The bucket list: how it really happened | Jim Greer

This is a movie I did for the Be Kind Rewind Film Festival here in Austin back when that movie was still relevant. The contest involved making an abridged version of a real movie, so I did The Bucket List, with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. I've never actually seen the film and never will. I wrote this primarily based on the trailer and Roger Ebert's scathing review of it that denounced it for using cancer as a plot device, cancer treatment for cheap laughs, and for making Morgan Freeman yet another side character who was only there to teach a white dude the meaning of life. As Ebert said, Morgan Freeman should have been the main character because he had the better story. I'm confident that I told the story better in under than ten minutes than they did in the entire movie and mine's a lot funnier. And for the record, I'm not doing a Morgan Freeman impression because I don't do impressions. That's my take on the character and I think mine fits the story better. Morgan Freeman was too good for that movie, but I gave him the ending he deserved.