The film is based on reporter J.R. Moehringer's real-life experience writing about Satterfield in his 1997 article "Resurrecting the Champ."

To help promote the film, I recently got to sit down with most of the cast and director Rod Lurie to participate in roundtable interviews. So posted below is the roundtable with Sam Jackson.

If you’re a fan of Sam, you’ll love this interview as he talks for a long time on a variety of subjects. We cover this film, what’s coming up next, what he’s recently done and he even talks a bit on his one day on “Iron Man.” Seriously, it’s a great interview.

As always, you can either read the transcript below or download the audio of the interview as an MP3 here. Later today I’ll be posting a lot more interviews from the film so make sure to check back.

"Resurrecting the Champ" opens this Friday.

Question: So 1408 did really well.

Samuel L. Jackson: Yeah, it did.

Were you surprised? 

Yeah, I guess so considering the kind of movies that kids go to. The slasher, chop ‘em I like too, I have nothing against that so I was kind of surprised that a psychological kind of horror film worked that well for so long.

Were you originally going to go down to Comic Con with Jumper because I’m just curious?

No.

I was curious because Fox had this big presentation and then at the last second…

I didn’t know that.

…yeah it had to do with footage about a lot of rated R stuff.  Alias vs. Predator 2, Hit Man, Jumper.  They had a big presentation then cancelled it and I was curious if you were originally…?

No. I was never part of it, sorry.

You’re so good in this I was just wondering if you love boxing and if you’d based this on any person you might have spoken to or was this just a creation out of your own consciousness.

Just a creation.  Just a creation out of my consciousness.  Yeah, I did box when I was younger, but yeah, it had nothing to do with this.

Now here you’ve created the whole look of the character.

Sort of, yeah.  I generally have a big hand in that or I read stuff and I give it to my makeup artist and I give it to my hairdresser and everybody gets a chance to make up their own mind about what they think he looks like and then we kind of sit together and start to do stuff to it.  Al has this great program.  He can put my blank face on his computer screen and we can like pull hair from places and put it on and we can do stuff to my face.

How long did it take to put on?

3 hours.  Not a big deal, I could go to sleep.

Oh, you did?

Yeah, get in the chair, lay down and go to sleep and they’d start pulling on my face and I don’t even feel it.  I could sleep in a shit storm they tell me.

When you saw yourself the first time did you know, ok, I can be…

Yeah, when I finally saw the creation…the end of it was kind of like yeah, ok, great but the one thing that was missing was my teeth and Al was painting them like he does on that thing and I was like no, that’s still not right. So then I called my dentist Dr. Greco and asked him to make me some crooked teeth from a guy who’d never had braces and had been a fighter and was missing some…oh, sure I can do that.  So I went and got the mold made and he made the teeth and I just kind of went for it and everything. It was kind of great.

How was it working with Rod Lurie as a director?

Rod actually directed us?  I knew he was there.  I heard him say action and I heard him say cut.  Other than that he didn’t actually do very much. You know, he stayed out of our way.  I heard him talking to the film crew about what lens he wanted to use here and there and he’d go ok, action.  That’s the way I like my directors to be—out of the way. Let me do what I do and they do what they do and hopefully the can edit. It was kind of cool like that.

I’m curious—people have mentioned that you like one take.  Is that the way you are in all films?  Or is it certain projects?  I was curious more about the whole Star Wars thing and were you just able to do one take on that?

With George, yeah.  George is even better about it because amazingly when you’re doing Star Wars there’s people are sawing and people hammering, there’s stuff going on around you because they’re building the sets for the next shot or the next scene or the next day or the next week so you know you can start talking and (saw sounds and hammering sounds) and George will go ok print that--that’s great.  You know you got a little bit anyway.  They’re going to put all the stuff in it.  So it’s kind of cool like that.

When you were doing the scenes with Josh, did you between takes maybe you not speak to him or did you discuss things well, because your character doesn’t give anything away to him?  I’m just wondering what your demeanor was with him on the set?  If you rehearsed, if…?

When the director says cut I become Sam.  Sometimes I look at him and I just start laughing because you know, he’ll have messed up something and I just go (laughter) and or he’ll go was that ok and I go yeah, man that was fine, whatever you want to do or we’ll get the last couple sentences twisted because Josh likes to build into it.  I got used to it kind of ok, Josh likes to do this at least 4 times.

And you didn’t mind?

Nothing else I could do about it.  Whether I minded or not didn’t matter.  There was nothing I could do so you hit your head and you do it. You do what the other actor needs so they can do what they need to do.

You try to accommodate your colleagues.

Always. You do the best you can.

That’s different from Sinatra who was notoriously one take.

There’s lots of actors too that just don’t do off-camera. You know, if you’re on the other side of the camera and you know, they can’t see them then they just kind of go and they let the stand-in do it or somebody else do it.

I bet you don’t do it?

No, I enjoy it.  There are only so many acting opportunities in a lifetime so you’ve got to take them.

Did you think this was one of the greatest opportunities this film, this role?

Greatest opportunities?  It was another opportunity.  I think all of them are the greatest while I’m doing them because like I say there are only so many.  You only get so many jobs in your lifetime and you kind of have to jump on them and do them when you can do them and give all of them your best. 

I’m curious if your Shield movie is 2009 or 2010?

I have no idea.  I have no idea if I’m even going to do one.  I have no idea if I’m in Iron Man or not.  People keep talking about it.

It’s possible that you and maybe Hilary Swank have one day parts.

I’ve heard that.  I’ve heard that, yeah.

If you were hypothetically in the movie, which of course you weren’t, but if you were, what drew you to wanting to play—hypothetically—possibly playing a character like that?

Well, because I knew who Nick Fury was when I was a kid and it’s really amazing to me that he actually…he was this white guy who used to be in the Army with this ground called the Howling Commandos and as I grew up, he actually grew up to be me in the comic book now.  When I look at the comic book I go wow, Nick Fury looks a lot like me now.  So I figure it’s got to be interesting to play a guy who used to be white who’s now black and like me.

Did you hear about how well the footage was received at Comic Con?

No, I did not.

They didn’t show hypothetically if you were in the movie but the footage that played was the talk of the entire convention.

Awesome.

It was the A , homerun, Barry Bonds destroying it. It was amazing.

That’s good to hear.  Maybe I will let them do me in there.

Just throwing that out there.

Now, you’re co-producing The Cleaners.  Is The Cleaners similar to the character the cleaner in Pulp Fiction?

No, see everybody seems to assume that. This guy is actually a cleaner.  He cleans up death sites, accident sites.  What most people don’t know—actually I laugh in the movie every time I try to explain it-it sounds like I’m doing quotes from the movie—when somebody dies in your house or you have a car accident or you’re on the street somewhere whatever--when somebody dies in your house after the police have been there and the coroner comes and takes the body away, you’re responsible for cleaning it up no matter how messy it was.  If it was brains all over the place or blood every where, they’ve been lying there for 3 days and they leave their skin outline on the floor, it’s your responsibility to clean it up.  This guy comes to your house and he does this service for you and that’s what I do in the film.  I clean up biohazards.

There’s a scene in Pulp Fiction where there’s a little cleaning of the car or something in Pulp Fiction?

Yeah, but that’s different.  Yeah, different kind of thing. But he’s actually a cleaner so.

So you’re not Harvey Keitel?

No, no, no.  He’s actually a business man.  He cleans up.

Is this a thriller?

Yes, it is.  Well, the police do give him jobs, so one day he gets a police report saying that he’s supposed to go to this house and clean up this site where somebody was murdered. He gets there and there’s blood and brains and all this stuff all over the place and he cleans the place up. He forgets and takes the key and he goes back the next day to return the key and he meets the wife who doesn’t know her husband’s been killed.  She has no idea that there’s been a murder.  He doesn’t tell her and he’s got to figure out who sent him to the house.  He’s cleaned up a murder scene, now what?

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