John Cusack and Sam Jackson Enter 1408

Creepy Stephen King stories always attract the film community for adaptation. A King short story called "1408" is no exception. It's a psychological twist on the haunted inn story and, in the film version, John Cusack plays a writer who debunks haunting myths.. until he stays in room 1408. Samuel L. Jackson plays the manager of the hotel who does everything he can to dissuade John's character from that fateful overnight stay. We met with John and Sam in Beverly Hills recently to talk about their involvement in the film, first exposure to Stephen King, what scares them, their own belief in the paranormal [Sam tells some great personal ghost stories]. The guys even tell us what they think about the Paris Hilton jail saga.

Picture handsome, dapper John in his usual all black (suit, shirt and tie) and more casual Sam in gray tee over white long-sleeved shirt and topped off with a cute, denim newsboy hat; a study in fashion opposites. These seasoned actors are alike in that they look you right in the eye when they answer your question. Believe it or not, this is rare in Hollywood. Get ready for a candid chat that is both funny and very serious.

TeenHollywood: Okay, Paris is back in Jail. Do you two have any comments on celebrity privilege or this whole mess in particular?

John: Yeah. I'll talk about it. I think all heiresses should be put in prison on general principle.

Sam: Not my daughter. No. My daughter's an accidental heiress only because of what I've done.

John: No, I'm talking about old money.

Sam: Oh, old money. All right, all right!

John: I'm Irish American so I'm anti-royalist. You know, right? I intrinsically don't trust the monarchy so any heiress I think should have to do prison time. Mandatory prison time [he has an entirely straight face so we don't know if he's kidding or not].

Sam: This story's [Paris Hilton] way bigger than it needs to be. You know? Come on. For real. I mean that's just the truth. It's just way bigger than it needs to be.

John: It's always sad in the context that it's taking up air time when habeas corpus is suspended and no one's doing anything about it. Habeas corpus, right? That's the foundation of legal structure, right? That you can face your accuser and all your rights stem from that, right? The Bush administration has taken away habeas corpus and people want to talk about Paris Hilton. That's America.

TeenHollywood: Go figure. Anyhoo, John, why did you want to make this thriller?

John: I just thought it would be cool to be on a poster with Sam Jackson [Sam grins].

TeenHollywood. Sam, you get to say that the room is "an evil f**king room"...

John: I was pissed off about that because [the movie] is PG-13 and I was getting tortured in this room for 15 weeks and you're being tortured and all you want to do is just swear. You want to go 'f**k, s**t, right? But you can't because Sam's got 'evil f**king room.' We get one f**k and they give it to Sam and I get tortured.

Sam: You get two, but they can't be sexual. Don't you get two? It used to be two. [John says 'no'] Okay.

John: You just took it because you had the cool line and I got nothing during all the torture. [Uh, now we're laughing and we've forgotten what our question was going to be.. oh well, moving on...]

TeenHollywood: For each of you, what is your scariest hotel room experience or bad hotel stay story?

Sam: I don't know if it's bad but I guess the most interesting thing that's ever happened to me checking into what's called a hotel is last year we went to a game reserve in South Africa. And when we checked in, the guy didn't ask for a credit card, he asked us to sign a release. Yeah. You're going 'that's very bad'. Walking from here to my room, bad things could happen and they didn't even have [big] cats. So it was kind of like, hmm.

John: Besides normal jetlag where you wake up in Dusseldorf and you have no idea what country you're in or what room you're in, which has happened to me before, I was also in a game reserve in South Africa and they said 'we've got to make sure you go back at night with a guard because some woman had had dinner and she had taken her high heels off and wanted to go change her shoes and tried to walk back to her cottage and she got eaten'. True story. Yeah.

Sam: They DID have cats.

John: They had cats. If you're in one of these hotels in Africa, it's like that's where the animals live. So it's pretty real. But as far as spooky hotels, I did a movie in upstate New York and there was this very, very scary big old hotel and I found out that's what Stephen King based 'The Shining' on and it was supposed to be haunted and we were staying up there. And then we'd go walking back at night after one too many cocktails it was a little frightening in there. And I can't remember the name of it but it was a scary place.

TeenHollywood: John you are on screen alone for a huge hunk of this movie. Can you talk about that experience?

John: I think Mikael [Hafstrom, the director] and I, we sort of had Stockholm Syndrome where the room was keeping us captive. It was kind of strange. We did scenes in the lobby and there were all these extras and then you'd go out to Venice Beach and there'd be surfers and things. But, we just thought 'we got to get back in the room, get back in the room where it's safe and horrible. Just me staring at the walls and I get tortured' and we started to think that made more sense than dealing with people after a while.

TeenHollywood: That's kind of creepy.

John: But it was pretty fun. You're going to go through nine circles of hell but each one of them is going to have a piece of your life and your past in it and you have to confront your demons in it. I thought the piece was very ambitious. How do you pull off that kind of dance in a room with just the D.P., the director, the actor and anything you can think of. It was kind of ambitious to try to pull it off. That kind of got you going in the morning because we couldn't rely on the [other actors].

TeenHollywood: When did both of you first encounter Stephen King or his books?

John: My parents took us to Nantucket to visit some cousins and that was about 1979 or 1978 and The Shining had come out and was already sort of a classic. It was in all the revival houses and I snuck into a theater at around six o'clock because it was an R movie. And I had to walk back to this cottage where we were staying at and when I got out it was night and it was a pretty windy road with these lamps and stuff. That was the scariest walk home I've ever taken after a movie. I saw The Shining when I was about 12 years old and that freaked me out. I snuck in alone and then I had to walk home for like 20 minutes by myself. That was a bad, bad, bad, bad walk. I thought I heard Jack Nicholson around the corner of every bush. So that was my first entre into Stephen King. Then I saw Carrie as I got older and read 'The Stand' in about one sitting over a whole night because I can't put it down. I think he's very underrated as a writer. Also his sense of character I think is very underrated. He writes terrific characters. And I think somebody told me he uses a lot of pop culture references and so he doesn't say 'the man poured the detergent into the laundry.' He says 'he poured the Tide into the laundry.' And everybody sort of dismisses him as not a kind of literary talent because he's so pop cultured. I think he's pretty damn good. Carrie's a really intense film, too.

Sam: Well, 'Duel' was too good for a television show. That was the first thing I said 'who's this guy Stephen? 'Duel.'

John: The Steven Spielberg one? I didn't even know that was Stephen [King].

Sam: Yeah. Short story.

TeenHollywood: Do you think 1408 is a cousin to The Shining, another scary hotel movie?

John: It's definitely in that same ballpark.

Sam: You actually start to talk about a place being evil and it's not like a whole place, it's just a particular section of this particular building that's possessed in this particular way that everybody believes. He [John's character] comes to be a believer and if you're in that room with him through this film, you kind of go 'damn. Maybe so'.

TeenHollywood: The room keeps playing "We've Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters. Would that be your nightmare song to hear over and over or what would be?

John: That would be pretty good. I was thinking there's a couple Neil Diamond tunes that I would never want like for extended periods. 'Cracklin' Rosie' that might really push me over the edge. If I heard that after being up for four days in Dusseldorf I might jump.

TeenHollywood: Were you hurt making the film? It gets pretty physical.

John: I was emotionally hurt but no, I wasn't physically hurt. Although we tried. We did almost everything you could do to a person in a room. We lit ourselves on fire, we froze ourselves under water, earthquakes, cords, dead daughters.

Sam: You're hung off a wall.

John: Yeah and Sam was sarcastic to me. I was wounded by the experience. [Sam is laughing].

TeenHollywood: John's character starts out believing only that which he can see with his own eyes. Does that ring true for either of you?

John: That doesn't ring true for me. I thought one of the fun things about this piece was that King had written this very terrifically cynical character that is basically daring the gods or the devils to come and show themselves. Houdini used to go around and debunk all the people who were the mystics, but secretly it's because he had like this thing with his mother who died and he really wanted to have proof that there was another world. And I think [my character]is a lot like that. He's a paranormal debunker but he's really just screaming 'show me there's something out there in the universe!' because he suffered the loss of his daughter. So to go from a very worldly cynical, 'bring it on' kind of a guy and to totally break him down and have him be a true believer by the end is a pretty fun journey. I would never be that cynical. I think there's definitely stuff going on beyond our senses. I probably start where he ended up. So I don't relate to it that way. I definitely think there's much more than meets the eye here.

Sam: I grew up in Tennessee around people who believe all kinds of things. I was told ghost stories at night by my grandfather and his brothers. I grew up in the segregated South so sometimes when we got hurt or sick or whatever, we couldn't afford to go to the doctor or even go to the hospital because we figured they weren't going to see us anyway. So they called what was known in our neighborhood as the 'root lady' who would actually come over and she'd put very stinky stuff on you and chant, good stuff. And you would get well. She would take herbs and things. We bought chickens off a truck, they were live chickens and we killed them. She got the heads and feet. She did stuff with them.

TeenHollywood: Sounds spooky. What else happened?

Sam: Well, there were people who died in our neighborhood that we saw long after they were dead. If you were out at night and looking around the wrong place, doing something wrong and you'd look up and there would be that lady who used to call your house and tell your mother you were doing something wrong. You'd be like, 'she's dead. She's not supposed to be here and she is'. And you weren't the only person that saw her. It was kind of like we had phenomenon like that, that went on throughout my life. [We're on the edge of our seat and our eyes are wide.. Sam goes on].

There was a school bus that turned over in this particular place and if you go there at a certain time of night you can hear the kids crying and hear the screeches of the tires. And we'd go there and, sure enough, you'd hear it. So there are lots of things that we can't explain and somebody somewhere has seen these things and they write about them. Some people remember them vividly enough to write about them. Some people make them up. But there are lots and lots of things that we can't explain that are just part of our culture.

TeenHollywood: Does knowing that make you scared or fearless?

Sam: Fearless? No. No. I'm quite the opposite of fearless. I'm the guy that sits in the horror movie and says 'don't go in the dark room. You're safe in this particular place right here, stay there until it gets light and call somebody or do something, but don't go in the dark room. Don't go down the stairs. Don't go see what the noise is'. Even if I'm at home by myself in my house here in Beverly Hills, it's big enough that if I hear something down the hall, I'll just stay in my room. I'll go turn the alarm on and if something happens then the alarm will go off but I'm not going to go down the hall to see if something's not right. I'm not that interested.

TeenHollywood: So, you're not heroic?

Sam: Well, I got a gun, too. I will take the gun out and I'll put the gun on the bed and I'll sit there and if somebody comes in the room that's not supposed to be in the house, I'll just start shooting [Cusack is laughing].

John: So, I shouldn't drop by your house late at night. Sam? [he knocks on the table].

Sam: Not unannounced. No. As long as you're doing that [knocking], you're okay. But don't just pop in the room 'the door was open.' It was not.

John: I'm pretty lucky. The only times I've had kind of weird paranormal events, like where I thought things had moved or whatever it was, it wasn't a bad spirit because I've never really been in the presence of I don't think anything truly evil that I couldn't explain.

Sam: Weird isn't necessarily evil. I remember doing a movie and just being freaked out. I was in New Mexico and we shot in Alamogordo and when we finished we had to go back to Santa Fe and I was in my car alone because nobody wanted to ride back with me. So I'm on a lonely New Mexico highway that's just straight just saying to myself 'please let nothing show up in the sky and beam me up'. Because it's New Mexico and you're always seeing shit that's in the sky, like zzz, zzz, zzz, stop! And 'zzz, zzz' and boom you're gone. What was that? All I could say was please let nothing pull in front of my car and just hover. Let me get back to Santa Fe, please!

TeenHollywood: Sam, is your character Olin evil or what?

John: The guys think Olin's evil and the girls think he's not, which is interesting. All the girls I've talked to said, 'no he's a good guy. He's trying to help you out.' And the guys are like, 'no he isn't. He's the crypt keeper. He's the one who set you up for all this.'

Sam: Hopefully, I can be the crypt keeper for the next three incarnations of this film. 1408 Returns or 1408, Junior Suite.

TeenHollywood: A lot of the scares in this film aren't as bloody as in some slasher films. Is what scares people different for different generations?

Sam: Every generation jumps for a different reason. Some of the people used to jump for Vincent Price. Now they're jumping for different s**t. I remember The Tingler. They had something under your seat trying to make you think there was something there. Or even, [in the original] House on Haunted Hill [a skeleton] ran across the theater on wires and you were like 'ah. Come on'. But then it was innovative and awesome. Kids are so movie savvy now. Kids are special effects savvy. They're making their own slasher movies in, what, sixth grade? And doing them all in Photo Finish or whatever.

TeenHollywood: If 1408 deals with everyone's inner demons, what inner demon do each of you have that you would not like to confront in that hotel room?

John: Shallow demons would be like rats. Big demons, but it hasn't happened to me, would be like if I was responsible for someone else's death or something. If something like that had happened I'd be haunted by that person. That would be my worst fear if I did something to someone and then that would be the worst thing, being responsible for that. And on a shallow level just rats.

Sam: For me, not working [we laugh]. That would bother me. If the phone stops ringing. And I guess on a really deeper level, I guess getting older. There are things that I used to know that I don't know anymore and I'm disturbed by that because Alzheimer's kind of runs in my family so when I walk in a room and I don't know why I walked in there, it is really starting to f**k with me. So I'm having that issue but I'm doing more crossword puzzles.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.