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 the photographer for The Times 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 all about male bonding late in life that is set to open in theaters on Christmas Day. 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 -- though in reality, the duo tries to make sure there's a healthy dash of vinegar inside the schmaltz. "My job, I felt, was to take the piss out of the project, to not get so flowery . . . ," says Nicholson. On a fall afternoon, Nicholson and Freeman were ensconced side by side on a couch in Jack's office, one of many buildings on his Mulholland compound, 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 last few decades (40 years for Nicholson, 20 for Freeman), the duo has 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 the nation's resident anarchist -- rebellious, angry and sardonic. With his easy confidence, Freeman has come to represent a benign, wise paternal figure -- the voice of authority without its brutalizing edge. Simply put, Jack's alter ego has been the devil, while Freeman routinely plays God to a variety of screen mortals.
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. Though 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.
