Older, Wiser and Virtually Ignored

What if you were a member of a group that was more numerous, affluent and had more free time than ever before--you would think Hollywood would be interested in you, right? Well, not if you are an older American--a moviegoing force all but ignored by the major studios.

“Films for seniors are an anomaly,” says Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. “It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Older people don’t go to the movies because there are no films that appeal to them, so studios don’t make pictures for seniors because they don’t show up at the box office.”

Notes Terry Press, head of marketing at DreamWorks: “There is a perception that people in their mid-50s and above rent videos but avoid the theaters, especially in the crucial opening weekends.”

In Hollywood demographics, “old” means paying customers over 30, and even professional head counters tend to ignore those beyond middle age. “We just don’t sample people over 54,” says David Smith, president of Frank N. Magid Associates, an international marketing research firm that works with many entertainment companies.

But by writing off this large and constantly growing chunk of the population, Hollywood is missing a bet, contend analysts of the senior scene. They note that nearly one-fifth of Americans are 60 and older, and close to one-third are over 50. Fermin Carranza, a retired UCLA professor, says he and his wife Rita, both in their early 70s, attend movies about once a week, usually in nearby Century City. “We are selective, but if the reviews are good and the subject matter sounds interesting, we’ll go.”

Notes Cary Silvers, research director for Modern Maturity magazine: “The movie industry, like the automotive, cosmetics and packaged-food industries, has largely written off over-50 purchasers. Even if one-third of a given product is bought by retired people, the manufacturer feels that the only way to sell more is by expanding his younger market.”

By contrast, Hollywood can’t do enough to lure teens, who are considered the keys to mainstream success. Breakout hits like “Scream” and Adam Sandler’s “The Waterboy” were fueled by younger audiences who not only go to movies on the opening weekend, but if they like a film, also go back again and again. Dozens of films about teen life--often starring teen TV stars unknown to an older audience--are opening this year.

Even if they’re not courted by Hollywood, seniors do buy tickets, according to figures compiled by the Motion Picture Assn. of America. In 1997, people 60 and older accounted for 9% of annual theater admissions. Close to 1.4 billion movie tickets were sold in the U.S. in 1997, which means the over-60 group purchased around 126 million admissions.

If the 50-59 age bracket is added (also 9% of annual admissions), the number of ticket sales doubles for the oldest segments of the American population.

In the last dozen years for which statistics are available, the percentage of tickets bought by the over-60 group ranged from a low of 3% in 1986, rising steadily to a high of 12% in 1994, before leveling off at the 1997 figure. According to a senior executive at the MPAA, no studies have been conducted to account for these fluctuations, but it is probable that they were related to the number and quality of senior-appealing movies released in a given year.

Which suggests that there obviously are some films that attract an older crowd. These include intelligent thrillers, upscale comedies and dramas and certain foreign films. On the turnoff list: teen comedies, rock ‘n’ roll movies and films with excessive violence.

There are some crossover movies that transcend demographic categories, such as DreamWorks’ “Saving Private Ryan.” “At a certain point, a film becomes so big that everybody goes, and that was the case with ‘Private Ryan,’ ” says Press.

“We felt it would draw veterans and people who lived through World War II, but our marketing didn’t aim at that particular group.”

Ken Dychtwald, publisher of 47 regional Get Up & Go magazines for seniors, thinks Hollywood is passing up a big slice of potential business, based on generational misconceptions.

“The entertainment industry is stuck in the past, in a time when most of the elderly were relatively poor and conservative and stayed home,” says Dychtwald. “During the last decade, there has been a reversal of fortune, with the over-50 segment of the population controlling 70% of the assets and half the discretionary spending in this country. These people are in their power years.”

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The box-office void for seniors left by the majority of studio products is being partially filled by specialty and art films, most often made by smaller independent producers or subsidiaries of major studios.

“Our business is to hit them where [the big studios] ain’t,” says Mark Gill, president of Miramax. “If the majors are oriented toward the under-35 crowd, I usually ask myself, ‘Is this a film my mother would like?’ ”

His mother’s generation attentively reads reviews, mainly in major newspapers, before heading to the neighborhood theater. If the reviews are very good, and word of mouth is equally positive--as they have been for Miramax’s “Life Is Beautiful” and “Shakespeare in Love”--older viewers can represent up to two-thirds of the opening week’s ticket buyers, says Gill. In such cases, he adds, the younger audiences will soon catch up with their elders.

Besides getting great reviews, a movie has to be smart and emotionally appealing to draw an older crowd, say movie executives.

“By ‘smart’ I mean that the film doesn’t insult the viewer’s intelligence, presents three-dimensional characters and has a plot that doesn’t telegraph its ending in the first five minutes,” Gill says.

Small, independent pictures following this formula can make it because “they don’t cost $100 million, so we don’t need such huge returns,” he says. For instance, Miramax paid only about $6 million for the rights to the Italian film “Life Is Beautiful,” which Miramax says could take in $125 million in domestic and foreign sales, especially with anticipated Oscar nominations.

Also doing well with older audiences is “Waking Ned Devine,” released by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It doesn’t hurt that the film stars two older actors, but Valerie Van Galder, Fox’s senior vice president for marketing and publicity, believes the movie’s appeal to seniors goes beyond the casting.

“This is just a great comedy that’s smart and funny and that’s not dark and depressing, as so many current pictures aimed at younger audiences,” she says. As she did in marketing the surprise hit “The Full Monty,” Van Galder tilts her advertising more toward print and less toward electronic media.

The same basic formula, with variations, was applied by Gramercy Pictures for its current release “Elizabeth,” which dramatizes the youth, intrigues and reign of Britain’s 16th century queen. The marketing strategy formulated by Gramercy President Russell Schwartz, though aimed at a general audience, tended to reach a more mature segment of the public.

“We relied a great deal on favorable print reviews and word of mouth, but also focused our advertising,” Schwartz says. “We favored newspapers as well as such print media as Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair and Vogue.”

Even in his television commercials, Schwartz was selective, keeping an older audience in mind. “Instead of MTV or Comedy Central, we went with such programs as ’60 Minutes,’ ‘20/20’ and the early-morning and late-night news programs, along with the History and Discover channels,” he says.

As the film went nationwide, audiences for “Elizabeth” have grown progressively younger. “During the opening weekend, more than half the audience was over 35,” Schwartz says. “Now, the majority is under 35.”

But in most cases, even when a film is positioned to attract senior audiences, advertising and publicity are slanted toward the youth and yuppie markets, or at best toward general audiences of all ages. No one is more aware of this bias than the publishers of magazines for senior citizens.

Modern Maturity, published by the mammoth American Assn. of Retired Persons, goes to more than 21 million households. Yet, during his 12 years with the magazine, research director Silvers can recount few contacts with and no advertising by Hollywood studios.

Silvers grants that the magazine’s bimonthly publication schedule and $200,000 price tag for the Get Up & Go magazine chain last year, Dychtwald, a 48-year-old psychologist, has added a film review column. The current January issue features Clint Eastwood on the cover, with Sophia Loren to follow. Yet even though the magazine has 3.5 million readers, Dychtwald says he had a hard time getting Eastwood’s and Loren’s photos from their publicists.

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Analysts may reduce the senior population to a set of uniform statistics, but its members, of course, vary widely in movie tastes and attendance.

At one end of the spectrum is Paul Boyer, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1997. He and his wife Lyda, who live in West Los Angeles, cram their annual quota of three to four films into the Christmas holidays.

For the rest of the year, says the 80-year-old scientist, “I am too busy doing other things. Also, I don’t like to bother with parking, and I hate standing in lines. Besides, I sense that the movies have become obsessed with sex and violence.” In the opposite corner is Barbara Lewis, a business consultant just turned 50. She and her friend Emil Farkas, 52, of Sherman Oaks, are heavily into martial arts--he runs his own karate school in Beverly Hills--and they dote on Jackie Chan and rarely miss a good action picture.

“I work very hard and when I go to the movies, every one or two weeks, I want total escape,” says Lewis. She thinks that action pictures and their special effects are getting better.

Her choice of movies is based mainly on viewing the theater trailers. “I read the reviews, but I don’t listen to them,” she says.

Lewis’ neighbor, Marilyn Langford, a retired social worker and a church volunteer, cites a common complaint of seniors about current movies: the increasingly graphic violence.

“I don’t get too much upset about sex. I thought ‘All About Mary’ was outlandish but not offensive, she says of “There’s Something About Mary.” “But I can’t stand it when the characters gouge each other’s eyes out.”

A couple of times a month, Langford gets together with two or three female friends to have lunch and go to the lower-priced matinees. Her group has liked such period fare as “Sense and Sensibility,” but also counts the contemporary “As Good as It Gets” among its favorites.

Retired computer scientists Gerald and Thelma Estrin go to the movies a couple of times a week looking for dramatic rather than escapist fare. By contrast, the Carranzas opt for comedies, though they say they are hard put to find good ones. The couple is attracted to movies with certain stars, none of them newcomers.

The Carranzas agree that movies aren’t nearly as appealing as they were 40 years ago. “Those films were marvelous,” Fermin Carranza says. “Of course, we tend to remember the good ones and forget the bad ones.” Neither the rapid growth of the over-50 population nor the arguments of its spokesmen are likely to persuade major studios to produce more senior-friendly movies. “I can see no trend in that direction,” says marketing strategist Smith. “If anything, the big studios are moving in the opposite direction.”

At least one studio executive, taking the long view, sounds a different note. Chris Pula, Disney’s newly named marketing director, says one reason Hollywood plays to the mostly single, under-25 audience is that they are “impulse purchasers” who can decide to go to the movies on 10 minutes’ notice.

The same holds true for a portion of the senior crowd, he notes. After people retire and no longer have to worry about baby-sitters and business appointments, they can again hop down to the theater on the spur of the moment. As baby boomers retire, many before the customary 65 years, Pula hopes more will return to the moviegoing habits of their teen years.

“Hollywood will always make more movies aimed at young consumers, but with the exploding diversity of entertainment choices, you’ll see growing attention to neglected or niche markets,” Pula says. “That will mean more films targeting not only specific ethnic groups, but also folks in their 50s, 60s and beyond.”

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FACTS & FIGURES

Number of Americans 60 and older: 52.8 million

Number of Americans who are retired: 44 million

Percentage of total movie admissions in 1997 by people over 60: 9%

Percentage of total movie admissions in 1997 by people 30-39: 19%

Number of admissions in 1997 by people over 60: 126 million

Number of admissions in 1997 by people 30-39: 266 million

Price of a full-page ad in Modern Maturity: $200,000

Price of a full-page ad in Entertainment Weekly: $80,070

Source: Los Angeles Times, MPAA