Billy Wilder died in 2002, but he had retired from directing a couple of decades earlier, in 1981, at age 75. His heart problems and unhealthy lifestyle meant that no company was willing to grant him the insurance policy necessary to continue working. So he dedicated his old age to collecting art, with the “bulimic enthusiasm” that he was not allowed to pour into cinema.
The new Hollywood generation, which revolutionized the seventh art back in the 1970s, has not encountered that problem. Scorsese, Allen, Coppola, De Palma, Malick and Schrader still enjoy the rare privilege of continuing to make films at very advanced ages. Some of them, if the biological imperative allows it, could beat the creative longevity record of the Portuguese Manoel de Oliveira, who announced that he was taking a sabbatical year at the age of 101, after the premiere of The strange case of Angelica (2010), and still had time to pick up the clapperboard again and direct another couple of films. The problem that the new batch of septuagenarians and octogenarians in Hollywood is encountering is that his films apparently arouse a waning enthusiasm both among the Z public and among the business leaders.
Coppola has been the latest to encounter obstacles that could derail his career. Megalopolis, his first film in 13 years (since the failure of Twixt, an out-of-tune and muted Coppola), it took a while to find a distributor in Europe (in Spain it will be Tripictures, at the end of this year) and it still does not have one in the US. It has been of little use that the director of The Godfather invest in it the 120 million dollars that he has obtained by selling a large part of his Californian vineyards. Self-financed and with a stellar cast, after 43 years of intermittent gestation, the film was presented in public at the end of March in a private screening for 300 people, and two months later, at the Cannes Festival. At that screening she garnered polite applause, but no one, not Paramount, not Disney, not Netflix, not Warner, not Sony, has been willing to bet on her.
In parallel, David Lynch, who is seven years younger than Coppola and is usually considered to be from the generation immediately after him, has just had the doors of Netflix closed, which will not invest a single cent in Snootworld, the ambitious animated film from the director of Blue velvet. It was of little use that Lynch enlisted Caroline Thompson, screenwriter of family film classics such as Edward Scissorhands either Nightmare Before Christmas. The old-style fairy tale that the Montana illusionist is putting together sounds to Netflix like a stale relic that is not worth risking your money for. Lynch himself has shown himself willing to leave the direction in the hands of his daughter Jennifer, author of Helena Boxing or various episodes of series such as American Horror Story. Whatever it takes for a project he describes as “outlandish and crazy” to have a chance.
Another veteran in trouble is John Waters, the sniper of eschatology and (exquisite) bad taste who scandalized the world with dunghill pearls like Pink Flamingos. Waters has announced that he has actress Aubrey Plaza (The White Lotus) for a new project, Liarmouth, for whom the only thing missing is the most important thing: money. Waters starts from his own novel, published in 2022, to turn into a film the chaotic adventures of Marsha Sprinkle, white-collar thief, con artist, queen of disguises. She is an “intelligent, deranged and not completely sane” woman, hated by “dogs and children” and whom “her own family wants to see dead.” The most illustrious generator of cinematographic detritus is now 78 years old and has not directed a film in 20 years. Film critic Peter Debruge is asked in Variety What the hell is Hollywood waiting for to lend this man the money he needs to continue fighting, now that cinema needs “his indecency and lack of prejudice” more than ever?
Even Woody Allen, author, at 88, of 50 films, told the magazine Airmail that no longer rules out that the one that premiered a few months ago, Stroke of luck, ends up being the last. He claims to have new projects in the glove box, but he is increasingly less willing to “go out and look for the money necessary to make them a reality.” He finds it an embarrassing procedure, if not humiliating: “If someone calls me to make a proposal, I will be happy to listen to it, but I am no longer old enough to go begging from door to door.” Martin Scorsese (81 years old
), on the other hand, seems to be doing better than ever in the new ecosystem of content platforms. The Queens filmmaker has known how to sell himself to the highest bidder (The Irish to Netflix, The Moon Killers to Paramount and Apple TV+) and works at the healthy pace of a film every three or four years since the forceful relaunch of his career that represented The wolf of Wall Street.
Scorsese has found on TikTok, a platform that his daughter Francesca joined, an unusual shortcut to connect with new generations. His casting Oscar, the acting dog whom he presents as the legitimate heir to De Niro and DiCaprio, is a viral masterpiece. But yours is an isolated case. For most of his contemporaries, it is becoming clear, Hollywood is no country for old men.
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