Cinema has long been to thank for many a viral moment on social media, but one of the earliest examples was a now-famous quote uttered by screen legend Samuel L. Jackson in the 2006 action thriller, “Snakes on a Plane.” I’m speaking, of course, about when his character, exasperated FBI Agent Neville Flynn, said, “I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane.” In a career retrospective with GQ, Jackson shared how this iconic moment almost didn’t happen.
“They were trying to make a PG-13 movie, and you can only have one ‘fuck’ or some shit like that in [a PG-13 movie],” he said. “And I told them, ‘Look, I gotta say motherfucker in this movie. There’s motherfucking snakes all over this plane.’ They’re like, ‘Aw Sam, come on! No.’ I said, ‘OK, fine.’ We wrap, they test the movie and test the movie. All of a sudden, we gotta do a reshoot. It cost them a bunch of money to get that ‘motherfucker.’”
Recounting how he came to find out about the project and his immediate interest in it, Jackson said, “I saw it in the trades, I called Ronny [Yu, the film‘s original director] and I said, ‘So are you doing a movie called ‘Snakes on a Plane?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah.’ I was like, ‘What is it?’ He was like, ‘Well, some poisonous snakes get loose on a plane.’ I said, ‘Oh shit! Can I be in it?’ He’s like, ‘Seriously?’ I was like, ‘Yes! I don’t give a fuck. You can bite me first. I just wanna be in it.’ And he called New Line and they’re like, ‘You wanna be in the movie?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, fuck yeah.’ ‘OK, you got it.’ Two months later [Yu] gets fired.”
Despite this tumult during pre-production, Jackson went ahead with the project, now under the direction of David R. Ellis (“Cellular”), but it wouldn’t be the last time the studio tried to mess with the film. When Jackson showed up to set, he was surprised to find the title to be changed to what he remembered as “‘Terror on Flight 272’ or some shit.”
“I’m like, ‘What is this?’ ‘Well, we don’t want to give it away,’” Jackson said, recreating the conversation between him and the studio executive on the project. “I’m like, ‘It’s the fuckin’ point! What’s wrong with you people? There’s snakes on a plane. If it’s not ‘Snakes on a Plane,’ I’m not shooting an inch of this fuckin’ movie, I’ll go home right now.’ And it was like, next day we had new seats with ‘Snakes on a Plane’ [written on them].”
