For Samuel L. Jackson, his big scene in Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight is all about the epic speech his character delivers.
The scene was in the script from the first time Jackson read it. “It was always that moment of, This is a great speech. Let me see if I can do this. It was all about putting it in the right context, understanding who I was doing it to,” he told BuzzFeed News. “Bruce is just such a great character to have to say something like that to.”
The actor then added: “But you gotta decide, is it the truth or not?” We’ll likely never know the answer to that.
Jackson praised Tarantino, who wrote the scene, though he ndid put his signature spin on it: “Tarantino] wrote it, I had an opportunity to massage it, work on it, and put the beats together.”
Marquis is the lone black man in the room and he’s worried that the elderly white man who fought to keep slavery alive wants him dead. But if Marquis kills the ex-general, he’d be in trouble with the law. So instead, he taunts Smithers with salacious story about how before he killed his son, he forced him to perform oral sex on him.
The general grows angrier at the image, and reaches for his gun, giving Marquis the ammunition that he needs to fire his weapon and killm the old man.
Jackson compared that moment to the one in Pulp Fiction in which his character, Jules Winnfield, recites a lengthy speech before he finishes off his victims. Years later, when fans approach Jackson, it’s the first thing that they mention.
“When doing the speech, most of the crew hadn’t heard it. The first time it happened, you could actually hear a pin drop on set. Everybody was like, Daammnn. Wow, and then somebody started clapping. It was kind of, Oh my god! This speech is the one.”
