It's hard to be hip after 50 -- or any other time

THOMPSON E-mail: Click here

© St. Petersburg Times
published May 25, 2002

Last weekend we went to the movies at WestShore Plaza to see Infidelity, which one review described as "a movie about adultery for adults." The lobby was crawling with kids -- Spiderman was playing in a bunch of theaters, and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones had just opened. The "movie for adults" was playing in a theater so small that sitting in the second row from the back meant sitting in the second row. (Not counting those awful rows in front of the wide horizontal aisle.)

So much for being an adult. Infidelity delivered what I'd expected -- a good performance by Diane Lane in the throes of sexual obsession, worth the price of the ticket, luckily, since nothing else in the movie made much sense. But it didn't occur to me until later that what really didn't make sense was this: The husband Diane Lane's character is cheating on is played by Richard Gere.

Richard Gere! Remember American Gigolo? Richard Gere used to be the sexiest man alive. Now he's the slightly annoying husband who quotes stock prices and teaches his kid to make rude sounds with his underarm. When Gere approaches the young hunk with whom his wife is having an affair, his first words are, "How old are you?"

Indeed. I guess I could feel good that what happens to women actors now happens to men: After a certain age, they become the cheated on, not the cheated with. But I don't.

Saturday night we went to Tropical Heatwave, WMNF's annual party, with 30 bands playing from 6 p.m. until 3 a.m. at the Cuban Club and environs in Ybor City. I have to say I am an unlikely person to find there, since I stopped listening to pop music around 1968, but I had been driving to Sarasota once a week for the past few months and, to break the monotony, listened to Marcie Finkelstein's show on WMNF. I heard Michelle Shocked for the first time. (I know, I know.) She was playing at Heatwave at an almost-civilized 9:25, so I got tickets to go.

When we got into the courtyard of the Cuban Club around 9, there were already about a hundred people sitting in chairs in front of the bandstand. No seats left, so my husband and I dragged over the only two remaining folding chairs from a table and set them up at the back of the crowd.

Then, just before 9:25, someone -- I think from WMNF, but the mike was off -- came on stage and told the audience that this was a stand-up concert, no chairs. No chairs! A whole audience of mostly no-longer-young people had already assembled, setting up their own outdoor concert hall with illegal chairs. After some grumbling the chairs dispersed, and Michelle Shocked and her band kept us standing -- even dancing -- for an hour and a half. The next day I wasn't sorry, but parts of my body continued to remind me of the benefit of chairs.

A few weekends ago, we went to the Tampa Theatre to see Italian for Beginners, an awful title, especially for a film that's not Italian. From the back of the theater while the lights were still on, I surveyed and noticed -- even more so than at any time before -- that almost the entire audience had gray hair. This was a little scary; what will happen when all of us die? Will there be no audience for anything but Star Wars? The film playing was not by Merchant and Ivory, which might make it understandable, but by the hip Danish film collective Dogme.

In the lobby madhouse at West Shore Plaza on Friday night, I advised my husband: "Take a close look now, so we'll appreciate going to the movies all by ourselves at Channelside." Independent and foreign movies -- movies for adults! -- still play there. We'll finally see Y Tu Mama Tambien this weekend, probably with a small, noticeably adult, audience.

It may be hard to be hip after 50, but I'm thinking maybe it's even harder if you're young.

Unless an exposed belly button and pants that hang somewhere around the pubic bone are what make you that way, but I'm not even going to go there.

-- Sandra Thompson is a writer living in Tampa. She can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com. City Life appears on Saturday.

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