Samuel L. Jackson has created, as he put it, ”the most reprehensible negro in cinema history,” with his portrayal of Stephen, the slave who runs Calvin Candie’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) Candyland plantation in Django Unchained. But, the actor told Movieline that he’s even more despicable in scenes that were cut from the final print of Quentin Tarantino’s spaghetti southern.
Jackson’s character treats his fellow slaves with great cruelty as runs his master’s plantation with an iron fist and a calculating intellect. “I am the power behind the throne …the Spook Cheney of Candyland,” Jackson said of his role at a press conference for the movie on Sunday morning that included Tarantino, Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Christoph Waltz, DiCaprio, Walt Goggins and Jonah Hill, despite that last actor’s miniscule cameo as a Klansman.
Jackson’s sinister performance is one of the artistic high points of the movie and will have cineastes dissecting the complexity of his character for a long time to come.
And if Tarantino decides to release a director’s cut of Django Unchained, there will be much more to discuss.
In an interview with Jackson that will run in its entirety later this week, the actor told me, “There are scenes we shot that aren’t in the movie in which I do some things that are way more reprehensible than the things you actually see on screen.”
Without getting too spoilery here, Jackson explained that a pivotal scene in which Django is captured originally ran much longer and involved Stephen torturing Foxx’s character.
“I burn his nipples off with a hot poker. I do all kinds of shit to him in that scene that would have just made people go Ahhhhh!” said Jackson, squirming in his seat for effect.
He added that the hot…
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The adaptation process is always a tricky one, but Oliver Stone had to make some especially tough choices in editing his big-screen version of Don Winslow’s Savages – and as a result, scenes with Uma Thurman, one of his cast’s biggest names, were left on the cutting room floor.
Paring down the book to tell the tale of two Southern California weed growers (Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson) going commando to get their kidnapped girlfriend (Blake Lively) back from the Mexican cartel, Stone (who adapted Winslow’s novel with Shane Salerno and the author) had to leave certain material out; at a rambling two-plus hour run time, it’s already crowded with languid scenes and a deep line-up of characters.
Thurman joined the cast last year and shot scenes playing the Laguna Beach-dwelling mother of Lively’s rich hippie girl O (short for Ophelia). The character, a frequently absent multiple divorcee, is mentioned in the final cut but ultimately was snipped out in the name of ruthless editing. (There goes that Pulp Fiction Travolta reunion.)
“Oh we cut a lot; the book is one hundred and twenty scenes. I think we only in a movie have 30 scenes to play,” Stone told journalists in Los Angeles of the sections of the novel whittled down and excised in the adaptation process. “We had to make decisions in script, we made decisions in the editing, we had to consolidate so much and there’s so many things different in the movie than the book, you have to read the book to understand that.”
“We have some good deleted scenes that you’ll see one day that are fun, but they had to go,” he continued. Also apparently left on the cutting room floor…
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Good news for anyone who couldn’t get enough of Kenneth Lonergan’s flawed, fearless, possibly cursed epic Margaret: The forthcoming DVD will feature a 186-minute cut — 36 minutes longer than the version all but buried last year by Fox Searchlight before a cadre of critical supporters rallied on its behalf. The not-so-good news, if high-definition transfers of talky moral dramas are of particular importance to you: The 150-minute version will reportedly be the only one available on Blu-ray when it goes on sale July 10. But hey. We take what we can get in this world. [Amazon]
The Giant Lawn Peen of Sweden!
A serious news journalist in Sweden was doing a story about a house near the mansion belonging to businessman Per-Olof Söderberg when he came across this picture of something straight out of the catalog for The John Travolta Landscape Artistes. The journalist said the words I long to say on a daily basis: “Yup, that’s a big ole’ dick before me.“
The Scandinavian site TheLocal.se (via Joe.ie) researched the grass peen, which is etched into the lawn of Söderberg’s property right next to a Star of David, and their experts say it was not doctored and is the real thing. Everyone thinks pranksters cut a cut dick complete with a peen slit into Söderberg’s lawn, because he says he didn’t do it himself.
Well, I’m etching a giant “UH UH” covered with sarcasm seeds into this story, because it’s obvious that Söderberg is lying. It’s also obvious that Söderberg is a Scientologist. I mean, a daddy dick with two baby dicks next to it is the official symbol all Scientologists etch into their lawns so that when Xenu comes back to earth he knows where to find his people.
We now visit that famously vague, gossipy realm of Internet discourse known as the IMDB message boards, where a translation of a French-language interview with Tree of LIfe DP Emmanuel Lubezki has surfaced to announce that director Terrence Malick hasn’t finished tinkering with the film. To wit, who’s up for a six-hour cut?
I know what you’re thinking: “But didn’t I already watch a six-hour cut?” Har har, whatever. Whether or not it sees the light of day, apparently it’s really a thing — according to an English translation of a Cahiers du Cinema article featuring a Mexican cinematographer talking about a famously slow-working American who’s already incubating no fewer than two other previously announced projects. Ahem.
Translated, the exchange went like this:
Does Malick think about editing when he’s filming?
We speak about it almost every time. But most of the ideas about the editing we share on the set don’t make the final cut. We maybe have been shot 600.000 metres (around 370 [hours]) of film. The first cut was 8 hours long. Terry is working on/preparing a 6 hours long version of the movie. What I’ve seen (of this) is absolutely incredible, it’s wonderful. The longer version will have to/will likely, for the most part, relate to the children part. There were outstanding things, we’ve shot many, many things about Jack’s childhood: his friends, his evolution, his changes, his awareness of the loss of his childhood. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say all of this!
I…
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Heads-up, NYC: Writer-director and comedy legend Elaine May will appear in person next week to discuss the never-before-seen director’s cut of Ishtar, her infamous 1987 bomb starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. Tickets are going fast, as well they should be.
Not to be outdone by Daniel Radcliffe, May will be the next to take the stage at the 92nd Street Y on Tuesday, May 17, for a candid chat about one of the most notorious big-budget bungles in Hollywood history — but one whose brutal critical reception a quarter-century ago has since softened with reappraisal by the likes of Jeffrey Wells and Richard Brody. Nevertheless, Ishtar — featuring Beatty and Hoffman as a pair of hacky lounge singers embroiled in Cold War intrigue in North Africa — has never been available on DVD or Blu-ray. (This despite Sony’s initial plans to release it earlier this year.)
Moreover, according to the event’s organizers, May’s director’s cut has never been screened publicly. And it’s not as though May, the comic icon who got her start cracking wise with Mike Nichols in the ’50s, makes many public appearances in the first place. So this has “real event” written all over it, and it could be the first domino to fall in the chain that will finally find Ishtar more readily available for fans and lookie-loos alike.
More details here, and of course, expect full coverage of the event here at Movieline.
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