In with the old, out with the new

I watched some movie recently, I forget what it was; but in reading a review the writer mentioned sourly that the screenplay was written thirty years ago.  When ​The Bodyguard came out in 1992 it was filmed with a screenplay that had originally been written in 1975.  The critics took note of that fact as well; as a point of criticism.  As though, that because the script was old, automatically the movie deserved demerits.  Who cares?  Apparently snotty critics.  But not audiences.  The Bodyguard made something like 400 million dollars at the box office.  Does our culture despise oldness that much?  I think, sadly, it does.  I recall when I first got to Hollywood.  I was working as a receptionist for Robinson, Weintraub and Gross, a boutique literary agency on snazzy Melrose Place in a building that was once the home of Adrian and Janet Gaynor.  I had little to do other than answer the phone, except pore over the show business periodicals: Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.  This was the very early 90's.  In reading the articles, it became clear that the industry was obsessed with young screenwriters.  At the time, an aspiring screenwriter myself, I was 26 years old.  According to the papers, I was already over the hill.  Obsolete.  At my age I had no chance of ever selling a screenplay.  I was 26!  This attitude so incensed me that I wrote a letter to the editor of the Reporter decrying this ingrained but patently stupid viewpoint.  They actually published the letter.  Now I'm 55.  Methuselah's great grand-father by Hollywood screenwriter standards.  But I still find it laughable.  Good storytelling has nothing to do with youthfulness.  In fact, it's rather the opposite.  
Which brings me to the above comic strip.  Among the numerous artistic endeavors I've endeavored to pursue, comic strip artist was once a fancy.  When I was a page at Paramount Studios, I remember Herman the Ermin popped into my head one day when myself and some fellow pages were undertaking some busy work.  Some mundane task like boxing files.  Of course, I was doing everything I could to avoid this work and started doodling the little Ermin.  I showed it to a wry fellow named Eric and he drew a poop with "stinky lines" next to the character.  I thought this was genius.  I started imagining Herman's world.  Who his friends were.  What his world was and what happened in it. Looking back, I suppose I took a lot of inspiration from "Pogo" (a comic strip I always felt cheated by as a child--I never understood it after having been lured in by the cute drawings) and of course, "Peanuts."  The first strip I attempted, many years after the invention of Herman, is pretty much a recreation (homage!) of the first Schulz strip.  It was a good ten years between inspiration and execution.  Then I drew a second strip, seen here (this one inspired by the famous Tootsie Pop commercial):

And that was it.  It was incredibly time consuming to execute these drawings, which you can see aren't finished.  I was also struggling to find Herman's "look" which is still pending.  The amount of detail that the rendering of the forest and the animals would take for me to be satisfied was (to me) mind-boggling.  And this was after only eight drawings.  My fancy to be the next Bill Watterson went the way of a Members Only jacket.
So I guess this is about equating art with "old-age."  Herman first popped into my head when I was in my mid-20's.  Now I'm in my mid 50's and Herman decided to fall out of a file folder the other day to remind me of his existence; one, which--who knows--still may happen.  Maybe I'll be happily turning out Herman the Ermin and his Forest Friends when I'm in my mid 80's.  God willing! 
​I guess the ultimate point is: "F" ageism.  If I'd hung up my keyboard because I bought into the myth that only young people can write, I wouldn't have two novels under my belt.  Is some Hollywood executive really going to send his Vermeer to Valhalla because it's nearly four hundred years old?  I think not.  If Lawrence Kasdan had decided to put the kibosh on The Bodyguard being green-lit because someone scoffed that the script was long in the tooth, where would we be?  Well, regardless of what you think of the film; we'd certainly be without Whitney Houston's sublime cover of Chaka Khan's I'm Every Woman, now wouldn't we?  And I don't think anybody wants a world without that!
Here was as far as I got with the conception and development of Herman's world.  Don't ask me why there's a lady platypus.  Maybe I was channeling Olivia Newton-John in Grease​?  Also, I've just realized that "ermin" has an "e" on the end of it.  I don't know, I kind of like my misspelling.