European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 9, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                By Aljean Harmetz new York times when driving miss Daisy topped $100-Miflion at the Box office in the United states in May that feat underscored something that has become increasingly obvious to american movie makers icon agers no longer Are the prime audience. For nearly a decade Between Star wars in 1977 and top gun in 1986, Hollywood a pumped adults. The studios used their heavy reels of celluloid As weapons aimed at moviegoers Between the Ages of 12 and 20. Adult audiences were too Picky. And even when they liked a movie adults rarely went Back to see it a second time. Teen agers would pay to see the same movie half a dozen limes. As an added Bonus they would buy sweatshirts lunch boxes Cereal and jewelry emblazoned with the movies logo. A there is no longer the fear of making a movie for an older audience,1�?T says Jack Brodsky a producer at 20lh Century Fox in movie jargon however Quot old Quot is Over 25 and despite the Success of Quot miss Daisy Quot a the Academy award winning movie about an old jewish widow and her Hynek chauffeur a few movies Are Likely to focus on older characters or the concerns of the Middle aged. Quot Anbyn y who starts to make a series of movies based on  Putric audiences will have a sad Awakening Quot nays Ned Tanen former president of both Universal and Paramount studios. For n it Yvo movie executives feel that their Core audio is Between the Ages of 20 and 35 when studios Ai red to a 12 to 20-year old com audience the in if u  was or sexual initiation. Now it is on a Proem Jun recent movies about having babies include i men men and a baby parenthood look who  movie told from the Point cd View of an infant. Baby Boom and she s having a baby. The first id ice fad the Box office Jackpot. The a w parents in the audience Are the teen agers of the last i made. Unlike the generation  preceded them the have remained consistent moviegoers a Hollywood pays court to the Young adult characterized by a shrinking poo of teen agers Young adults Are being courted now. But people Over 40 Are still out of Luck. One movie project defiantly titled 50has been languishing at Tri Star for several years even though it is based on a successful novel of the same title by Avery Gorman and at one time Richard Dreyfuss was willing to Star As a Man facing his 50th birthday. A a the audience Over 40 still does no to go to the movies with enough regularity to make pictures just for them Quot says Thomas Pollock chairman of Universal pictures. Quot but it s growing. And that audience tends to like the same movies As people from 25 to 40.�?� As one glance at such summer movies As robocop2\ gremlins 2, die hard2 another 48hrs, and Back to the future part show most movies will continue to be hard Core mind Candy. A for practical reasons the Basic ingredient of movies Are action sex violence and stars Quot says Richard Zanuck the producer who spent four years trying to get a studio to put up the Money for Quot miss  however the aging and grading of american has already affected the kinds of comedies and dramas being made. In 1980. Teen agers made up 42 percent of the audience and studios were catering almost solely to them. In 1976, before the teenage epidemic hit. The two movies that led the Box office were one flew Over the cuckoo s nest a drama about confronting authority in a mental Hospital and All the president s men the Story of the watergate scandal a movies that challenged audiences and appealed to adults until platoon took second place to Beverly Hills cop ii in 1987, no movie that challenged audiences was close to the top again. The Box office Gold went to comic Book heroes or comic Book adventures Superman the Empire strikes Back raiders of the lost Ark Back to the future ghost stars Indiana Jones and the Temple of doom. During those 10 years one adult comedy to Ltd Tsie and one melodrama about a divorced father Kramer is. Kramer managed to take second place statistics gathered yearly for the motion picture association of America the Industry a Trade group document the changing demographics. In 1989, teenagers composed Only 30 percent of the audience. In 1985, an insignificant 14 2 percent of the ticket buyers were Over 40. By the end of 1988, 22.2 percent were Over 40. Last year that number crept up further to 23 percent. The men who run studios Well have the radar of bats they did t need statistics to know that something was wrong during the summer of 1985. The mindless teen comedy a genre that had raked in Money for More than half a decade was suddenly failing at the Box office. Everything is relative and movies about teen agers sex lives were not replaced by dramas about septuagenarian in crisis. But teen Wolf Porky a revenge and three other films in release during the summer of 1985 about adolescents who created women or havoc with their science kits were very different from the most successful comedy released during the summer of 1987 the film version of John Updike a novel the witches of Eastwick. The Success of1 a witches Quot could be explained away. The movie had a major Star Jack Nicholson and a lot of Gross special effects. However in 1988, two sophisticated comedies proved that Summers no longer had to be Given exclusively to children who were out of school and greedy for entertainment. The Industry predicted doom for Orion in june of that year when it released Bull Durham a sexy baseball comedy in which Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner seemed As passionate about language As about sex. But the movie played through the summer of 1988, earning nearly $22 million in film rental. Film rental is the share of the Box office Money roughly 50 percent that goes Back to the distributor of a movie. The Industry considers any movie that makes $20 million in film rental to be a hit which is not necessarily the same thing As profitable a fish called Wanda a Black comedy with no stars did even better earning $26.5 million in film rental. As part of its decade Long youth fetish o Wood has opened its arms to Young writers and because of America s changing demo rapiers Page 16 a the stars and stripes monday july 9, 1990