AS ONE OF the stars
of the new romantic
comedy The Light-
keepers, Richard
Dreyfuss says he
knows why few on-screen love
stories involve characters over 50.
“ When the kids find out that their
parents make love, they immedi-
ately go, ‘I don’t want to hear about
it! Ugh! I’m disgusted!’” he says.
“When you make a movie, you have
to take that into consideration.”
He needn’t worry. The Lightkeep-
ers, which costars Dreyfuss’s old
friend Blythe Danner, is one of the
sweetest grown-up love stories to
come to the screen in years. He’s a
grizzled old lighthouse keeper who
Movies
for
Grownups®
suddenly finds himself face-to-face
with the wife he left years before (a
radiant Danner). The couple’s tentative reconnection, and their subsequent rediscovery of the things
they loved about each other, is as
tender a love tale as you’ll find.
“It’s rare to find grownup love
stories,” says Danner, “especially
in this youth-oriented society,
always waiting for the next hot
kid to come along.” Still, Dreyfuss
adds, he doesn’t expect anyone to
mistake him for a sex symbol.
“People like to watch beautiful
bodies, rather than bodies that were
once beautiful,” he says, hastening
to add, “although in Blythe’s case
there’s no problem.” —Bill Newcott
SANDS OF TIME
Danner and Dreyfuss shine
in The Lightkeepers.
Books
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Foxy Lady
“What’s the movie about?”
Pam Grier asked her agent
in 1970. His response: “It’s
about women in a prison
in the jungle. Bondage,
torture, attempted es-
cape, addiction, machine
guns, sex. The usual.”
Grier said yes to the
B-movie role—that of “a
tough-talking bisexual
prostitute” in The Big Doll
House (1971). Like many
of her early films, the
movie was entertainingly
bad. But don’t blame that
entirely on Grier: to pre-
pare, as she winningly
retells the story in Foxy:
My Life in Three Acts,
she immersed herself
in the works of Ingmar
Bergman.
Foxy Brown (1974) established her as “one of
the primary blaxploitation
queens” of the mid-1970s.
More recently she starred
in Showtime’s The L Word.
“I never intend to retire,”
says 60-year old Grier. “I
love having a purpose.”
—Allan Fallow
CENTER: COURTESY OF NEW FILMS INTERNATIONAL
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Dreams of a Carpenter “I’m a zephyr on the inside,” sings Mary Chapin
Carpenter, who gracefully charts the struggle between personal turmoil and dreams
of flight on her new album, The Age of Miracles. Carpenter reflects on the Tiananmen
Square protests in “ 4 June 1989” and ponders the inner life of Ernest Hemingway’s
first wife in this beautiful and brave collection of songs. —Richard Gehr
Music
14 AARP MAY&JUNE 2010
