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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.”
