Q: Did either of you try the Kopi Luac coffee?

Jack: Kopi Luac. Another tip of the hat to Rob Reiner. I kept saying Kopi Luac? This better work, baby, because we … what’s with the Kopi Luac? It held together in there very well.

Morgan: (To a journalist) Have you ever tasted the stuff?

Q: No. But I had weasel vomit, and it tasted good.

Morgan: Maybe you got some sort of high.

Jack: She started weaseling around. No is the short answer. I didn’t feel it was necessary for the research.

Morgan: Me either.

Q: What would you do for Jack and what would you do for Morgan?

Jack: There’s something kind of final in that statement. We’re both golfers a bit and I’d love to go out and play golf with Morgan. We went to a ballgame together. Morgan works a lot more than I do lately. He’s been very busy. I’d just like to see more of him. On his behalf, he’s doing fine.

Morgan: If you can find a way to help me break 90.

Jack: I’m a good coach, but I can’t play.

Q: Did you know each other before this movie started?

Morgan: I’ve known him ever since Easy Rider. I’ve seen just about everything he’s ever done.

Jack: We were acquaintances of longstanding. We’ve gone through a lot over this period of time. We weren’t quite so distinguished when we first met. We had a few…

Morgan: I thought you were.

Jack: You thought I was distinguished? Isn’t that wonderful.

Morgan: I was ready to kneel down and say, I’d do anything for a chance to work with you.

Jack: We’d run into one another, crossing backstage at the Oscars, for instance, and talk about the women. This kind of relationship; it’s changed over the years. And it’s changed now. We got to share a protracted amount of time together and Morgan—this is the only film you’ll ever see where Nelson Mandela was cut out. Morgan going over there got some footage with Nelson but Rob decided we weren’t going to shoot it. There were a lot of reasons. I just thought it would interest you to know that we had Nelson Mandela in the picture and he got cut out.

Q: Now that you’ve met each other, did you have to work scenes out or let it happen?

Jack: Everything is three or four takes. One thing we did share: we loved starting every day lying down in bed. Fantastic.

Morgan: The good thing about Jack is that he doesn’t get up early in the morning. The day would start around 10 a.m.

Jack: And that’s early.

Morgan: We worked fast.

Jack: I’ve never worked with a movie crew that outran me. This movie crew—I was just easing back and they were like, c’mon, we gotta get going. It was good. Halfway through I thought, geez, I hope they’re not kicking this movie out. It’s going pretty fast. We were out of continuity. I had that anxiety but it was great for me, because I worried about energy being in bed for eight weeks before. So getting it like that, I expected it of Morgan. If we don’t do a lot of mistakes we can do it in two takes or we can do it in 82 takes.

Q: You were in bed for eight weeks before this movie? What happened?

Jack: I had this—it wasn’t a big thing—it wasn’t… I had a saliva gland where I had to have this operation. It was infected. All those antibiotics. I panicked a little bit, let’s put it that way, because I was tired. I didn’t know. It takes a lot of energy to do a movie so I wasn’t sure I could do it. I did what I should do: I worked harder. I didn’t want to self-prophesize catastrophe and not make a full effort. It really worked for us. You don’t even know it but you can feel when you’re trying to MAKE something happen. It never came up with Morgan as far as I’m concerned. He’s the guy and that’s that, from the beginning.

Q: You gentleman have reached the status of, I suppose, of Hollywood’s senior citizens.  How do you deal with it?  Apart from collecting your social security.

Jack: You bet I collect. (Laughs.)

Morgan: Me too. Y’know, I think a lot of senior citizenship is a mental thing. I don’t feel senior. Of course when I look at a mirror in the morning, there it all is. But, thank heavens I don’t…Well, for instance, I don’t know what it feels like to be 70, except to feel the way I feel which isn’t 70.

Jack: I’ll tell you one thing.  When I look in the mirror in the morning I can’t see myself. (Laughs.) I am like Monet.  (Laughs.) But you know all I do is be myself, I was going ot lie all day today. But, when I turned 70 was actually the first time since 50 that I felt young for my age. I know, me, as Morgan said so. Y’know, 50 scares you to death. Numerical and so forth and then so forth, but the day I just noticed, I feel very young for my age. That’s tremendous. I’m going to put my glasses on.  But y’know, we are fortunate in that other than ‘Spider-Man’ and so forth, the movie audiences also moving along so to speak. Hence I think the resonance of this picture – ‘Bucket List.’ At my screening, I was telling Morgan on the way down, an artist couldn’t get a better result than this.  I have a friend’s screening so to speak.  And I was telling Morgan, four or five people reconciled in the lobby after this screening that I had. So, y’know, it’s nice to and the question I’ll ask you now: did the movie have resonance for you?  Did you think about it later after you saw it? That was one thing I wanted to know subjectively as a person involved and the other thing was the tone which the audience itself answered that. Cause, you don’t know. This was the first movie that I got done we worked hard or constant – hard might not be the right word – every day and the problems and the matchings and the this and the that, but it was very out of continuity. More than usual. More than the usual cliché of, ‘How do you do this?’ The result of that was is that I didn’t know…Well, normally by the time you are done shooting you got some sense, but I really didn’t know. ‘Well, I wonder what?’ When I got done you start saying, ‘Geez, we did that? I wonder…’ and so forth and so on. The first review came in with Morgan’s response, when you saw it I said, ‘What did you think Morgan?’ And he said, ‘Astonishing.’ So, I thought, ‘That’s…’

Morgan: But you gotta take that with a bucket of salt.

Jack: Bucket of salt…(Laughs.)

Morgan: To me, (to Jack) You can close your ears. It wouldn’t matter if they had taken the whole thing and tossed it into the toilet. I was working with Jack Nicholson. You are never going to know what’s that’s like until you do it. Primo. O.K. (Laughs.)

Jack: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Q: Do you know what your next project is going to be?

Jack: I never go to a next until I’m done.