In which our hero takes a meeting with his agent.

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There are two types of people in this world: heart attack people and cancer people.

Letters:

I would like to apologize to Adam Sandler, whose image appeared in this blog without my first obtaining his permission. He is in no way affiliated with the words printed here.

Ain’t It Hip: What made you choose to do Bucket List?

Jack Nicholson: Morgan Freeman.

Ain’t It Hip: Really?!

Jack Nicholson: Yes, I was very excited at the opportunity to work with a Black.

Ain’t It Hip: He is a very accomplished actor.

Jack Nicholson: Yeah, Rob Reiner came to me with the script and I wasn’t interested. But when he said that Morgan Freeman was going to be in it, I went hmm… You know, I’d never really worked with an African before… or rather, a Black American.

Ain’t It Hip: Did you see this project as a chance to personally confront getting older?

Jack Nicholson: I saw it as a chance to confront my fear of black people.

Ain’t It Hip: And what about old age? Or maybe, like, death?

Jack Nicholson: They scare me. And I don’t mean that in a racist way. They’re just more frightening than white people. You know, I have trouble relating the people in my own life to black people, or relating black people to the people in my own life. Genetically we have 99 per cent in common with a banana, never mind Morgan Freeman. Or even Adolf Hitler!

Ain’t It Hip: Are you afraid of dying?

A midtown Manhattan office building. Men in grey flannel suits and women resembling Hillary Rodham Clinton – and with names resembling Hillary Rodham Clinton’s – come and go in a ceremonial manner. We have a black president. I am awkwardly alternating between a run and a slow walk because I have to take a shit. A homeless black man once called me a tighty-whitey in Brooklyn because I walked as if I were an uptight white man. He didn’t know that my uptight walk was attributed to holding in a shit.

Moving in past desks of ringing telephones, beneath the buzz of fluorescent lights, we find a closed door inscribed: Mitchell Scapinelli – TALENT. My agent resembles a supporting but recognizable character actor one might find in a Cohen Brothers movie; he adopts mannerisms that are simultaneously absurdities out of nowhere and familiar clichés; he talks fast and brash, wearing the effects of one too many cups of coffee; and he is Jewy, but without God.

I am seated firmly, so as to push back up the shit trying to sneak out my ass. He reads from his ipad, so as to pace his office to better emphasize his frustration. “You say, and I quote: ‘Sometimes when I walk in public, I think black people can read my mind.’ What is that? Like a secret genetic power they keep quiet in fear of a racist backlash? ‘I am very careful about what I think when black people are in close proximity. Even when my internal monologue addresses the possibility of their racial ability to read my thoughts, I try to think about that possibility in a non-racist way.” He hands me the ipad, and as I reach for it, the tip of my shit pushes against my boxer briefs. Calvin Klein. It tickles the cotton, marking it like crayon.

That time in Brooklyn, the shit burst out. I remember the warm mass between my ass and underwear; thinking I’d really have to scrub the back of my thighs in the shower when I got home; wondering if little turds would tear away and drop down my pant leg; deliberating how to subtly abandon the fallen pieces on the street; hoping people around me would assume they belonged to a dog; balancing the mother-load that now shifted on the seat of my underwear, its umbilical cord cut from my asshole.

That must be why people say Oh Shit! when something bad happens, like just before a car accident or when you drop something on the kitchen floor. That’s what I said when I shit myself: “Shit!” And the shit was sitting in my underwear to confirm it. The whole process was: a pain in the ass. Where do these expressions come from? My theory is that they originated with people who shit themselves. Accidents, burdens, grievances: they’re all associated with, described as: shit.

“Nowhere in the interview do you feel it necessary to discuss the actual production of the film! For Christ’s sake, Jack, we’ve talked about this. Do you have any clue how much work it took to twist this thing into: Jack Nicholson is the last honest man in a world gone mad with political correctness? Do I need to be worried about you, Jack? What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin’? Well you’re not! You’re not! You’re no crazier than the average asshole out walkin’ around on the streets, and that’s it.” 

An awkward pause follows, in which my agent tries to fill the dead air by making an elbow gesture and a nip-nip noise as if he has just taken a shot of Jim Beam (in reference to my alcoholic lawyer from Easy Rider who will next be portrayed by Zach fucking Braff).

“My advice to you: don’t be hostile to the bottle.” His thumb and index finger reach into the desk drawer to pull out a mickey of prune schnapps – his other fingers extended as if delicately flaunting a cup of tea. “Best godamn drink in the world, dontcha think?” He takes a swig and punches out his elbow, making more nip-nip noises. “I am the motherfucking Easy Riding Nicholson, motherfucker. I AM the motherfucking Nicholson. Now give this man a SLIVOVITZKA!” Drinks are poured.

I learned my sister was really my mother from a Time Magazine researcher who discovered the truth when writing a story about me. She died of cancer – my sister, or mother, not the reporter.

“Your mother never got the irony of calling you a bastard!” jokes my agent. He dims the lights and takes the most recent draft of my screenplay from my hands to read under the warm glow of his desk lamp.

“No, but seriously, tell me more about that. I’m listening.”

My father died of a heart attack a month preceding my Bar Mitzvah. I hadn’t seen the man in eight years.

He fixes us two more drinks, lights a cigar, and encourages me to put my feet up on his leather sofa.