot of adrenaline to the heart, who ups the game just by being there.