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The Rediscovered -Older Filmgoers- Still Count as Bums on Seats
 When Hollywood marketing gurus speak about "the older audience," they generally don't mean older by much. Box office tallies, for instance, are often reviewed with an eye to the percentage of moviegoers over and under the age of 25. Yet change is afoot. Some filmmakers and smaller distributors have discovered a secret society of mature moviegoers, and they have decided that this audience may actually be worth courting.
One of the most striking recent forays toward the older audience comes from Susan Seidelman, 53, who established herself as a hip young director when she made "Smithereens" in 1982 and "Desperately Seeking Susan" with Madonna in 1985.
Last year Ms. Seidelman made "Boynton Beach Club," a comedy about romance in a community for the elderly in Florida, starring a raft of 60-ish performers like Dyan Cannon, Sally Kellerman, Brenda Vaccaro, Len Cariou, Joe Bologna and Renée Taylor. Ms. Seidelman financed the movie independently, then tried to sell it to one of the studios.
"They all said to me, 'It's a nice movie, but we don't believe there's enough commercial potential in that demographic,' " Ms. Seidelman recalled. "That didn't compute for me. I'm over 50, and I go to the movies at least once a week. My mother is over 70, and she goes twice a week. My 16-year-old son barely goes at all. He's online all the time. I think people over 50 are the most under-represented audience." (Statistics compiled by the Motion Picture Association of America show that moviegoers 50 and older accounted for 23.9 percent of the total audience last year, up slightly from 21.3 percent in 2001.)
The film got the attention of audiences in South Florida and Palm Springs, Calif., when Ms. Seidelman engineered a limited release in those regions. Now, "Boynton Beach Club" will be seen around the country when Roadside Attractions releases it on Aug. 4.
This article can be read in full in the New York Times
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