Since at least the early 1980s, virtually every major studio, network and talent agency in Hollywood has engaged in a systematic pattern or practice of discrimination against writers of television programming on the basis of their age. The stereotypical assumption underlying this pattern or practice of discrimination is that older writers are unable to write in a manner that is appealing to the younger audiences the networks seek to attract.
~~ Class Action v Hollywood, United States District Court (California), filed October 20, 2000

A Pervasive Pattern of Age Discrimination

Gregory Widen: I hear a lot of those stories, but I don't know anybody personally who can say that happened to them. I suspect that that may be more true in television. The whole ageism and discrimination aspect of movies, I hear a lot about it, but I've honestly never seen it.

William Froug: Well, you're young, that may be why. [1]

Try to recall the truly memorable films of the past 20 years that have featured older actors. A quick selection might include Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond (1981). Don Ameche in Cocoon (1985). Jessica Tandy in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven (1992). Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau doing their schtick in Grumpy Old Men (1993). Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County (1995).

A pejorative list that suggests age discrimination is still very much alive in Tinseltown? A stellar scoop for Daily Variety, Yahoo! Entertainment or The Site Formerly Known As Inside.com? According to a class-action lawsuit filed in the US District Court (California), on 20 October 2000, older scriptwriters also face typecasting, openly acknowledged within the industry yet unspoken, especially if they write material for TV and ancillary markets. Filed by 28 writers on behalf of 7000 others, the lawsuit states unequivocally that the industry engages in "pervasive pattern of age discrimination"; the lawsuit names major studios, independent production houses, creative agencies and individual studio executives. Although the outcome of the lawsuit is still two to five years away, the ramifications may shake-up Hollywood as much as studio black-lists did during the 1950s McCarthy scare.

Imagine if Broadway had rejected the mega-successful musical adaptation of The Producers because creator Mel Brooks was over 40. Or imagine that Rolling Stone magazine and the music industry had conspired to prevent The Rolling Stones from recording and touring after Tattoo You (1981). On second thoughts, maybe that would have been a good idea . . .

Let's Lynch The Log-line Executive (Biafra Beat Mix)

Anna Hamilton Phelan: The only thing that would help, I guess, is everybody boycotting, if everybody stopped writing or started striking or something. But people don't seem to want to do that anymore. So I don't know what can be done . . . I don't think it's a conscious thing with the studio heads. God, I hope it isn’t. I think they just kind of subconsciously feel that only one age and one color and one sex can write. I mean, what else is there?

William Froug: It's fear of failure that drives the industry. [2]

In his insightful book Adventures in the Screen Trade (New York: Warner Books, 1983), William Goldman offers the advice that "Nobody knows anything" in Hollywood. Just as the spreadsheet had transformed corporate accounting practices in the early 1980s, the codification of scriptwriting knowledge into formulaic paradigms and software also transformed the creative process.

This knowledge had previously been part of the scriptwriter's skills-set (untacit), now it was made conscious (tacit) but without the necessary experience. This quantum leap in intellectual capital suited the post-Fordist structure of the film industry, especially the fast-paced production schedule and unceasing appetite of television. And just as the spreadsheet had anointed 'junk bond' financiers like Michael Milken, scriptwriting paradigms and software meant that creative control had migrated to MBA studio executives.

For the lawsuit targets, the ironies abound: studio exec jobs are tenuous, subject to changing market demands. The quarterly focus of Wall Street financial analysts is anathema to the metamorphoses that scripts must undergo. The MBAs who came to power in the mid-1980s, after Heaven's Gate (1980), were M&A specialists, not technicians of the imaginal. Yet because of the influence of business management theorists including Charles Handy and Tom Peters, these same executives are now embracing storytelling as a necessary tool of change in an ultra-competitive corporate ecosystem.

A final irony is that as the US population ages, there will be greater opportunity for addressing niche markets that the current obsession with youth fails to meet. Maybe when Michael Eisner realizes that he is losing invaluable cultural DNA, the industry will embrace change. Until then, to reverse the 1960s countercultural phrase, don't trust a studio executive under 30.

Endnotes:

[1] William Froug. The New Screenwriter Looks at the New Screenwriter (Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1991). p. 111.