What is The Bucket List about?
“It’s a really interesting film about two guys. Nicholson plays a character who
is very wealthy. Morgan Freeman plays a character who’s been a mechanic his
whole life. They meet in a hospital. Nicholson’s character actually owns the
hospital, and owns like a string of hospitals and is very wealthy.
They are both diagnosed with cancer and they’re both terminal. They go through treatments together and they become very close friends. They decide rather than go through more experimental treatments - and they’re asymptomatic – they decide that even though they have maybe six months to a year, they’re going to go on this trip together…
In the case of Morgan Freeman, he’s very intelligent. He went to college and his girlfriend got pregnant his first semester. He had to drop out to get a job and take care of the baby. He’s lived his whole life as a mechanic for 46 years, doing the right thing with three children. He’s never been anywhere. He’s very smart. He knows all the answers on Jeopardy. He reads a lot, but he’s never been anywhere. And Nicholson, who’s been very successful, doesn’t have close friends and decides, ‘Let’s go on this trip.’”
Reiner continued, “One day in the hospital you see Morgan Freeman’s character writing this thing called the Bucket List. And Nicholson looks at it and says, ‘What is this thing?’ He sees things like: ‘Witness something truly majestic. Help a complete stranger.’ He says, ‘What are these things?’ He tells him that when he was in college his philosophy teacher said, ‘Make up a list of the things you want to do before you…’ ‘You mean, kick the bucket?’ And he says, ‘Yeah. When I was young I had be the first black President. Make a million dollars. Now I thought I’d make a different list and see. But it’s pointless because we’re going to die.’ He says, ‘No, no. Wait a minute...’
He starts helping him and they rewrite the list together.
He says, ‘No, we can do some of these things.’ So they decide to go on this trip together. It’s really about the two of them becoming friends and helping each other work through the issues that they need to work through before they die.”
You’d think with stars like Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman you wouldn’t have a problem getting the film made. Are the studios wary of character-driven pieces?
“Well, they are. Most studios don’t want to touch those kind of adult
drama/comedies, because there is a lot of comedy in it as well. But they’re
ready to go. We’re pretty close. As a matter of fact today I should know
whether or not all the deals get resolved, and I think they will.”
Has it been particularly hard to find the projects you’re interested in
directing?
“Yes, and for a number of reasons. One is you get older the things that
interest you become more narrow. You’ve lived a lot of life and you’ve done a
lot of things so there are certain things you want to discuss on film, and that
becomes limited. And then quite frankly, the studios as you’re becoming older,
they don’t want an older person.”
Even as the director?
“Not so much directors. But they want movies that are going to appeal to
younger people. I think it’s an odd place that the studios are at now because
the movies that they are gearing towards younger audiences, the big budget,
action special effects movies, kids are not moviegoing-type kids anymore. They
don’t sit passively and watch a movie. They’re text messaging. They’re
listening to their iPod. They want to play games. They want to do interactive
stuff and their attention span, quite frankly, is limited. So the people who’ve
grown up on movies – my generation and the generations before – who are used to
the shared experience in a movie theater, they don’t make movies for them.
I think there is an audience. If you look at a picture like Million Dollar Baby or Something’s Gotta Give, people will go to those movies but it’s a different crowd. There are people who are conditioned to going to a movie theater, but then there’s nothing there for them to go to. It’s this weird thing where they’re making movies for kids but they don’t quite know how to reach kids because kids don’t do that. I watched in Pirates of the Caribbean. I took my kids to see that and it’s doing great business and all that, but the kids are sitting there and they’re on their Blackberries and they’re text messaging and stuff, while they’re watching the movie, you know? It’s different.”