Bucking the “Invisible After Fifty” Stereotype

There is something about Mary Tucker.

My friend seems like a normal enough person when you meet her. That is, normal in the sense of having been an attentive mom to her two daughters, a support to her husband, and an active member of her community. She’s smart, funny, has successfully managed some rental property on the side, and written occasionally for local publications over the years. She’s someone you could meet at PTA or at the grocery store. But there is more to her than meets the eye.

It isn’t just her enthusiasm, creativity, or her writing talent, although she has those aplenty. No, her “something” is that at fifty, she wasn’t afraid to follow her muse in an unexpected and unfamiliar direction—filmmaking. We’ve all heard that women start becoming invisible after fifty; Mary isn’t buying into that for herself or any other woman.

In fact, her curious and intrepid spirit was part of my inspiration for starting WomenBloom. How did she go from mom and wife to rubbing elbows at film festivals?

Three or four years ago, Mary decided to take a creative writing course and wrote a story about a woman unhappily caring for an elderly relative. A year or so later, she happened across a contest for screenwriters. First prize was getting your short screenplay turned into a movie.

She suddenly had the idea that her story might make a good screenplay, and that re-writing it into a different format would be a fun challenge. She decided to enter. “It was one of those things. I knew when I put it in the envelope, it was going to have significance in my life … I thought I might win this thing,” Mary said.

Gentle reader, in case you think this is a complete fairy tale of a story, Mary did not win first place with her screenplay. She came in second. Exciting, but no film deal. Nonetheless, the outcome did turn out to be significant. When she told her niece about the contest, the aspiring actress and writer offered to help turn the story into a film.

“It was more than somebody offering to help; it was somebody giving me permission to do something I didn’t realize I could do. I am so grateful although it makes me a little sad, that it was someone else who had to give me permission … to show me I could do it,” Mary explained.

Mary laughs ruefully now to think that only seven weeks after her niece’s offer, she had a completed short film. “That was really stupid. I didn’t know what I was doing and it wasn’t done carefully. That movie didn’t do very well.” It did land in the SXSW Reel Women Showcase but went no further.

Undaunted, the next short film she wrote and directed was planned much more deliberately. She collaborated with a director of photography for three months before she actually shot it. He encouraged her to work through the basics of making a film, helping her think through each shot very carefully. Eventually, she created her most important tool, a storyboard using photographs.

Her thoughtful approach paid off. Her second film landed in more than sixteen film festivals, a few of which were Academy Award-qualifying film festivals, including Nashville Film Festival, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, and DC International Film Festival, to name only a few.