The crisis of the forties. What does that even mean? For me, it’s something that came out of American cinema, a cliché that drives the plot of comedies. All the Woody Allen movies in the 70s, or Billy Crystal as a city dweller who goes on a cattle drive with his two best friends in “Stop the City, I Want to Get Down” to bring the smile back to his life (to be precise, his character there is 39 years old but the crisis is of 40). What references do we already have for this in Israel? Especially the movie “Tel Aviv Los Angeles”, where Dodo Topaz plays a 40-year-old failed comedian who hasn’t been able to make the big break yet. In any case, it was always something that seemed very distant to me, mainly because I was first exposed to these movies and shows as a child and when you’re a child whose biggest concern in life is finishing an assignment for home economics class. From age 10, the distance to age 40 is measured in light years.
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My biggest crisis was actually the crisis of the age of 30. I was right after film studies. A recent graduate who made an acclaimed final film and screened at festivals around the world. I was sure that the world was spread out at my feet, and maybe it really was spread out there for a moment, but I quickly stopped feeling that way. Going out into the real world was a hard fall for me. Without a framework to act in, I found myself sinking very quickly into seclusion in my parents’ house and a depression that lasted for several years. But luckily, I had and still have a loving and supportive family and good friends who helped me get out of this crisis. But during the decade after I returned to creating, I reached new heights in my career and led a more successful social life than I had in my twenties, and at the age of forty I found myself in a creative flourish that I had not experienced in all the years until then: I was in the midst of filming and editing my debut film, a full-length documentary about The Turntable Club, where I spent my 20s. When the movie came out earlier this year to critical acclaim, I could finally lie in bed and say to myself, “Come on, I’ve done something in this life.” How many people can really say that?
something to do with your life. “Furious and Fast” poster, Itzker’s movie about the turntable club
In Richard Linklater’s cult film Dazed and Confused, Wooderson’s character appears, the (relatively) older star played gracefully by Matthew McConaughey. Wooderson is in his third decade but still hangs out with high schoolers and starts with young girls. In one sentence he says in the middle of the film, he succeeds in distilling the (rather pathetic) philosophy of life according to which he operates: “Why do I like high school girls? I get old and they stay the same age.” My equivalent of that is seeing how I’m getting older than the characters I grew up with in film and television, even George Costanza who looked 50 but was actually 35. It doesn’t always make you feel better.
This month I will be 43 years old. In recent years I find myself connecting more with Michael Douglas in the excellent series “The Kominsky Method”, even though he is already in his 70s. He plays a respected acting teacher whose acting career did not take off over the years, until at the end of the series, sorry for the spoiler, he experiences renewed success and prosperity and is cast in the main role he has been waiting for all his life. From age 40, the distance to age 70 is no longer measured in light years. Just in normal years.