How Old is Too Old to Be a Screenwriter?

Posted on September 5, 2008 in General Screenwriting | No Comments

Raymond Chandler wrote his first screenplay at 56. He didn’t even publish his first novel until he was 51. For the record, he wrote the original screenplays for ‘Double Indemnity’ and ‘Strangers On A Train.’

In 1939, after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s career as a novelist had faltered, he needed money fast. He went to Hollywood and found work as a screenwriter. He was 43 years old. William Faulkner wrote his first screenplay at 48. Joseph Mankiewitz (who, incidentally, rewrote Fitzgerald) was well over 35 when he wrote ‘All About Eve.’

As for contemporary screenwriters: William Goldman is pushing 70; David Mamet is 53; the Coen brothers are over 35. Academy Award®-winning authors of ‘Shakespeare In Love,’ Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman, are no spring chickens. Norman is closer to 60 than 50, and Stoppard turns 64 this year. But these guys all fall under the category of ‘established’ screenwriters. They’ve been around awhile, i.e. since they fell under the category of ‘young’ screenwriters. So maybe the rules don’t count for them. There’s nothing like a track record to get a pitch meeting, a script read and a deal.

So, the more relevant question has to do not with the plight of established screenwriters, but with the new screenwriter with a few miles on him or her? And when I use the term ‘new,’ I don’t limit that to the ‘older’ person who starts his first screenplay tomorrow. I’m also including that huge pool of hearty souls who’ve been writing screenplays for years and years (or decades) without getting so much as a foot in the door. It’s getting that foot in that door that leads me to the two things older screenwriters have going against them. The Big A’s: Ageism and Access.

The Ageism factor is pretty easy to understand. Somehow, older (and presumably wiser) isn’t necessarily better or smarter. In Hollywood think, a 23-year-old will write a more commercially viable script than a 43-year-old or 53-year-old. They might be right, if the plot has to do with high school or college kids (‘American Pie,’ ‘Road Trip’ or any Freddy Prinze Jr. movie). But when it comes to stories with depth and weight, I think it’s fair to say that age and life experience will supercede youth and inexperience.

Not that screenwriters over 35 aren’t capable of writing dumb, inane and just plain awful scripts. And don’t assume for one second that there aren’t young screenwriters who’ve written wonderful, complex, smart, wise-beyond-their-years scripts.

This happens more often than you might think. I’ve experienced it firsthand. I’ve been teaching screenwriting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in The Department of Dramatic Writing and Film & Television Department since 1988. I’ve taught well over a thousand students, most of them