Discussion: How Do We Serve Older Actresses -- and Older Audiences?

My parents are getting up there in years, but they still like going out to the movies. And they are constantly complaining that there's nothing out there for them to see.

They're right.

One has to believe that a good, entertaining movie skewing toward an older audience would make a lot of money, because don't kid yourself -- the older crowd is out there, and they are hungry.

It's one reason that "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" made so much money; sure, the main characters weren't old, but it felt like something older audiences would like. And they flocked to it.

There have been a few others examples that occasionally pop up too, in which movies tap into the older audience, and do well. "The Notebook". "Space Cowboys".

But instead, it seems that every year, Hollywood is just more and more determined to make mass-market movies that hit as many levels of audiences as they can, but of course what that really means is that they are going for the younger audiences first, and if older audiences want to go out and see Superman Returns or The Lake House, well that's fine.

So there's a need, and there's also a hell of a lot of great older actresses out there to serve it... and yet we're ignoring them too.

This is a big mystery to me (and I know it was explained a bit in the documentary "Searching For Debra Winger", but I didn't see it, and Hollywood obviously didn't care). What has happened to the great stories for older women?

And I'm not even talking old, old. I'm talking 40. Though there are actresses in their 50s and 60s who could rock a movie too.

And it's strange, because if you look at the heyday of Hollywood, there was a lot of work for actresses of this age.

But if Katherine Hepburn was 40 and in Hollywood now, what would she be acting in? What about Bette Davis? Claudette Colbert?

Would people be writing movies for them, because they have star power? Or would they be relegated to character roles and guest shots on Will and Grace?

Meryl Streep is getting work, but the substantial roles are becoming few and far between even for her. Julianne Moore seems to have pretty much cornered the market on playing housewives age with any meat on the roles at all, but what will she be playing in the next five years?

Glenn Close is doing cable, Geena Davis is doing network TV, Susan Sarandon can't find a decent part.

Julia Roberts can't even find good roles. Julia Roberts. And she's only 38.

So let's talk about this. A lot of the people who wander over to this blog are writers -- do you find yourselves automatically writing characters younger than yourselves, just because that's what Hollywood wants? Have we become so indoctrined toward writing for younger audiences that that is all anyone does any more?

(I have to admit that, on reflection, I'm guilty. Though many of my specs have female leads, they are inevitably in their 20s, or younger).

If you were told that you had a chance to pitch a movie to Julia Roberts' production company, what kind of story would you pitch her? What kind of movies should Hollywood have a 40-year-old Julia Roberts starring in?

Otherwise, I'm sure everyone reading this goes to the movies a lot. What is it about today's films that you can't make the kind of Tracy-Hepburn mature comedy that they used to make 50 years ago? Why is it only rarely that older actresses can be in romantic comedy-dramas, and even then apparently only if Jack Nicholson is in the movie too?

What is it going to take to reinvent the older female film to reawake Hollywood to its potential?

Talk to me.