I hope you saw the Sunday Morning story titled “An ‘Annie Hall’ for the Ages: Seniors Star in a Remake of Woody Allen’s Classic”.

By Steve Moran

I hope you saw the Sunday Morning story titled “An ‘Annie Hall”‘ for the Ages: Seniors Star in a Remake of Woody Allen’s Classic“. The whole article is a wonderful example of senior living doing something amazing and I have an email out to interview the filmmaker.  

Here is the trailer:

Except for one thing . . .

I completely cringed when I read this one part of the article:

“But it looked like curtains before it even began; ten senior homes rejected their idea, until they turned to the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House in New York City. “They got it,” said Sachs.”

So here we have two brilliant filmmakers who approach 10 senior living communities with an amazing idea that will . . .

  1. Shine a positive light on senior living

  2. Cost nothing

  3. Get a bunch of residents involved in something really cool

  4. Provide a bunch of free positive publicity

  5. Explore how film can improve the lives of residents with dementia

AND YET 10 COMMUNITIES SAID “NO THANKS” ?!

How Can This Be?

I want to bang my head against a wall in frustration. It is actually amazing that the filmmakers were that persistent, but they knew how good it would be for seniors, for the world and kept going. There are two questions that should haunt us:

  1. Why did those 10 communities say no?

  2. What would the communities in your organization say?

I believe the “no” was all about various forms of “We can’t be bothered”:

  • “We don’t have time to even listen to the pitch”

  • “It would disrupt our program”

  • “We already have it all figured out”

I don’t know . . . it leaves me speechless.