Samuel L Jackson Motivation: His Unusual Path To Stardom

I can't watch myself on screen. Well, why the fuck should we pay $12.50 to watch your ass if you're not gonna? All the getting high, the drinking, the drugs, and everything else I did, I showed up at the theater every day.

And then when you go to those soap auditions and that doesn't happen, you say to yourself, what I really need is one good national beer commercial. That's what I need.

He's a prolific actor and film producer who's appeared in over 100 movies. He achieved prominence in the early 1990s with films like Patriot Games, Jurassic Park, and Pulp Fiction. He's ranked as the The second highest box office star of all time with box office earnings of almost $5 billion. He's Samuel L. Jackson, and here's my take on his top 10 rules for success. Rule number 2 is my personal favorite, and make sure to stick around all the way to the end for some special bonus clips. And as always, if Samuel says something that really means something to you, please leave it in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well. Enjoy.

Listen, there's so much shit you don't know about what will happen to you if you become an actor or you become famous that, you know, all this shit is gravy. You know, that's what it is. But you're still doing the work. I mean, this is not— yeah, it's about the work. It's not about all the other shit. The other shit's a byproduct of it. Now, you can buy into the other shit and lose yourself in it and lose yourself in the bullshit people tell you about yourself and about, you know, the kind of shit you do, you know, everything I do is not great, you know, good, but it ain't great. I do good work in some shit movies. I know that. That's happened. I know what they are. They know what they are. But people watch them anyway because there's something about them that made me want to do it. I enjoyed myself doing it and just didn't work out well. But if you buy into all this shit or you start bullshitting yourself about what all this is, then you can get fucked up in it. I read everything people write about me because I'm that I remember a lot of people that say bad shit about me, 'cause I'm that kind of guy. I remember the people who write good shit about me, 'cause I'm that kind of guy. We're in this business because it's a look at me fucking business. And if you say you don't do that shit, you're a liar. You lie to yourself, you're lying to the people who watch you. Even those motherfuckers that go, "Oh, I can't watch myself on screen." Well, why the fuck should we pay $12.50 to watch your ass if you're not gonna?

You know?

If you can't watch it, I damn sure don't wanna watch it. I watch my movies. I want to see myself. When I was on stage, I always wanted to see the play I was in with me in it. This is the perfect venue for that. I watch my fucking movies. Some of them I watch over and over again. If I'm channel surfing and nothing else is on and I pass a movie I'm in, I'm in. I'm there watching it. 'Cause that's what it is. It's a look at me business. And I got into it because I enjoyed the fantasy of it. I love make-believe.

I love movies.

I love entertaining people.

That's what we do.

I kept going. I had a path. I knew what my path was. My path was to become what I am right now. Now, I lost sight of it in an interesting sort of way, or I went about it in a wayward path. But fortunately for me, all the getting high, the drinking, the drugs, and everything else I did, I showed up at the theater every day. I did plays ripped out of my mind. I rehearsed ripped out of my mind. But every lesson that I learned, I held on to for some reason. God, whatever, somebody let me hold on to everything that I was learning. My stage lefts and my stage rights, my upstage foot always out, turned down this way, learning how to develop a character, doing all those things, because those are the things that I love. And I did them in the midst of everything else that I was doing. When my friends were getting ready to go get some more drugs, I'd go, oh, no, I got to be at the theater. I'll catch y'all in the theater when I'm done. And I jet. Or I got to go build a set. I got to do this. So I did everything that I had to do. So I was focused on this by any means necessary. Plus I had a professor who was like, well, you know, all the great ones do their jobs and get ripped out of their minds. You look at the Peter O'Toole's and the da-da-da-da. They get drunk and they get high. They do what they do. Show up, and they do the job. So we were like, OK. And that's what we did. We drank with him, and we went to Styles of Acting class. We'd go smoke a joint and come in and do our other acting classes, or go build a set, or build some costumes, or hang some lights, and do all the things that we had to do. So I kept learning my lessons and doing them.

How often do you find when you get on set, people are like, do the Samuel— do the Sam Jackson thing. Do the Samuel L. Jackson thing that we know and love.

Not often. I don't know what that is. I mean, unless it say motherfucker like 8 times in a, you know, well-crafted place. But I mean, I don't really know what that is. Or to me, the Sam Jackson thing is I've read the script you know, I don't know how many times, and I've broken my character down the way I learned to break a character down in the theater. If there's source material, like for George Washington Williams, I'll go to the source material and deal with that. But if not, then okay, it's up to me to figure out who this guy is. I can figure out when he was born, who his parents were, what his educational background is, military, if he has that, what kind of life experiences he's had. How he feels about this, that, or the other, even down sometimes to what kind of food he eats, you know, just because there are eating scenes in the movie and I want to figure out what I want to eat when I'm, you know, in that particular scene. And then from scene to scene, what my relationship is with those characters or what I'm trying to accomplish in this scene that leads to the next scene that leads to the next scene that leads to the next scene. So what happens is the Sam Jackson thing for me according to my agents and managers, is I'm so prepared when I show up that I expect everybody else to be as prepared as I am. So when a director does not have a shot list for that day, or director's floundering and trying to figure out what he's doing, he can ask me and I can tell him, you know, because one of the funny things about movies is the director is usually the person on the film set has got the least amount of experience of everybody there.

True.

Because a director makes one movie every 4 years, every 2 years.

Yeah.

An actor makes 7 movies.

A good director's career is 15 movies.

Yeah.

You know, everybody there has done 15 movies in the last 2 years. You know, so we all know, you know, why the fuck is he shooting that? That ain't going to be in the movie. You know? It's like— You don't really need that shot, dude.

You don't need that shot. Yeah.

So there's that shit going on. Where did I digress from?

No, that was amazing.

What are you— I don't care if you digress.

I digress from somewhere.

But I show up prepared. So to me, that's the Sam Jackson thing. When you hire me, you've hired an actor who's going to show up, who's going to know his lines, who's going to hit his marks, and do his best to make the other actors around him better.

Absolutely.

I'm not gonna call shots for you, and I don't expect you to give me a line reading. And if you do, you hired the wrong motherfucker.

Well, young actors have aspirations, and you look at movies and you look at television, and especially every year the Academy Awards show comes around, and you sit there and you say, "God, I really would love to be there. What do I have to do to get to that point?" You stand in the mirror, you do your You do your great acceptance speech and all the things I would say if I was up there, who I would thank. And as you keep working, I often tell people this now, that what happened to me was I actually kept working to the point where I started to do better plays and different kinds of directors that I came into contact with and other actors and interacting with them. And the craft became a lot more important. But there were times when I stopped wanting to be a movie star, and I said, well, okay, I can, uh, I can do a TV series. Sure, I can do a sitcom. And then when you audition for a few sitcoms and you don't get that job, you say to yourself, okay, uh, I can do a soap. Yeah, yeah, I can sign a 2-year contract and do a soap for a while. And then when you go to those soap auditions and that doesn't happen, you say to yourself, what I really need is one good national beer commercial. That's what I need, a good national beer commercial. I can get those checks coming every week and I can keep my theater habit going. But when all this stuff doesn't happen and you continue to work work at your craft and you do theater and you work with the August Wilsons and the Lloyd Richards and the Douglas Turner Wards of the world and the Charles Fullers, you develop a way of working and your craft becomes just one of those great satisfying things that you go to the theater every night, you have a different audience, and people are sitting there and you can feel the sharing of energy between you and them. They're giving you something, you're giving them something, and at the end every night there's that great reward, the applause. And you're very satisfied. With that. And once you let go of all those dreams and aspirations and let your respect for what you do become the most important thing, the other things start to happen.

There was a point when I went to auditions like everybody else, no matter what the movie was, because I wanted to be in the movies and I wanted to go to work, and I had no choice. Going to work was the option. So generally, I didn't see the script anyway. They gave you 8 pages of sides with scenes in them. And you might have got the script later after you got the job. They give you the script, you know, and I used to flip through and see what page I died on, and that was it. But when you're out of the audition process and you're sitting at home and you're making choices, then you should make choices that are satisfying to you in some way, and not monetarily, right? They should be satisfying to you artistically. They should appeal to you as an actor. Or as an audience member, or as a person who wants to make people excited when they come to the movies and see you do this. You know, it shouldn't be based on, you know, all that other, you know, bullshit about, you know, this is who they think I am, so I've become this kind of actor and people appreciate me for this. That's the one thing I used to like about Jim Carrey, that everybody wanted to go watch Jim Carrey laugh, you know, and be funny. But Jim tried all this other shit, you know. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but he wasn't gonna be painted into that corner, right, that you're not gonna— I'm not just, just gonna do comedies, you know. I don't have to be the Three Stooges. I don't have to be, you know, W.C. Fields. I don't have to be Chaplin. I don't have to be, you know, a name. I don't have to be John Wayne. I can be all these other things, and I want to try and be them. And he made an effort to be that. And when I came into this business from the theater, I didn't do the same kind of play all the time. I did all kinds of plays. I did all kinds of characters. And this is a bigger venue for doing that. They got better makeup artists, they got better scripts, they put you in the environment. You don't have to convince somebody. You're in the environment. It's there. They put you in it. So why not do as many different things as you're capable of doing? And that was my, my thought. I want to do as wide a variety of genres of film as I can, just to, you know, continue to see if I can stretch myself as an actor.

But then I was in the Die Hard office one day, and there's this sign on the wall that I adhere to vehemently now that said, "Be careful of the toes you step on today, for they could be connected to the ass you'll have to kiss tomorrow." Believe me, there have been PAs and other people, like when I'm on a movie set, I think everybody is just as important as I am, or I treat them that way. So I know PAs' names, I talk to them, I speak to them every day. I speak to the gaffers, I speak to the grips, I speak to all these people. And over the years I've gotten jobs and the producer will show up and he'll be like, you don't remember me, but I was a PA on so-and-so and so, and you were so nice to me. That, you know, when I was doing this movie, I couldn't help but think, you know, that you would be the perfect— and that shit works out, you know, or they become writers or they become directors, you know, but it's a collaborative effort. I mean, we're almost the least important element of any film because if my niggas ain't putting the lights up right or the sound man's mic is jacked up, it don't mean shit about what you're doing because nobody can see you or hear you, you know, so they can fix that in the mix. Yeah, but everything else has got to work, and you, you have to know that.

I dreamed about being an actor for a very long time. Why I was fooling myself thinking I wanted to be an oceanographer, I'll never know. I always, always thought I wanted to be the Black Jacques Cousteau.

I just wanted to hang out in the water.

I always thought inner space was much more exciting than outer space, so I figured I'd go underwater and hang out because I like to dive and do stuff like that. But I've loved movies since I was a kid. I spent a lot of my time in the movies when I was a kid, and I watched a lot of movies. I still spend an inordinate amount of my time watching movies. I collect Asian films, so I watch a lot of Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean— Koreans are making really great films these days— Indonesian films. I just like Asian film. It's more visual and It stimulates me in another way. But I grew up watching movies and imagining myself on screen. So aside from the very serious things that I do, I will occasionally do a Snakes on a Plane because— because those are the kind of movies I liked when I was a kid. I always wanted to see myself in a movie with a bunch of snakes. And I'm still trying to find the right, you know, slasher movie to do because I like slasher movies. And I'm still, you know, I did things like Deep Blue Sea because I wanted to run from something that had big teeth and all that good stuff. So I'm not that serious about it, you know. I really think movies should be fun and I think they should be entertaining. If I want to teach you something, I'll do a documentary. But I do this because it feeds me. It feeds my artistic soul. Artistic sense. A lot of people think I do too many movies. I read an article in the paper yesterday about me doing too many movies. But, I mean, you know, writers get up and write every day. Painters get up and paint every day. Actors only have so many acting opportunities in a lifetime. I'm gonna take mine as they come and do as many movies as I can before I'm up outta here. So something like Avengers, it seemed like you were having a great time. Oh yeah! Not a great— not a huge acting challenge for you, I imagine. But depends, you seem to be having fun. What fun is important, this should be a fun job. It's make-believe. This is you and your friends with real costumes and better guns and shit doing the thing, you know, exciting people. It's— that's what that's about. When you're doing something like The Avengers, you got to take it seriously in, in, in terms of you believe the space you're in, you believe the world and the convention of it. Of it, that there are people who can do shit greater than normal human beings can do. Trust that, go with it, treat them like they're those kinds of people, and they have an element of danger and an element of awe that comes with all that. That's the honesty of the world. But, you know, I'm fucking Nick Fury. I got some shit with me too. So I can be, you know, boom, I can stand up to them and say what I need to say, and sometimes, like in The Avengers, I need to manipulate these people. I got to where I am because I'm Nick Fury. I can do some shit. I got some shit with me. Nobody knows how old I am or why I'm still alive or why I'm now black when I used to be white. You know? So I got some shit with me too. Mm-hmm. So you accept that and you go with it and you treat it like it's something honest and you treat it like it's something real so that when people come and see it they don't see you going— [LAUGHTER] You know? Shit, I'm in it! Hmm. I'm in it. It's some dangerous happening and you might not even know about it. Can help us fix that. So let's go get them. That's like you and your friends doing that shit when you were kids. Let's go get them. Let's go get them.

Ah!

You know? And then you shoot them, and they can't say you missed, 'cause their chest blow up, and all that kind of shit happens.

It's great.

'Cause I just happened to do a British talk show, and this guy asked me if there were any directors I'd never worked with that I wanted to work with. And I realized George was about to start Star Wars. So I said, I'd love to work with George Lucas. And somebody that worked with him who worked for him told him because they were doing pre-production in London. And I left there and I went to San Francisco and I was doing Sphere out in the Napa Valley somewhere. And I got a call and they said, George wants to meet with you if you're really serious about being in Star Wars. I was like, great. So they sent a car, I went over to the ranch and I met with him. And, you know, he was like, you know, I've seen a couple things you're in but I don't really, You know, and I'm like, well, you don't have to know. It's OK. You know, I just want to be in the movie. And they were like, well, I don't know. And I'm like, well, look, I'll be a stormtrooper. I just want to run across the screen. Nobody needs to know I'm in this movie but me. You know? I will run across the screen with a white helmet on. I would have been happy because I just wanted to be in a Star Wars movie.

You were a Jedi Knight, though.

No, I had no idea until they called— I left there, George says, "Well, you know, they got a couple things. I got some palace guard stuff. You know, maybe we'll find something." And I was like, "Okay, great." So I went off and it was like 3 months later, I was done with Sphere and I was ready to do something else. I got a call that said, "George wants you to come to London. Can you come to London now?" I'm like, "Fuck sure." Get on a plane, I go to London, I get to the studio, they take me to this dressing room. And mind you, I still haven't seen the script. I haven't seen anything.

But you already were willing to do—

I was—

here's the thing, though.

I didn't care.

You collect, like, little figurines, right?

Yeah.

So was that what you were angling for?

No.

I want to be a Star Wars figurine?

No.

I just wanted to be in Star Wars. You don't understand. When I sat there and saw that movie for the first time, I was sitting there saying to myself, how in the hell do you get in something like this? What do you have to do? And then, you know, another movie like Die Hard, my friend Reginald Vail is that cop that's outside eating donuts all the time. How did Reggie get that job? So there are certain things that you watch that you just want to do. So when I got there and I was in my dressing room, or what they said was my dressing room, they go, well, somebody will be up here to help you put on your costume in a minute, you're having a fitting. And cool, so I was I wonder whose dressing room this is, because I see some boots and I see— wow, that looks like a Jedi robe. I must be in somebody's room. Then somebody came in and gave me these 3 pages. And they go, these are your lines. And I went, Mace Windu? Who the hell is that? And it's just Mace Windu, Yoda. Mace Windu, Yoda. Mace Windu, Yoda. I know I'm not Yoda.

I must be Mace Windu.

Still didn't know who this guy was. And then they came in. And I put on some boots, and they start putting the stuff on me. I'm like, so I'm a Jedi? And they're like, well, yeah. I'm like, wow. And I'm having a conversation with Yoda.

So I guess I won't be edited out of the movie.

So I won't be just running across screen. And then the guy came in with the Halliburton, and he's like, pick your lightsaber handle.

I'm like, oh, shit.

I don't know.

So now I'm just— I can't even tell you what I really did.

I really just went like, mm. And I was like, oh my God. So that one. So that's when I knew I was a Jedi. And it was there.

Didn't you think there'd be a little ceremony where you'd be knighted into Jedi?

I didn't care what was going to happen at that point. All I knew was I was a Jedi. I had my lightsaber. They told me to go in this room. I met Frank Oz and all these people. These guys because Yoda was still a puppet then, right? So I had to rehearse with these guys for like hours and hours while they did ears and eyes and Yoda stuff, and I was very cool with all that. But I made up my mind, and I was like, okay, so I just gotta be cool and not give George any grief, be quiet, stay out of the way, and see how long I hang around. Don't let him kill me. Don't kill me. Don't kill me. And that's what I did, because in the first movie I sat in the chair and I I was, you know, everybody was having lightsaber battles. I wanted to like, mm. I was like, let it go. Let it go. Let it go.

I'm fine.

He'll get to you. And I made it through the first one. So the second one, they actually sent me a script. And I'm reading it, and I see, oh, wow. There's a huge, huge battle scene in this arena. And I'm in it. But it's like, we've called Jedis from all over the galaxy. I wanna see the fight in this arena. And I'm like, how in the hell am I gonna find myself in all this big old fight? George, you think I could have like a purple lightsaber? And he's like, no, Sam, they're either red or they're green. I'm sorry. But I'm, you know, I'm the second baddest Jedi in the universe and I've been around for a while, you know.

And purple's kind of in the middle.

Purple could be like kind of, It could be kind of dope. And he said, let me think about it. I didn't bother. I go away. We shoot the movie in Australia. Then we do reshoots in London. He says, oh, I got something to show you. And he pulls it up. And sure enough, purple lightsaber.

I'm like, oh.

But George is still in that space where it's like, I don't know if I'm going to let you keep that though, because somehow it got leaked on the net and it's causing this big shitstorm. I'm like, really? I wonder who leaked that. And eventually I got to keep it. I just really, you know, it was only because I was just vanity. I was trying to find myself in that big old fight in the middle of the arena. It totally works.

Totally works.

I know where I am in that big old fight. But you know, George is great like that. George is— George like me, I like George. And it all worked out. And he finally told me, he said, "Well, you know, you're gonna die in episode 3." I'm like, "Why?" He says, "Well, I've already done episode 4, 5, and 6, and you're not in 'em. And you're the only significant character that I can kill that will make a difference, that moves the story along." I wasn't too happy about it. I was like, "Well, can't I just, like, get my hand cut off and fall out the window and not really be dead?" He's like, "Well, that would mean you'd have to wait till episode 4." episode 7 to come back to be able to be something. But I'm OK with that. I had my moment. It was great.

The Lucas give it and the Lucas take away.

Yeah, but you know, it's the—

You had a good run.

It's like the gift that keeps on giving. They just re-released all that stuff on Blu-ray and stuff. So I got another check.

I'm good.

Excuse me. Mr. L. Jackson, I just watched Shaft for the first time.

Very cool.

Um, and you know that part where you say, "It's my duty to please that booty"?

Indeed I do, yes.

Um, well, my daughter said it to her principal, and now she's suspended from school, and it's all your fault.

Oh, whoa, whoa, I was just acting in a movie.

Fuck you, Samuel L. Jackson. Hey, Samuel L. Jackson, I'm a huge fan of loved you in Jurassic Park.

Oh, thanks very much.

Yeah, except for the fact that you smoke in it and my kid's addicted to cigarettes now, you monster.

Hey, hey, hey, a lot of people smoke in movies.

I'm not the only one, okay? And if I'm not mistaken, that's a cigarette, right?

It's your fault my kid smokes. Fuck you, Samuel L. Jackson.

Oh, hey, Samuel L. Jackson. Oh man, my son and I just saw you in Coach Carter.

Oh, great, thanks.

Yeah, I mean, it really taught him to believe in himself.

Awesome, glad I could do that for him.

But he really sucks at basketball, so he should really quit, you know? And his sense of style is completely off because you played Ordell in Jackie Brown. So fuck you, Samuel L. Jackson. Hey, would you mind signing my kid's wallet?

It's $2.

Oh hey, Samuel L. Jackson!

Please don't start telling me about how my movies have screwed up your kids, okay?

No, actually, I was gonna say you were great in Unbreakable.

Oh, hi, my man. Thank you.

Too bad my kid's a supervillain that commits heinous crimes for his own sick amusement.

My son was attacked by a shark because he saw you in Deep Blue Sea.

How's that even my fault? My son is a 22-year-old overweight nerd living in my basement because you decided to do Star Wars.

Yeah, and my son has a severe peanut allergy because of you.

My nickname's Gator and I smoke crack.

Because of Jungle Fever?

No, I never saw it. I just like I smoke crack.

What?

There he is.

Hey, hey, you stalking me?

I have a son who's in prison because you were in Shawshank Redemption.

That wasn't even me!

That was Morgan Freeman!

Well, fuck you anyway. I got a kid who's an insomniac because you never sleep in your movies.

My 3-year-old saw you in Django Unchained.

Now she can't stop saying the N-word. You let your kid watch Django? Jesus.

Okay, everybody, listen.

I know I play some bad dudes in movies.

Okay?

But if my picture's on the poster, maybe your kid shouldn't watch it!

Don't you people read the descriptions of these movies before you show 'em to your kids, huh? Um—

Look at the ratings!

The ratings.

I forgot.

That's your responsibility, not mine. [SIGH] Thank you very much.

Get some help for that crack problem, man.

Oh, yeah.

See? I can be a motherfucker. Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Appreciate your time.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I made this video because Dmitry Georgiev asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave it down in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of the top 10 rules had the biggest impact on you and why? What did you learn from this? What are you gonna apply to your business or your life? Leave it in the comments. I'm gonna join in the discussion. I also want to give a quick shout out to Marelle. I hope I pronounced that okay. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book. It really, really, really means a lot to me. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, guys.

I'll see you soon.

I didn't get your name. I got yours, uh, Vincent, right? But, but I never got you.

My name's Pitt, and your ass ain't talking your way out of this shit.

No, no, no.

I just want you to know how— I just want you to know how sorry we are that things got so fucked up with us and Mr. Wallace. —We got into this thing with the best intentions, really. I never—

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue. You were saying something about best intentions? What's the matter?

Oh, you were finished?

Oh, well, allow me to retort. What does Marcellus Wallace look like?

What? What country you from? What? What ain't no country I ever heard of. They speak English in what? What? English, motherfucker! Do you speak it? Yes. Then you know what I'm saying. Yes. Describe what Marcellus Wallace looks like. What? Say what again. Say what again? I dare you. I double dare you. Say what one more goddamn time. He's black. Go on. He's bald. Does he look like a bitch? What? Does he look like a bitch? No!

Then why you try to fuck him like a bitch, Brett?

I didn't. Yes, you did. Yes, you did, Brett. You tried to beat me. No.

And Marcellus Wallace don't like to be beat by anybody except Mrs. Wallace.

You read the Bible, Greg? Yes.

Well, there's this passage I got memorized.

Sort of fits this occasion. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Yeah!

Danny, would you relax a little bit?

I'm relaxed. I'm very fucking relaxed.

But let me give you some advice. Never say no to a hostage taker. It's in the manual. Now, are you gonna tell me no again?

No, I'm not. No! Ah! Wrong answer.

Eliminate "no" from your vocabulary, Paulie. Never use "no," "don't," "won't," or "can't." All right? It eliminates options. The only option that leaves is to shoot someone. Understand? Yes.

Yes, I do. Yes! Good. See? Yes is good.

You say "no" again, I'll kill somebody, all right? Now let's practice. Can I see a priest? Let's not.

You know what? Can we just, like, talk about this? You wanted to talk. We are talking.

Now can I see a priest? Uh, I'll see what I can do. That's good, Farley. Now you're learning. I'd like a submachine gun so I can blow everyone away. I'll look into that. Good. You're doing good, Farley. You ever cheat on your wife, Farley? No. Watch yourself. I'll kill someone. You ever cheat on your wife? Answer! I'll see what I can do. I have to— I'll think about that.

I'll look into that.

You ever dress up like a schoolgirl and get your ass spanked, Farley? Danny, look, okay, all I want to do is just talk to you.

I am talking! Now, did you or did you not ever dress up like a schoolgirl and get your ass spanked?

I have to look into that, Danny. Oh, jeez, Farley, you know, nothing against you dressing up like a little girl, but I didn't know that about you, Farley.

Danny, you know, this is really, really unproductive. Unproductive? You're right, it is.

So tell me a joke, Farley. You know any jokes? No.

No? You just cost someone their life, Farley. Game over. Shot fired. Shot fired. Shot fired. Can anyone see?

Uh, what?

Uh, you can't talk me down. You can't make me change the deadline. Now get me Sabian. You got 6 minutes, 42, 41, 40. Danny, Danny, is anybody hurt? Danny, come on the line.

Anybody hurt? We're okay. Just don't be saying no no more.

I just have one more thing, Colonel. Did you have to repeat your orders to Captain Lee?

Sorry?

You ordered Captain Lee to engage hostile targets, and he advised you that there were women and children in the line of fire.

Is that correct? Well, he couldn't see— Yes or no, Colonel.

Did he follow your first set of orders? I don't remember. Captain Lee is on record as saying he hesitated and mentioned the snipers in the buildings. Is his testimony accurate? What did you say to it?

I don't remember.

Let me get this straight. You evacuate the ambassador. You go back to the roof. Two of your Marines are KIA. A third, Sergeant Krasovich, dies. You give your captain an order, which he doesn't follow. In fact, he questions. And then you said what?

I don't remember. You don't remember what you said next? It was combat, not some training exercise.

A moment later, your men were shooting. What did you say to make that happen? I don't know. You must have said something. Captain Lee reversed himself.

What did you say? I don't know the exact words. Let me help you. Your Honor, you said, "Waste the motherfuckers," didn't you? No, no, no. You didn't say it? Well, it all happened so fast. You're under oath, Colonel.

Let me refresh your memory. Your Honor, this is Exhibit Q, a tape recording made aboard the USS Wake Island of all radio communications received that day, including your exact words. Your Honor, with your permission, I would like to play this tape.

Well, if you got it on tape, then that's what I said. They were killing my Marines, so yeah, I said it. Waste them, motherfuckers.

Are these the motherfuckers?

Objection. Overruled. Yes. These? Objection. Yes! These? Objection! Overruled. Yes!

Are these the motherfuckers that you ordered to be wasted?

Your Honor— Major. Yes!

Your Honor, the crowd in front of the embassy had no weapons, did they, Colonel? Objection.

We found no sniper's weapons either. Yes, they had weapons! You think there's a script for fighting a war without pissing somebody off? Follow the rules and nobody gets hurt? Yes, innocent people probably died. Innocent people always die. But I did not Exceed my orders.

There are rules, and Marines are sworn to uphold them.

I was not going to stand by and see another Marine die just to live by those fucking rules. Colonel!