Jack doesn't do hugs. The iconic bad boy — do we even need to mention his last name? — isn't one for playing false palsy-walsy for the cameras, and on a recent afternoon, he was vaguely peeved that a Los Angeles Times photographer suggested that he sling his arm around Morgan Freeman for a portrait of public bonhomie.
It's clear why the photographer would like a shot like that. Nicholson and Freeman star in The Bucket List, a film about male bonding late in life. The two play disparate cancer patients who meet on the ward and decide to go off together to do everything on their bucket list — the list of everything they ever dreamed of doing before they kick the bucket.
Just the premise suggests a kind of Beaches for men — although, in reality, the duo tries to make sure there's a healthy dash of vinegar inside the schmaltz.
Unpretentious
"My job, I felt, was to take the p*** out of the project, to not get so flowery...," Nicholson says. On an autumn afternoon, Nicholson and Freeman were ensconced side by side on a couch in Jack's office, one of many buildings on his Mulholland compound in Hollywood, an unpretentious ranch house, decked out in earth tones, with square modern furniture.
It's not quite a time capsule from the '70s, but almost.
For the past few decades (40 years for Nicholson, 20 for Freeman), the two have embodied different strains of American manhood. From Five Easy Pieces to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to As Good as It Gets, Nicholson has been America's resident anarchist — rebellious, angry and sardonic.
Benign
With his easy confidence, Freeman has come to represent a benign, wise paternal figure — the voice of authority without its brutalising edge.
Freeman is elegant in slacks and a navy blazer; he appears kindly but elusive, as if the real Morgan Freeman is hovering above the scene, watching. In The Bucket List, Nicholson hauls around a tub of girth like a dainty elephant who knows how to pirouette —he makes his fat both funny and a poignant reminder of the ravages of time. In person, he's shed the weight and appears trim in khakis and a black shirt.
Although comradely, the pair doesn't have the simpatico ease of Jack and Warren, or Clint and Morgan.
Nicholson descends from the screen lineage of men who seduce women with their minds; Freeman from the iconic, classic Americana of men who prefer doing to speaking.
They both turned 70 this year.
‘Young'
"The first time I felt young for my age," jokes Nicholson. "I think we all try to say we are not affected by this, but something about the number, I thought, ‘Geez, I'm in pretty good form; I'm going pretty strong here'."
"If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself!" Freeman says.
They both still have a kind of restlessness, but in Freeman's case it has led him to pilot planes, steer yachts and own various businesses. Nicholson appears more the armchair traveller, ensconced in his home devouring books about science, politics, literature and hard-boiled fiction. Jack likes to talk, meander, digress and entertain.
Different
"They couldn't be more different. That's what works in the movie," says Rob Reiner, who directed The Bucket List and has known Nicholson since the '70s. In the film, Nicholson plays an irascible hospital magnate with all the money in the world but no friends and a daughter who won't talk to him.
Freeman tackles the role of a brainy garage mechanic who forswore his dreams in order to provide for his family.
"Both of these guys play right out of themselves," Reiner says. "The character is an extension of themselves. Morgan is this calm, Zen-like person. Jack is all over the place, very passionate, larger than life. They have a way of rubbing off on each other. Morgan can take a lot of Jack's energy, and Jack can take a lot of Morgan's calmness."
Reiner adds that right before shooting Nicholson had been in the hospital for the first time in his life.
"It was very upsetting to him and very scary," Reiner says, "and to be doing a part that touches on issues of mortality. He took from the experience in the hospital and brought it to the character".
"It was just a procedure, but it tired me out," Nicholson says. "There are a few lines in (the film like, ‘Can't you use the same blood?' that came right out of my stay. I had it fixed so that every two minutes (his character is getting his blood drawn.) Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood."
Relaxed
Mortality hovers over Nicholson, as it does over The Bucket List despite its jolly sequences of the spry pair diving from airplanes, racing cars, climbing the Himalayas — all courtesy of computer graphics.
Freeman, however, seems more relaxed about facing the gaping maw. If given the option of living to 120, he'd take it in a flash, "because I'm going to be viable. Otherwise, no, I won't live that long. You can't. Life is only about the strong."
Both men insist they still have things on their own personal "bucket lists", although they remain vague on what they are.
Own lists
For Freeman, he wanted to work with Nicholson before he died. And that included hugging.
After the last shot, Freeman told Nicholson, "This has been a dream come true," recalls Reiner. Before the last shot, "Jack had said, ‘We're not hugging.' But Morgan is a hugger. After the last shot, Morgan gave him a great bear hug."
Nicholson, says Freeman, "is still working on kissing the most beautiful girl in the world".
"That's right, I still am working on it," riffs the man who is known as a Lothario.
In reality, though, his Bucket List sounds tinged in regret.
"I'm not an adventurer and a traveller like my friend is.... I am kind of a home person that way, and I travelled a lot earlier on in my life, but still there's plenty of places I want to go to.
There are endless things you want to do, books you wanted to read, corners you wanted to clean, this you wanted to get right, that thing you wanted to put right with, it is endless."
