Foul-mouthed poetry: Samuel L Jackson’s greatest use of the word “motherfucker”
John Wayne had “pilgrim”, Owen Wilson has “wow”, Keanu Reeves has “whoa”, and Samuel L Jackson has “motherfucker”; there are just some soundbites that become so synonymous with a particular actor it becomes a key part of their personality, with the latter turning foul language into cinematic poetry.
It’s not often that people would stroll up to their favourite celebrity on the street and ask to be verbally accosted, but Jackson has no doubt spent decades being confronted by fans desperate for him to call them a motherfucker. He didn’t invent the word, and neither did he popularise it, but it’s hard to say there’s anybody who’s ever wrapped their laughing gear around it better.
He’s said it hundreds of times, but each motherfucker feels different from the last. It’s like the big screen equivalent of Taylor Swift putting out so many special editions, reissues, and bonus addendums to her discography; folks have heard it plenty of times before, but there’s something irresistible about having the same thing repackaged as a shinier, newer, and this case swearier version of itself.
Jackson has starred in plenty of movies that restrict him from dropping his favoured verbal bomb, but since PG-13 quite literally has one single “fuck” to give, it’s been a masterclass in restraint from filmmakers and the actor himself not to shoehorn it in just to give the people what they wanted.
Of course, it wouldn’t always work, but it’s not hard to imagine it being an upgrade in some cases. On one hand, “Hold on to your motherfucking butts” would definitely fit neatly into Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, whereas it would be jarring to hear Mace Windu screaming, “He has control of the Senate and the courts; this motherfucker is too dangerous to be left alive!” in George Lucas’ Star Wars prequel Revenge of the Sith.
Jackson has said it hundreds of times in dozens of different films, and everyone was so desperate to hear it that an online campaign instigated genuine change when his desire to get these motherfucking snakes off this motherfucking plane was added into Snakes on a Plane by popular demand. It was incredibly gratuitous, but the B-tier creature feature wouldn’t have felt the same without it.
Only one “motherfucker” gets to be anointed as the motherfuckiest motherfucker of them all, though, and it’s fitting that it came in Jackson’s breakthrough star-making performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, which perfectly encapsulates the personality and persona of the person saying it, furthers the plot and deepens the character, all while establishing the sharp-suited Jules Winnfield as the coolest… well, motherfucker… in any room he walks into.
When Frank Whaley’s Brett is panicking for his life, stumbling and stuttering over his words hardly endears him to Jules, who grows increasingly frustrated with the lack of concrete answers to his questions; “Say ‘what’ again! Say ‘what’ again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker, say what one more goddamn time.”
What makes it the best “motherfucker” of Jackson’s career? In short, because it’s everything. In the space of that single line, Jackson reiterates that as much as Jules is a cool, collected, and charismatic customer, he’s also a terrifying force of nature who makes his living, inflicting pain and misery on the people who cross the person who pays him.
He’s undeniably one of the coolest cats Tarantino – or any filmmaker, for that matter – has created, but Jules also lives up to his billing as somebody who can proclaim themselves a bad motherfucker on their wallet and have it be something of an understatement. It’s an actor at the top of their game, working from a transformative screenplay, immersing and injecting themselves fully into the role, and running the gamut from laugh-out-loud hilarious to blackly comedic, arse-clenchingly scary and ferociously indignant all at once.
It’s a masterpiece of motherfuckery, one Jackson has never come close to replicating despite plenty of worthy spiritual successors to his foul-mouthed arsenal in the years since.
