I love coming in for quick pops. You come in. You score. You leave. You're on the golf course. It's great. You don't carry any story.

What I remember from [the first meeting with Samuel L. Jackson] was that he was a friendly, animated kind of guy. His screen image is a hard boiled intimidating kind of character. That's what I remembered thinking, 'Boy, this guy seems like a normal guy.'

It was actually a lot more helpful to have Calvin Hart, a cop, as my template. He was also my technical advisor on Shaft. This time, I kinda got to go to Jersey City with him, and hang around, and watch him interact with other cops, people in the projects, and see what it means to be him. People call him 'Big Daddy' and he's this larger-than-life hero to a lot of people.

There are tons of stories out there. I read a lot of scripts on a weekly basis. I'm looking for stories to tell and stories that I hope will be interesting to an audience.

I don't run around shooting people. Much. I only shoot two people a year. Maybe.

I understood, through rehab, things about creating characters. I understood that creating whole people means knowing where we come from, how we can make a mistake and how we overcome things to make ourselves stronger.

I run into a lot of kids who are either on R&R, or on their way to Iraq. They all know who I am and are fans, but they're kids! I am yet to meet one that's over 23. Yet they're full-time warriors.