Old People Rule the (Movie) World
I’m back from my social media and “real” vacations. During my vacation, we went to only one movie, a special screening of The Black Pirate with a live orchestral score by the Alloy Orchestra at the tiny Cape Ann Community Cinema in Massachusetts. It reminded me of everything I love about the cinema – a small, local cinema with couches, good movie snacks and beers, a great film that barely gets shown anymore, a great score by some amazing musicians. This was event-based cinema at its best. But there was one “problem.” My wife and I, in our forties, were the youngest people in the room, probably by decades. As I thought about it, almost every arthouse movie I see in a theater (not at a festival) is predominantly older as well. That would seem to be a problem, but I think it could be turned into a good thing.
I love me my 80-year-old friends. Seriously – through some weird work factors, I’ve probably got more friends in their 80s than any other age group, and I think they’re much more interesting to hang with. Seriously, it has something to do with them forming their personalities before television, I think, but that’s another essay. So it’s not with any ageism that I say that the graying of the audience is a possible bad thing. Let’s face it, you don’t want your primary audience dying off on you, and if we aren’t building an audience of younger people who love going to movies, we might have some problems getting butts in the seats before too long.
There’s a lot of reasons for this situation, and I think most of us know them: younger people have more options for their time; they might like blockbusters more; etc. Perhaps the most important reason is quite simply that an older generation both grew up going to movies for entertainment, and that those who are retired have more time to go to the theater. What’s equally clear, however, is that there are not a ton of movies specifically aiming for this older demographic. Sure, there’s the occasional Boynton Beach Club by Susan Seidelman (which did great business in Florida), and of course not every “older” person wants to just watch films about their demographic, but if you look at any week’s list of indie/art-house openings, you’d be hard pressed to argue that anyone is taking this audience seriously. That’s a mistake, I think.
This audience is big, it’s growing and it tends to be well educated and just happens to love going to the movie theater, which is increasingly something that lots of people hate doing. There’s also a lot of great actors who don’t get cast as often (unless they’re a Redford and need to be the love interest of a teenager), which should mean cheaper casting for cash-starved indies. The audience actually reads the NYT, in print even, and will thus hear about your movie too. While I know many people focus on a younger demographic for a host of reasons, and that creatively, it can be good to work with what you know, it would seem to me that the entire industry, and especially smart indies and arthouse folks, should be focusing on those above the age of 40 or 50, and much even much higher, with the films, marketing and messaging.
Leave a comment