When you do a movie like this, does it bring home a sense of dealing with your own mortality?

Freeman: I think what you’re doing always in any acting situation is acting. You’re not trying to live the character. If you are, you’re going to get in deep trouble, I think. Playing a character who is dying or going to die, no, you just do it. I don’t have any sense of my own mortality. I reject any thoughts of my own mortality. What’s to think about there? I like the premise of the movie. It ain’t about that.  It’s about living.

Nicholson: Yeah, that’s right and that’s what the first audience said. This is a movie about living. One of the things about it that I liked is everybody considers their mortality all the time, whether they know it or not. That fear of the unknown, it drives you. I went to so many Krishnamurti lectures that illustrate this point that it’s phenomenal. 

So, I think what I asked the other group we just came from, ‘Did the movie stay with you?’ because we wanted it, even though it’s a comic approach, to have some resonance, and they said that it did. 

But I think it’s because these are interior, private conversations that we have with ourselves that we haven’t really seen them on film before. We haven’t seen them on the nose like we all, I’m sure who’ve ever been to a funeral have said, ‘Well, how do I want my whatever-you-want-to-call-it to be dealt with?’ Do you want a big pink statue like this, which was one of my considerations at some time. Nobody’s that different.

So, I went by the assumption these are things that people have thought about, how consciously they’ve thought about it. And if you touch that chord, this is what you get.  My first acting teacher, Jeff Corey, said your job is to provide a stimulating point of departure. This is what you do in a theatrical experience. And I thought, ‘This will be a doozy for that particular element.’ So, that’s what I think about that.

How much movie magic was involved in some of their adventures, particularly the skydiving sequence?

Nicholson: Oh, we dove like son of a guns. Fantastic. Fearlessly leapt out into the void, didn’t care and so forth. (laugh) This is part of my new lying approach. This is probably useless to you ‘cause I said this before. When I was first doing interviews I met Diana Vreeland, who was the editor of Vogue magazine (and talked about) the normal complaints people have about interviews. And she said, ‘Well, Jack, you must not tell them the truth.’ I said, ‘What?’ She says, ‘Well, my guess is you’re going to be doing a lot of interviews. If you tell them the truth, very quickly you’ll become bored with your own life.’ So, you know...

So, we can’t believe anything you’re saying.

Freeman: You can. You can believe it. It’s just not necessarily true.

Nicholson: There you go. Absolutely the right answer. (laugh)

Do either of you have a Bucket List or were any of the things that you wanted to do on this fictional list in the film?

Nicholson: I’ll give them the shortie. Love to see the pyramids. (laugh)

Freeman: I think we all have a private Bucket List. It may not be written down on paper. You got it written down somewhere. And I’m constantly checking them off, you know. I just checked him off. I’m not sure about checking him off. Maybe I just moved him down to another level. (laugh)

Nicholson: One of my favourite one-worders in the script that gets the most laughs— ‘Well, how do you plan do that?’ ‘Volume.’ (laugh)

Is there one character or one part that you would want to do that's not on your list?

Freeman: You mean, like if it’s got to stop tomorrow, which one would I want to do? Hard to say because there are a lot of them. I have a Mandela script I’m going to be doing next year. I really want to do that. And there’s a Western character, a guy named Bass Reeves, that I wanted to do for 15 years.