 Starring: Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Steve Guttenberg, Brian Dennehy
Director: Ron Howard
Year Of Release: 1985
Plot: Art, Ben and Joe are three senior citizens living in a retirement community, who aren’t too old for a bit of mischief. They sneak into the pool next door to have a swim, and are surprised to find it full of strange egg shaped rocks. After a few swims, they start feeling incredibly energised and encourage other old people to come for a dip. However this causes problems when they discover the rock are actually cocoons, containing aliens preparing for a trip back to their home planet. The old people are accidentally stealing the life force essential for the extraterrestrial’s interstellar trip. |
In the mid to late 1980s, old people seemed to be quite popular in films. While they’ve always been around in grandparent roles and to add a bit of colour to movies (often showing up so they can die and add a little emotion to the flick), suddenly people started making films where they got the major roles. Perhaps most surprisingly is that these weren’t always just nice little dramas made for niche audiences, but in mainstream genres with decent budgets.
We didn’t just have Cocoon, but a couple of years later there was another sci-fi film, Batteries Not Included. There was also the emergence of Jessica Tandy as a major star. She in both in both the old folks sci-fi flicks and in her eighth decade suddenly found herself more famous than ever before.
That said, it’s not like she hadn’t had an impressive career before then. This was, after all, the woman who created the role of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire during its first Broadway run in 1947 (but got passed over for the film version because she wasn’t famous enough and was replaced by Vivien Leigh). She also appeared in The Birds, but didn’t become a major movie star until she was well into her 70s. Tandy followed Cocoon and Batteries Not Included with her Oscar winning turn in Driving Miss Daisy – which at 81 makes her the oldest actor to ever win an Academy Award – and got another Oscar nomination for Fried Green Tomatoes in 1992. However by the time she made the last of those, she’d already been diagnosed with cancer and then died in 1994.
Although it was never as if Hollywood suddenly felt the need to make all their films about old folks, in the mid to late 80s there was definitely a much bigger interest in senior citizens that there was before, and people responded to it, making many of these films substantial hits. However as quickly as it arrived, the old people flicks disappeared. Unlike most movie fads, there wasn’t a trailing off as people got bored and stopped watching movies about senior citizens; it was just that Hollywood stopped making them.
The reason is probably because mainstream film has never been that keen on old people, as Tinsel Town is obsessed with the new and hip because they think this is where the money is, and almost by definition, senior citizens aren’t either of those things. As a result, even when there seems to be evidence movies about older people can be popular and crossover to different age audiences, the studios don’t nurture this, instead zipping off to the next fad that seems funkier and cooler. Because of this, old folks got plonked back in their bit parts and only got major roles in tiny budget movies that nobody in Tinseltown has much interest in.
In fact it’s gone so far that a lot of the time it’s treated as a special event if Hollywood makes a movie about pensioners and issues affecting them. When Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman made The Bucket List, most of the marketing seemed to be based on the ideas it was remarkable that it was about older men who were dealing with issues surrounding aging. They did have a bit of a point though, as it is far more remarkable than it ought to be. After all, only a decade before, a 60-year-old Nicholson was romancing a 35-year-old Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets, with barely a hint that the age difference might be a little unusual. When it comes to men, Hollywood tends to completely ignore the effects of aging, while women largely disappear from the screen when they reach 50.
Only Clint Eastwood seems to get around this, mainly because he has far more freedom to make whatever films he wants to than most people, and he’s never been like most actors, trying to suggest they’re far younger than they actually are. Nearly all his films as an actor from around the time of Unforgiven onwards have dealt at least in part with issues surrounding getting older, whether it’s ill health in Blood Work or being a grumpy old man who’s who decides to take action in Gran Torino. However he’s virtually the only one dealing with these issues consistently in mainstream movies. It’s a shame, but that’s how it is.
There is one other aspect to working with older people on film, and that’s the expense. Although the salaries may not be massive by movie star standards, the insurance is. Most productions need to take out a completion bond, where they’re insured in case there are any disasters on set that mean the movie can’t be finished or cause them to go massive over budget. One of the most expensive parts of this is insuring the major on-screen talent. The reason for this is because if there’s a problem with most of the people behind-the-camera they can be quickly replaced, but if something happens to one of the main actors, it can cause huge amounts of expense if things need to reshot, and in extreme cases could even result in the whole movie having to be abandoned.
Actors normally need to have physicals before they start filming, so the insurance company can feel confident they won’t die partway into filming, but of course, as people get older the likelihood of death or illness grows, and so the insurance premiums go through the roof. One of the main reasons Elizabeth Taylor hasn’t worked in years is because her age and ill health mean she’s pretty much uninsurable, rather than because she wouldn’t like to appear in new movies.
I worked on a TV mini-series a few years ago that had a cast that mostly consisted of people in their 20s and 30s, but there was one major role that went to someone in their mid-80s. Because the role would have been almost impossible to recast once filming started, just having that one older person doubled the cost of insuring the actors. Apparently before filming there were discussions about whether they could get rid of the role or get someone much younger to pretend they were old so they could save money, but eventually it was decided to just pay the premiums.
It would seem then that a lot of roles for old people probably do get cut, purely because casting people in their 70s and beyond starts to get expensive. It’s a shame, as I’d like to see a few more film about senior citizens, and with an aging population I’m sure there are a lot of older people out there who’d like to see that too. Statistics show that people go to the cinema less as they age, and while Hollywood often uses this to justify the lack of movies about senior citizens, the fact is, perhaps the reason old people don’t go to the movies much is because so few movies are made to appeal to them.
TIM ISAAC
PREVIOUS: Coach Carter - Or, the most successful actor ever - Samuel L Jackson
NEXT: Cold Mountain - Or, does Oscar campaigning work?
CLICK HERE to see the index of 909 films and TV shows the Movie-A-Day Project will be covering
CLICK HERE to find out more about the idea behind The Movie-A-Day Project
CLICK HERE to follow Movie_A_Day on Twitter
