George R. R, Martin is 67 years old. He’s the originator of the Emmy winning Best Drama, Game of Thrones. He seems to be doing quite well in television at his advanced age. It does happen. Of course he was a successful novelist first.
However, that is most certainly not the case with most writers over 67, or 57.
The unfortunate truth is there is ageism in Hollywood. However, that doesn’t mean writers in their 50’s can’t get jobs or writing assignments. It just means your chances get harder, especially if you’re over 40. But it CAN be done.
First lets examine why ageism happens.
To clarify, this blog should be titled Are You To Old To Start Writing For Hollywood? As long as you start in your 20’s or 30’s, you can write as long as you can hold on to your career. However, a 20 year career doesn’t happen easily. It takes hard work, and insight.
How can you hold onto your career?
If you can keep writing for twenty years straight, you are, likely to keep working in Hollywood, as long as you’re still writing at a professional level, and keep working. This is partly a matter of luck.
For example, if you are writing for TV, if you keep getting jobs on shows that only last a year, your chances of having a short career go up.
If you get lucky, and your first job is on Game of Thrones, for example, you’re likely going to move up from staff writer to Story Editor, to Producer and eventually to Executive Producer. Of course you have to consistently write at the level of the show or better.
If your scripts are constantly being rewritten by the other writers, and you don’t seem to be capturing the character’s voices, or the tone of the show, you might not be asked back at the end of the season. But if you’re good, you’ll keep moving up.
If you work on a string of shows that are cancelled in their first year, you don’t get known for being writer on a hit show. This puts you in a lesser category. Producers and network people may start to think of you as a “B” show writer.
So you don’t become the first choice on the next show you have an opportunity to work on. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You keep getting hired on “B” shows.
There is a way out of this. Sell a script to an “A” show. For example, the “A” shows today are Homeland, Game of Thrones, Ray Donovan, Veep, The Big Bang Theory, Silicon Valley, Orange Is The New Black and Better Call Saul.
Even selling one episode on those shows will help you move up to “A” show levels.
There’s another factor. In Hollywood, everyone’s asking “what have you done lately? If you go two years without selling a script, studios and networks start to forget about you.
That’s how careers end.
And in feature screenwriting, it’s much harder to sell consistently. So few feature film scripts are bought by studios these days, it hard to keep selling year after year.
Why is that? At least half the movies made today are superhero films, kid’s films, or prequels, sequels, or remakes. Those films are considered lower risk, because they have a built-in audience.
The studios are going to give those scripts to their tried and true best writers.
Another reason it gets harder to get hired if you’re older is that the showrunners in TV, and the network executives are generally between 20 to 35 years old. A 28 year old showrunner is going to feel awkward about giving notes to an older writer.
Most of the writers on a TV staff are going to be 20 to 35. So, Executive Producers want a writer’s room that gets along together, that will socialize with each other. So the 28 year old showrunner will try to keep the age range down.
There is also a perception that younger writers relate better to younger audiences. This may not be true, but that’s what people think. In TV, advertisers want to reach young adults, so they can show their ads to people who haven’t developed “brand preferences” yet.
So you get the recently married couple to start buying Volvos. There’s a chance they’ll remain Volvo customers for life and their kids will pick up on it ultimately.
In features, there’s a preconceived notion, that may or may not be true, that says people who see movies are people who are dating, so, again young adults. Lots of movies come out each year, especially romantic comedies that are meant to draw in teens and young adults.
Think about movies like The Hunger Games, or Maze Runner, or Harry Potter, or Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck, or any Paul Rudd or Jennifer Aniston comedy.
There’s also a huge children’s market for films. Kids find out about these movies, like Cinderella, or other Disney, or Pixar movies and they don’t stop screaming until their parents take them to see the latest kid movie. Parents can’t fight it.
This explains the “need for new young writers” in Hollywood. It’s part of Hollywood thinking, but it’s BS.
In Part 2, more about how older writers can buck the trends.
If you’re struggling to come up with a great idea for a screenplay, or if you’ve started one and just can’t figure out how to finish it, call for a free phone consult from a veteran screenwriter.
Image credit: Creative Commons George R. R. Martin at Amazon.com, 2011 by Shane Lin, is licensed under CC By 2.0