John Ankele and I launched Old Dog Documentaries in 1987 when we were 45 years old – yes, we are the same age.
For the next 10 years, we made films about the effects of US Policy on people in the developing world. We explored the murky world of American weapons exported to poor countries. We told stories about AIDS in Africa, and stories about the crushing, unpayable debt imposed on the poorest countries. We documented how the corporate globalization of food threatens farmers in the U.S. and abroad, and we made several films about the LGBTQ communities as they struggled for recognition and acceptance from their churches.
By the time we did all that we were 55 years old and I was becoming aware of a growing inner resistance to my own aging process – I didn’t like it! But I didn’t like my resistance to it either, so I thought a good way to get past it might be to make a film about growing old – to look old age straight in the eye and see what it might reveal.
John was enthusiastic about the film idea, though I doubt he was too worried about his own aging. Luckily for us, Richard Kiley (the original Man of La Mancha) was a neighbour of mine, and Richard invited his friend Julie Harris, a six-time Tony Award winner, to co-host our film with him. Richard also invited actors James Earl Jones and Hume Cronyn to participate. John’s connections led us to American Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön and to Leni Sonnenfeld, a 90-year-old photojournalist of the Jewish diaspora. Eventually, we had collected nine remarkable people who were willing to speak frankly about their own experiences of growing old.
Those 9 people became our guides on the path of aging – or you could say they became our “Spiritual Guides” because the 56-minute film is filled with their wisdom and their radiance. It also contains their humor, their wonderful poetry readings and a welcome touch of cantankerousness – especially from Hume Cronyn.
Maryland Public Television liked the concept of this film and, in 1999, Grow Old Along With Me became the centerpiece of their December Pledge Drive program, which was broadcast nationally.
Grow Old Along With Me does not deal with the great (and heartbreaking) inequities of aging. We did not include images of lonely, neglected people in nursing homes. Those documentaries are necessary and there are many excellent ones available. Instead, we were looking for something else: we wanted to know what it is like to grow old, and we wanted to hear it, first hand, from people who were already experiencing aging and, in some cases, experiencing the worst of it – Richard Kiley had a progressive terminal illness which he managed all during the filming months. He died a few weeks after the film was completed.
John and I think this is a beautiful film – full of color and music and great poetry; full of gifted people – our guides – who proved to us that old age need not be resisted or feared. It can, in fact, be fully (and fiercely) embraced. A poem by Kay Boyle (read by Julie Harris in the film) says perfectly what I am trying to say.
At this writing, we are at the very end of 2021. John and I no longer need to hear from others what it feels like to grow old- we are both on the cusp of 80 now – 35 years after we started Old Dog Documentaries. We are still here, still making films (mostly on the climate crisis) and we are grateful for the longevity that allows us to remain engaged and ‘in the game’. James Earl Jones and Pema Chödrön are still here, too. Our other 7 guides are gone now, but they are fully present and fully alive in our film, so we invite you to meet them (or reacquaint yourself with them) and to join us on this journey of Aging, “the last of life, for which the first was made..”
View the whole film here: https://www.olddogdocumentaries.org/product/grow-old-along-with-me/
