The Quentin Tarantino movie Samuel L Jackson wanted a writing credit for
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(Credit: Alamy)
Samuel L Jackson and Quentin Tarantino go way back. In fact, the director has only made four films without him – Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill Vol 1. (he was sensible enough to bring him back for the second), Death Proof, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Like Michael Caine in Christopher Nolan movies, Jackson is something of an expectation in Tarantino movies at this point, and it’s still hard to accept that in a chock-full cast that included Leonardo DiCaprio, Kurt Russell, Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler, and Al Pacino, the director couldn’t find somewhere to put his greatest collaborator in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
There are many ways to rank the nine films that they’ve made together. You could rank them by how much screen time Jackson gets (The Hateful Eight comes out on top; Inglorious Basterds, in which he serves as narrator, comes last). You could rank them by the merits of the actual movie (highly subjective, though Pulp Fiction would likely come out on top for most people). Or, you could opt for your favourite Jackson performance (again, Pulp Fiction probably takes the top spot).
Whichever way you slice it, the very act of ranking these collaborations will reinforce just how pivotal Jackson has been in Tarantino’s work. He is the consummate character actor, providing outright, unsettling villainy in Django Unchained, pure, unadulterated charisma in Pulp Fiction, and layer upon layer of complexity in Jackie Brown and The Hateful Eight.
It’s impossible to imagine Tarantino’s filmography without him, and it turns out that we should be giving him even more credit than we already are. During a career retrospective for GQ, Jackson revealed that he had a hand in writing a key part of the Hateful Eight script.
Jackson delivers one of the most nuanced performances of his career as the canny, battle-scarred Civil War veteran Major Marquis Warren. Most of the movie takes place within the confines of a haberdashery in Wyoming in the middle of a blizzard, but even with a stellar ensemble including Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tim Roth, Jackson emerges as the de facto protagonist.
One of the key aspects of his character is that he has a signed letter from President Abraham Lincoln. It’s a concise missive full of admiration for Warren and his contributions to the Union. It even contains a personal reference to the First Lady, ‘Ol Mary Todd.’ The letter is later revealed to be a forgery that Warren made to buy more time with white people.
During rehearsals for the film, Jackson was growing increasingly aware that he didn’t actually know what was supposed to be in the letter because Tarantino had not written it yet. He approached the director and asked, in exactly the tone you’d hope he would, “So when are you gonna write the fuckin’ letter?”Tarantino told him to do it, so Jackson went away and composed the letter himself. When he brought it back to the director, Tarantino pronounced that it was perfect. “Do I get a writing credit?” Jackson asked. “No,” was the immediate and only reply.
Anyone who has worked in Hollywood knows that people get writing credit for even the most tangential, tenuous contribution. You could jet in at the eleventh hour, add a comma, and show up on the IMDb page. Why Jackson didn’t get the same privileges for providing what is – let’s be real – a key part of the plot is beyond comprehension, but then again, a Tarantino film with a co-writing credit would be bound to raise eyebrows. It’s just not how he rolls.
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