OLDER WRITERS: NOT IN SCRIPT?

T ake a Meeting, Scene One : A producer’s office in Hollywood. The producer, a woman about 25 years old, is meeting with a well-known writer, another woman, 70, to discuss a possible assignment on a feature film. This is their first meeting and the producer is surprised by the writer’s age.

“Oh, dear,” the producer says, “this is a love story, do you think you can write a love scene?”

Take a Meeting, Scene Two : A very successful husband-and-wife writing team--he’s 65, she’s 58--are meeting with a production executive for one of the networks’ most respected and prolific suppliers. The production company loves the couple’s idea for an action/drama series, but doesn’t want them to write it.

“It’s a great idea and I’m sure we can sell it,” the executive says. “But we really need to get somebody young and hot before we go to the networks with it.”

Take a Meeting, Scene Three : An agent is on the telephone with a young production executive at a major studio. The exec explains that the studio is casting for a miniseries and that the name of one of the agent’s clients came up.

“You do handle Deborah Farr, don’t you?,” the exec asks.

“Deborah KERR ,” the agent says.

“Right, Deborah Kerr. Could you tell me some of the things she’s done?”

What’s going on here? The Little Rascals have taken over Hollywood. Charlie Brown and Lucy are production executives and Dennis the Menace is in charge of audience research. The inmates are running the nursery. This is the first generation in human history where the children sit around the campfire telling the elders stories.

The three incidents cited above all occurred, and they are typical of the kinds of stories being reported to the age-discrimination committee of the Writers Guild of America West. There are stories of older writers (rigor mortis of the intellect sets in, seen from the view of puberty, at about age 40) changing their names, dropping their credits and teaming up with young writers who act as fronts at story conferences.

Some younger writers moving inexorably toward middle age are artificially stalling the clock by shaving years off their age on official bios.

“When I was 31, I dropped three years off my age,” said one writer, who is now biologically 35 and professionally 32. “This business is very young. You go in to meet with people in the story departments about scripts and you’re talking to kids who are 22 or 23 years old.”

More than half of the 6,000 members of the Writers Guild are over 40, and though production executives, casting directors and agents deny there is any established policy against hiring older writers, there is no question that youth is preferred.

“It is primarily a thing with episodic television where there’s going to be an ongoing relationship,” said one agent. “They (networks and production companies) are always looking for the new writer, the new talent. There’s the attitude that older writers have burned out.”

“It has become widespread; agents are not sending out older writers,” said Mort Thaw, vice chairman of the guild’s age-discrimination committee. “The perception is that older writers cannot write stories about younger people, or they cannot write stories that appeal to younger people.”

Thaw said his committee has heard from Emmy-winning writers who can no longer get assignments. There are stories of dissatisfied older writers deciding to switch agents, only to find themselves out in the cold, unable--despite their credits--to get other representation.

One writer, in his 70s, spotted the trend several years ago and launched a new career writing novels. He said most of the people he had been able to count on for assignments were gone, replaced by hatchlings, so he decided to go, too.

“You get to a point where you’re in a room explaining what you’ve done before and the kid has never heard of them. I thought, ‘What do you prefer to do, write the garbage they’re putting on the air, or see how far you can stretch yourself?’ I chose to do the latter.”

Thaw and the others suggested several possibilities for the apparent disdain for older writers.

--The young execs were all reared on TV, rather than literature, and are merely recycling all the themes and stories they passively absorbed as children.

--In film, there is the lust for the blockbuster, the picture that will connect with teen-agers, gross a fortune and assure everyone involved in it of a career.

--Young agents and executives are intimidated or uncomfortable working with people twice or three times their age.

“Maybe there’s some Freudian thing where it’s difficult to deal with your father,” said Alan Mannings, the creator of “One Day at a Time.” “It’s more comfortable for them to tell people their own age what to do.”

The 70-year-old writer who was asked if she could write a love scene agreed with Mannings.

“I think she (the young producer) looked at me and saw her mother. Young people, liberated as they are, still get very up-tight thinking about their parents having sex. The implication is that once you’re past a certain age, you’ve either forgotten what love is, or it’s no longer part of your life. I’m pretty sure that the sexual revolution didn’t change the facts of life.”

Thaw said the Writers Guild is trying to accumulate enough material to take action against people in the industry who are practicing age discrimination. In the meantime, they hope to educate the public about the decline of the state of storytelling that comes with being overly dependent on the “young and hot.”

“Established writers used to help young writers get a toehold in the business,” Thaw said. “Now, they’re going to young writers to help them hold on to their careers. It’s criminal. This is the only profession I know where experience means nothing and, in fact, may hurt you.”

Take a Meeting, Scene Four (a fantasy) : A story conference at Big Production Co. A junior executive, age 23, is introducing a hot young writer, 21, to the head of the company, age 27.

“Here he is, Harry. I’m telling you, he’s terrific. Types 110 words a minute.”

“So, what have you got, kid?”

“What do you need? I’ve got a remake of ‘Citizen Kane,’ set in New York, about a backup singer who ends up owning a chain of discos. I’ve got a story about a soda shop chef who loses his leg in a hunting accident and makes a comeback. It’s sort of a cross between ‘The Monty Stratton Story’ and ‘Happy Days.’ ”

“Have you got anything . . . uh, what am I trying to say, fresh?”

“Well, I’ve got an idea for a TV series about a father who knows nothing. ‘Father Knows Best,’ only it’s done like ‘Sanford and Son.’ ”

“No, no. I mean original. Maybe something that you’ve done in your own life. You know, a real life experience.”

“You mean like, ‘What I did during my summer vacation?”’

“Yeah, that’s it. Great idea.”

“What did I tell you, Harry, the kid’s hot.”