WHAT HAPPENS ON SCREEN DOESN'T STAY ON SCREEN

For a long time, Hollywood had a pretty clear message about aging. It was, pretty much, don’t do it.

You know it. The slow fade when an actor moves from main character to supporting role to bit part. The actress who becomes invisible when she hits 35. The man whose best years are framed in the past tense. The butt of the joke. The cautionary tale. And we absorbed that messaging as a society.

But over the last few years, something has been shifting. We have seen recent movies like The Substance, featuring a 60+ year old Demi Moore in horror film that's all about combatting ageism at work. We saw it with The Idea of You, featuring a love story between a woman (Anne Hathaway) in her 40s and a decades younger music star. We saw shows like Grace and Frankie (Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin) with full casts (and fuller lives) in their 70s and 80s. And now there's data to prove that it's mattered.

According to AARP research, 1 in 3 people now say watching film and TV makes them feel more positive about aging. That's not a small number - and it's not an accident. It's the result of real, concerted, deliberate movement in Hollywood toward more honest, more human storytelling about the second half of life. The older adults on screen today are increasingly the protagonists living unabashedly in their main character era - complex, ambitious, funny, powerful, living fully. That's a meaningful shift from where we were.

And it matters far beyond the movie theater or television (or who am I kidding, tablet or smartphone). Cinema is a mirror to our society. Turns out, we don't stop living at some arbitrary age. We don't stop wanting, creating, contributing, thriving, or working. And by the way, adults over 50 control more than 70% of this country's disposable income - the most economically powerful demographic in America. Ignoring or marginalizing that audience is business suicide. 

The culture is slowly catching up to the reality that our stories matter as we age. But the work isn't done.

AARP's Movies for Grownups Awards exists to change that story. And TODAY, it airs on PBS (at 6/7pm Central). Hosted by Alan Cumming, honoring Adam Sandler with the Career Achievement Award, and featuring a lineup that includes George Clooney, Sharon Stone, Noah Wyle, Kathy Bates, Paul Mescal, Henry Winkler, and more, it's going to be a good time.

I was lucky enough to attend a behind-the-scenes session with AARP about the upcoming show, brought to us by my friend and colleague Amy Nelson - and what I learned made me want to make sure everyone I know watches this. 

As AARP's Movies for Grownups leaders Heather Nawrocki and Caitlin Rossman described, this awards show is different. It isn't glitzy for the sake of glitz. It's true cultural advocacy, just all dressed up in a ballgown and a tuxedo. It puts the right people - celebrated talent, industry executives, Oscar voters - in a room together and makes the case loudly that age-positive storytelling is both meaningful and commercially smart. This is about trying to move the needle on what gets made, the stories that get told. 

And another cool part is it's deliberately intergenerational. Younger stars like Elle Fanning are invited not just for the marquee, but because the message lands differently when it's not just older adults saying it. When a 27-year-old walks that red carpet and is asked the same question as a 75-year-old - "What do you love about being your age?" - the implicit point is made that we all have wisdom and value at each stage of our lives. It's about all of us, and the futures we're each moving toward. Which is infinitely richer when it includes a blend of our stories and experiences. 

That question is the thesis of the whole enterprise. Aging isn't something happening to you. It's something you're actively doing - living. And there's much more to love about getting older than our culture has been willing to admit.

Watch it TODAY. Share it with someone who needs the reminder that they don't have an expiration date.

We all know the saying “if you can see it, you can be it.” And right now, what we need to see is people living their fullest lives - with experience, depth, and power - well into the decades Hollywood told us were the end of the story.

They're not. Not even close.