When Samuel L. Jackson speaks, people listen. Whether it's on the big screen, a TV interview, or at a press conference, Jackson commands your attention. One of the busiest actors in Hollywood over the past two decades, Samuel L. Jackson now takes on the role of an L.A.P.D. cop who's pissed off at the fact a young interracial couple (Kerry Washington and Patrick Wilson) moves into the house next door to his in Lakeview Terrace. Amid racial tensions, Jackson's Abel Turner begins to harass the newlyweds in an effort to preserve his neighborhood. While at the press conference for Lakeview Terrace, we kicked back to listen to Jackson as he shared his thoughts on the film's alternate ending, reverse racism in America, and the death of his friend and funny man Bernie Mac.

Samuel L. Jackson on whether cops really get preferential treatment when they’re on the job:

"But we all know they do right? I mean we all know that when cops get called to a cop’s house and there’s a disturbance. They kind of take him outside and talk to him and ask the wife, ‘Are you sure you really want to press charges, because we’d like to let this go. Let it go.’ We had an interesting scenario - At one point we were talking about... What if when those cops came up there and this kid is standing there with a gun pointed at a cop, that he won’t put down. We know the L.A.P.D.. Come on, they shoot through kids to kill bad guys. They’ve done it, we know they did it. So this guy is standing there with a gun pointed at a cop and he’s saying, ‘I’m not putting it down, he has a gun.’ They’re like, ‘Put the gun down.’ They don’t ask him five times to put the gun down, they shoot him.

"But what if he puts the gun down and all of that goes away? And when we come back two weeks later, this guy’s wife maybe has left him or she’s still pissed off and these two guys are watering their lawns and they’re staring at each other, because he’s not going to move because he’s that stubborn, and Abel is still there too. Pretty much that’s the way it would’ve happened or they would’ve killed him. They wouldn’t have killed Abel because he pulled his gun, they would’ve killed this kid or these two guys would still be there, because the cops would go, ‘Hey, you got a cop living next door, leave him alone. You stay away from him, he’ll stay away from you.’ But more than likely these two guys would’ve been waiting on the next incident"

Jackson on how much talk there was about an alternate ending:

"You know, there are producers who are brave enough to do stuff like that because that’s the way life is. And there are producers who give you this bullshit answer about, ‘Well, the audience needs some satisfaction that something happened to the bad guy.’ Well, shit, I’m not the bad guy, necessarily. I mean there are a lot of people sitting there watching that movie that go, ‘I get where he’s coming from.’ I mean this kid is throwing cigarettes over on his thing and these people did talk down to him when he went to their party. They are making love in a pool, that they know they got kids next door. Maybe the kids shouldn’t be up, but they should put something up so people don’t see that or whatever.

"And there’s justification for feeling the way Abel feels, except for them being married, because they’re of different races. But that’s a personal problem he’s got that we didn’t explore probably enough in that particular way. There’s one statement about it and him feeling this way about his wife being with his boss when she dies. But there are all kinds of implications there, but who knows if that’s true or not? I’m not so sure he’s the bad guy, so when that came up there was animosity among a few of us for a couple of days because of it. I said, ‘Well, let’s shoot both endings and try them.’ But hey, it’s not my money." [laughs]

On whether there should’ve been more focus on the reverse racism in the movie:

"That shot that I understand is not in the film. There was a scene between us - me and the wife after the party when I sent the DVD to her of him at the party - There’s a scene of me going over and thinking she’s trying to seduce me and something else happens that’s not in the film that kind of works in another kind of way that says something different about who he is and what’s going on between the two of them. Or just a dynamic between the black people in the movie, that’s not there, that may be on the DVD and maybe not.

"I guess the movie works in the way it’s working now. I haven’t necessarily seen it in a long time so I’m not real sure. But yeah, I still think that there should be some other thing because I always wanted to say, ‘What was my black wife doing with her white boss in the valley when she should’ve been wherever... depends, with her panties in her pocketbook?’ Which would’ve said a lot more than what all of that was, which means that he has justification for feeling like something was wrong. But that also leads you to go, ‘Well, if your wife was cheating on you, what was wrong with your relationship?’ Were you this dogmatic guy with her? You know, you don’t even understand when the sister comes over and takes the kids. There’s something wrong with the dynamic between him and his family, whatever is going on, because the kids seem okay. The daughter is just being a daughter, you know, teenage girls are that way. The little boy seems to be okay."

Samuel L. Jackson on whether race should be an issue:

"Well, yeah, it shouldn’t be. But come on, race is an issue all of the time. I mean people don’t like to admit it, but IT IS. If there’s a person of color involved and that whole thing is happening, then, yeah, race is involved. Even in the Olympics race is involved. In the Olympics... if you watch what’s going on, say for instance in the gymnastics competition when Nastasia Liukin got the same score as the Chinese girl and all of a sudden it was like, ‘Who do you think is going to win this? Alright, China, they’re gonna give it to the Chinese girl.’ And they did. That’s not, 'She’s a better athlete.' That’s not, 'It’s the host country.' It’s a racist thought. They’re just going to take it from her because it’s the host country and they’re there and, you know, it’s Chinese and it’s a communist country. What are they going to do? Nothing. That’s just the thought. Or when the volleyball coach’s father-in-law was killed and they go, ‘Well, the guy that stabbed him committed suicide.’ Did he really? [laughs] I mean, come on! Okay, we’ll never know.

"But those are thoughts and we think like that. And because Barack is Barack, you can say Barack Obama all day long. But if somebody hadn’t been here, like been on another planet somewhere, and they came down here, eventually you’re going to have to say, ‘The black guy running for president.’ Just like you’d describe me to somebody, ‘You know, he’s the actor - he was in Pulp Fiction, he was in this.’ And they’d go, ‘Uh?’ ‘You know, black guy’ And they’d go, ‘Oh, yeah.’ Eventually you get to that because that’s just the way our country is built."

Jackson on working with Bernie Mac in Soul Men:

"Bernie and I have been friends for a long time. We were friends before you guys knew he was Bernie Mac. I knew Bernie because he used to come to my golf tournament in Bermuda and do comedy at night and he hadn’t become famous. And we would talk about what his dreams were and where I was headed, because I had just started on this upward climb, and we’ve been friends for a very long time. But we never had a chance to actually work together even though he asked me to do a show or whatever - I don’t know, my agent won’t let me do TV - so we stayed in touch, we played golf together, and we hung out. But finally getting to do a film together was awesome, because we play two guys that are very close to who we are, except we aren’t background singers. But we’re old guys and we’re kind of crabby and cranky sometimes and we have a relationship that’s... Those two guys have an old relationship that’s kind of full of animosity because of a woman. So it was fun to have that dynamic and be able to do that together.

"He’s awesome in the film. I saw it, I guess, a week before he passed and I was talking to Steven Greener, his manager, who said he never got a chance to see it, which is kind of tragic because it’s one of the best things I think he’s ever done. And it’s the Bernie we know and it’s the Bernie we love and it’s great. It’s funny and sad. These two guys who are trying to recapture this thing from their youth on their way to the Apollo to perform and it’s great. There are some good musical numbers, it’s fun. And Isaac [Hayes] came in and played Isaac, which was kind of cool. It’s interesting seeing guys you know have been vital for a very long time - I mean they’re not as vital as they used to be, because we’re getting older. Isaac had had a stroke, so he wasn’t as physically robust as he used to be and Bernie was thinner, too, because he’d been sick off and on for a while. So he wasn’t that football looking guy that I used to know, he was a little frailer. But, you know, as we get old it works for the characters. So it’s really great that we had an opportunity to do that and our lives are richer because we knew each other and did all of that."