By Jenny Halper in New York City

Samuel L. Jackson has snakes on his shoes. And on his shirt. And if the number of months he’s spent talking about New Line’s surprise pop-culture phenomenon are any indication, he probably has snakes on the brain.

The story, at this point, is well known: Jackson signed on to play an FBI agent stuck miles-high with hundreds of poisonous reptiles because he liked the title of the movie. But when the actor heard that the moniker “Snakes on a Plane” might be shelved in favor of more generic “Pacific Flight 121,” he threatened to back out. Then the internet blogging craze began.

Earlier this week Jackson arrived at the Regency Hotel decked out in sneakers and a t-shirt with silk-screened pictures of the deadly creatures and told press why he signed on, how he killed snakes, and why no one- not even him- will see “Snakes” before audiences do.

Q: What do you think of this Internet phenomenon?

SAM: It’s bizarre. There’s no explanation for it. It’s the same thing that got me. I was sitting at home reading the trades and I saw, Ronny Yu, “Snakes on a Plane.” What’s that? I know Ronny, so I emailed him and said, “What is ‘Snakes on a Plane?’ Is that a euphemism for something?’” And he said, “No, poisonous snakes get loose on a plane and I’m directing the movie.” I wrote back, ‘Wow, can I be in that?’ And that was it. It was just that simple. I saw the title and said, “OK, yeah.” So apparently a lot of people get that same visceral kind of thing from “Snakes on a Plane.” No explanation for that. It’s like “Freddy vs. Jason.” You know who’s going to be fighting. Do you want to see them fight?

Q: Well…

SAM: There’s no explaining how, why, what, but there was something there that made people believe they could take that and kind of run with it, and that’s what they did. They started making trailers. They started making their own trailers. They were taking pictures of me from other films and other places and just putting them on these sheets and putting snakes on them and putting balloons on them with me saying things. Then people started doing songs. And it just grew. Then, when they found out that (the studio) was trying to change the title, everybody just went bonkers.

Q: Was the new dialogue the result of what fans wanted?

SAM: That was dialogue I was doing anyway. I was always on the plane, going, “What the fuck! Oh shit!” And they were going, “Sam, PG-13, you can’t.” I’m going, “Mm. There are snakes on the plane. We can’t be going, golly gee!” It’s just what they were trying to do. The whole time I kept saying to David (Ellis), ‘Well, why don’t we shoot it both ways?’ Most times they want to do that anyway, but they didn’t want to waste the time. David actually wanted to shoot a spoof of the movie while we were doing the movie, but they wouldn’t let him do that either. So they missed opportunity after opportunity, not realizing what was going on around them. That’s why all the chairs had ‘Pacific Flight 121’ on them and this thing about, ‘We didn’t really want to change the title. We did that so that more actors would read the script.” That’s bullshit. They were going to change the title. Honestly. They thought that “Snakes on a Plane” was giving away too much about the movie.

Q: Why isn’t it being screened for press?

SAM: For what?

Q: So we can ask intelligent questions.

SAM: An intelligent question is ‘Did we have good snakes?’ Yes. Do they kill most of the people on the plane? Yeah. Does the plane almost crash? Yeah. It’s not a big deal. I haven’t seen it either. I know what happens. I don’t know how it happens, but I know what happens. I’m anxious to see it, too. It was an awesome amount of fun. It’s everything I thought it was going to be. I had a great time.

Q: Did you touch many of the snakes?

SAM: Yeah, well, there was a room full of them. So I could always go in the snake room and pick up a snake.

Q: But you didn’t deal with them on set…

SAM: Well, never, actually. There was a lot of chaos on set. We had the plane on gimbals and it was doing stuff. You can’t have snakes around there if we’re going to be running around and throwing luggage and doing stuff. You don’t want to hurt a snake. So they did all that stuff on second unit. We didn’t get to play with the real snakes on set. Occasionally, they’d have a snake there and they’d put a camera behind it so they could shoot over it and have the snake move.

Q: Were you upset about not getting to work with the real things?

SAM: No, not really. Especially the dangerous ones they had on second unit. They had albino cobras and rattlesnakes and stuff. We didn’t need to mess with those.

Q: What are some of the ways you kill snakes in the movie?

SAM: Blow torch. Homemade blow torch, which is like hair spray and a cigarette lighter. An axe, because you can’t use a gun on a plane.

Q: Given security measures now, could you take care of yourself?

SAM: Yeah, sure. Logically, the easiest way to do it is to lower the temperature on the plane. You make it cold and the snakes go to sleep. Most times, even the ones that we were handling when I was doing photo shoots recently, they’re just trying to get away from the light. So if I got one, it was trying to get inside my shirt or my collar. They’re running from the light. They don’t want to be bothered.

“Snakes on a Plane” opens on August 18th.