Chapter 22

Old Love

As the Boomers become the Social Security seniors set, the genre of older love stories is experiencing a revival. Nancy Meyers has been one of the artists responsible for making many of these. (In addition to actually writing the movie Baby Boom.) Something’s Gotta Give (2003) revitalized Diane Keaton as a romantic leading lady at the age of 57, here paired with Jack Nicholson, then 66. (And Keanu Reeves.) We’re grateful to Nancy for proving that not only are romcoms not dead, there is still some sexy life in the old genre.

Diane Keaton went on to make And So It Goes (paired with Michael Douglas, written by Mark Andrus) and 5 Flights Up (paired with Morgan Freeman, Charlie Peters adapting Jill Ciment’s book), both in 2014, with Keaton at the age of 68.

Meyers went on to make It’s Complicated, pairing Meryl Streep with Alec Baldwin. (And Steve Martin.) Streep continues to prove she can play anything including love stories (even musical love stories, such as Mamma Mia!) and she was born in 1949.

So the market is there. And there are plenty of aging actors, male and female, who are still bankable in their sixties, seventies, and beyond. (See Appendix 2 for a list.)

Surprisingly, the animated movie Up (2009, written by Bob Peterson and Pete Docter) includes one of the most touching love stories about aging and loss. The sequence at the beginning of this movie lasts around eight minutes and follows the relationship of a couple of children through love, marriage, and life until she dies many decades later. I have heard adults sobbing at the end of this sequence in darkened movie theaters. Ed Asner plays Carl, the old man. Is this a great old age love story inserted into a kids’ cartoon? Yes, it is.

The Gin Game, D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, was produced on Broadway and filmed live and broadcast on PBS in 1981, starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Most people think of this as a classic love story between two people in a retirement home. I’m not a huge fan. Not enough love. Too much bickering. But it is revived perennially by actors looking for a simple stage vehicle. Charles Durning and Julie Harris. James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson.

Cronyn and Tandy made several other beautiful aging love stories that work better. To Dance with the White Dog (1993, Susan Cooper from Terry Kay’s novel), Foxfire (1987, Susan Cooper adapting her play), and Cocoon (1985, Tom Benedek from David Saperstein’s story). In addition to films like these they were for a time the first couple of the American Theater, beside Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. And before them all, there were Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne who pretty much ruled the Broadway stage in the first half of the twentieth century.

Which leads me to one of my favorite “Old Love Stories.” I heard that James Costigan had written a lovely, romantic play, about an aging couple, for Lunt and Fontanne, and before it could be produced, Alfred Lunt died. Costigan put the script away in his trunk. A few years later, he was watching Dick Cavett interview Katharine Hepburn on television and Cavett asked, “Are you sorry you and Laurence Olivier never got to work together?” She responded dryly, “I believe we are both still alive.” Costigan rushed to his trunk, dusted off the play and it became Love Among the Ruins (1975, directed by George Cukor). This is one of the best of the genre, so see it if you can.

Britain has its own particular niche market of aging love stories. Actresses like Helen Mirren and Judi Dench as well as Julie Christie, Vanessa Redgrave (well the list goes on and on) continue to prove that in England love never grows out of style or ages out of it.

English films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011, Ol Parker adapting Deborah Moggach’s novel), The Hundred Foot Journey (2014, Steven Knight adapting Richard C. Morais’ novel), Quartet (2012, Ronald Harwood adapting his own play), 45 Years (2015, Andrew Haigh adapting David Constantine’s short story). This list also goes on and on. With modest budgets, these films make money and satisfy their mature audiences both.

How do these vehicles run? Let’s open a few of the hoods and study their engines.

The classic On Golden Pond (1981, written by Ernest Thompson, based on his play) has a couple married half a century (played beautifully by Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda), who have to confront that this summer at their lake house might be their last. They discover that the fear of the end of their life together brings them closer. Struggling to find a way to connect with their estranged daughter (Jane Fonda playing her father’s daughter for the only time in their careers) brings the whole family closer. This is love as precious and as romantic as any other. In stories like this one an embrace, a kiss, can be more moving than any sex scene.

Mrs. Brown (1997, written by Jeremy Brock) is a thoroughly engaging and stirring love story. The aging Queen Victoria (Judi Dench, then 63), unable to recover from the grief of losing her beloved husband, Prince Albert, is pulled out of this dark place by a tall, handsome Scotsman (Billy Connolly, 55), her horse handler. He stands in full view of her window every day with her horse saddled, daring her to leave her sackcloth and ashes and come out into the sunshine and literally get back on the horse. She orders him to stop. Threatens him if he doesn’t. But he doesn’t. And eventually, he is the more stubborn and she has to give in, mount up, choose life over death and daylight over darkness. It surprises her, though not us, that she even finds a way to fall in love again.

One of the things that makes Old Love Stories work is strength of character. These are strong, intelligent, capable people for the most part. Nothing whiny or pitiful about them. They just happen to be old. I think if they were weak, or, God help them, self-pitying these stories wouldn’t work. They choose each other because they fall in love, not because anything at all is better than a lonely, miserable dotage.

The Lion in Winter (1968, James Goldman adapting his own play) is a great example of two powerful, brilliant, charismatic characters who are absolutely perfectly matched. Katharine Hepburn as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Peter O’Toole as her husband of several decades, King Henry II. The writing, story, characters, dialogue are all top of the craft. It is also one to study if you ever need to write period dialogue and make it sound contemporary without being anachronistic. These twelfth-century folks throw words around like broadswords. They remade this for television in 2003 with Glenn Close and Patrick Stewart, but the earlier one is better. In it a young Anthony Hopkins plays Richard the Lionheart when he was still a prince. And Timothy Dalton plays the teenage Philippe, King of France. It won Oscars for Adapted Screenplay and for Best Actress (Hepburn), and was nominated for Picture, Best Actor (Peter O’Toole) and Director.

The brilliant James Goldman also wrote another of my favorite older love stories, Robin and Marian (1976), in which Robin Hood (Sean Connery) returns from the crusades after being gone for more than twenty years only to find that his love, Marian (Audrey Hepburn), not only didn’t wait for him, but is now the head abbess of a convent and quite angry.

This one is sexy. Even if one of them is a nun. Or maybe especially.

If you don’t know this one, you should go to some lengths to see it. It also has Robert Shaw (Jaws) as the Sheriff of Nottingham and Nicole Williamson as Little John. Richard Harris as Richard the Lionheart and Ian Holm as King John. Put it on your list now. Seriously. Right now. By the way, James Goldman is the older brother of renowned screenwriter William of Butch Cassidy and Princess Bride fame.

We have a new type of Old Love Stories in the twenty-first century, which has become a sub-genre of its own. Alzheimer’s love stories. Currently (as of 2016), one out of eight Americans over the age of 65 has Alzheimer’s Disease. That means for a couple over 65, the odds are one in four that one of them is afflicted. These films are sad, sometimes heartbreaking. Some comedies, some tragedies. And some of them are also great.

Beginning with Do You Remember Love?, a television film from 1985 written by Vickie Patik and starring the great Joanne Woodward as the college professor stricken with this disease, and the equally great Richard Kiley who plays her husband. This was before most of us had even heard of Alzheimer’s. All of us know it now. One moment from that film is indelibly imprinted on my mind’s eye. Kiley finds a note tucked into his wife’s sweater pocket. When he opens it, it has his name printed on it. The last thing in the world she ever wanted to forget was him.

The most successful film in this genre is probably The Notebook (2004, Jeremy Leven’s screenplay from Nicholas Sparks’ novel. Nick Cassavetes directing his mother, Gena Rowlands, is worth mentioning). Allie (Rowlands) has dementia and every day her long-time beau (husband) Duke (James Garner) comes and reads a story to her in the care facility where she lives. The story he reads her is of two young lovers, who of course turn out to be themselves, well played by Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling. It has a lovely surprise twist at the end. We had assumed that he wrote the story to help her remember. It turns out she actually wrote it before she forgot everything. But as he reads her own words to her again and again, sometimes she remembers him and they have the precious moment of reunion. This is the best of the Sparks adaptations.

Away From Her had Julie Christie playing the afflicted woman (2006, Sarah Polley adapting Alice Munro’s story). Both Christie and Polley were Oscar nominated for this.

Iris (2001, Richard Eyre directing and screenwriting from John Bayley’s memoir) is the true story of author Iris Murdoch (Judi Dench) and her husband John Bayley (Jim Broadbent) as she slipped into Alzheimer’s. Jim Broadbent won the Oscar for this performance and both Dench, and Kate Winslet, as young Iris, were nominated.

Still Alice (2014, written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, adapted from the best-selling novel by Lisa Genova) won Julianne Moore her first Oscar after five nominations. Alec Baldwin plays her understanding, devoted husband and Kristen Stewart her daughter.

These love stories are tragic. As of this writing there is no cure or effective treatment for this epidemic. And when spouses manage to love on in spite of being forgotten, they are inspiring and moving. And they also get a lot of awards and nominations. I’m just saying.

The number one way that screenplays get sold and shot, is by having roles that bankable actors want to play. It is something you need to keep in mind at every stage of the writing process. Imagine the actor you think would be best in the leading role. Then ask yourself why would he/she want to play this part? Shoot for that level. Give the actor a character and actions and dialogue they can sink their teeth into. When you imagine a Meryl Streep or Cate Blanchet or Tom Hiddleston (or Tom Hanks or Tom Hardy) playing your characters, it will improve the level of writing the same way a tennis player improves when pitted against a better player.

Okay, I hear you thinking, these are all sad. Where are the Alzheimer’s comedies? My favorite dementia comedy is Where’s Poppa? (1970, Robert Klane adapting his own novel). It opens with George Segal in a gorilla suit waking up his demented mother (Ruth Gordon) by jumping on her bed trying to scare her to death. Her response is punching him hard in the tenderest part of the gorilla suit. “Oh, Gordon, you’re so funny.” And it just gets wackier, sillier, and funnier as it goes on.

Don’t feel you have to treat a serious subject reverently. Remember the TV series M.A.S.H.? Tragedy and comedy can thrive hand in hand. Be daring.

When writing love stories about characters in their later years, all the same rules still apply. And often the obstacle is knowing that one or both of them will be dying in the foreseeable future. Or perhaps their children disapprove of Mom or Dad finding someone new.

Maybe finances are the biggest challenge. In Love is Strange (2014, written by Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias), John Lithgow and Alfred Molina play Ben and George, a couple who have been together thirty years, but only recently, with the changed laws, can they legally marry. Now that they are finally wed, the Catholic church where Molina’s George runs the music program, fires him. With their income suddenly cut in half, they can’t keep their apartment in Manhattan. None of their friends or children have room to take them both, so they have to live separately until they find a solution. Would this story be different if they were a straight couple with one of them losing his/her job? No. Other than the social issue of the gay/Catholic conflict, the story is the same. Living on a fixed income when expenses are not fixed could be a problem for any older couple.

If you are drawn to this subject or have a feeling for these issues, go for it. Old love stories are proving to be a viable and commercial niche.