In 2007 Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman starred in a hacky Oscar-bait movie about a black mechanic with lung cancer who spends his remaining days on earth being a sidekick to a greedy white jerk who has fun with his wealth before he dies without helping anyone else or becoming a better person. This is my response.

SYNOPSIS:

FYI: This isn't a real screenplay. I already filmed the real one, which is posted in my videos. This version is a longer rewrite for The Editing Room, a screenplay parody site which has it's own writing style intended to be read and uses the actors' names in the script to mock celebrity actors who play themselves in every movie. It's a good site for people who want to learn screenwriting and be entertained.

FYI 2: This is really more of an explainer of the script with some of the same jokes.

Morgan Freeman is a black mechanic showing off his intelligence by reciting the name of every type of nut. He smokes a joint then gets a call telling him he has lung cancer (due to pot smoking, of course), so he walks off and narrates his plan to find a rich white man who's life he will change forever because that's Morgan Freeman's purpose.

Jack Nicholson is a greedy old white man who is very greedy. He makes huge profits running a hospital he wouldn't want to stay in. When his staff tell him that he's actually costing the hospital money through his dumb policies, he ignores them because he's so greedy. When they suggest to him that he might be a hospital patient himself some day, he laughs until he starts coughing up blood. Lung cancer. His staff smirks, knowing that he'll be forced to stay in his own crappy hospital due to plot reasons.

Jack meets Morgan in a hospital room and they're rude to each other, then like each other. So Jack takes Morgan as his sidekick and Morgan suggests Jack should do his "bucket list". He explains what it is and mentions his back story which sounds much more interesting than this movie. Jack thinks it's a great idea and pulls out his already prepared bucket list.

The two of them travel the world to fulfill Jack's dreams, doing all kinds of crazy stunts that elderly chemo patients are known to do like jump from airplanes and drive race cars. Morgan's wife, kids, and grandkids wait patiently at home, because who cares about family when you're about to die. There's also a subplot about Jack's estranged daughter in a failed attempt to humanize him.

Finally, we get to the end of the film, which I rewrote to give both characters the ending they deserved. In the original film, Morgan dies first and Jack makes Morgan's funeral all about himself by telling everyone how much Morgan changed him...even though he doesn't actually change at all because he's Jack Nicholson and he doesn't do character arcs. But I had no problem finding the correct ending to the film.

THE BUCKET LIST: THE ABRIDGED SCRIPT