Having Fun With Getting Older Q&A

In her new web series, “The Other F Word,” Caytha Jentis celebrates the highs and lows women experience after turning 40 in a fun and fearless way. The Upper West Side filmmaker felt this demographic was underserved on screen and decided to focus on what she calls a “rebranding of aging.”

Taking a cue from shows like “Girls” and “Sex and the City,” she wrote a pilot about four women who are all tackling different issues that come with entering this new stage of life. After meeting with resistance from Hollywood, she employed a more grassroots campaign. The result is a true New York collaboration, with Jentis casting local actors whom she refers to as “diamonds in the rough” and filming in her apartment as well as Central Park. With the help of many of her neighbors, including Steve Guttenberg and comedian Judy Gold, she created eight episodes, which will be released in September.

I read that Hollywood wasn’t interested in it. Why do you think that was the case?I had done three features and wanted to tell this story. It felt episodic, these kind of coming-of-age journeys. I kind of used, not so much “Sex and the City,” but “Girls” as the model. Just to give the backstory, I thought “Girls” is 20 year olds trying to come of age and figure out who they are. And when you’re a mother, all of the sudden, you’re in this sort of child-centric life and all the sudden they get older and it’s like, ‘It’s me time again,’ and you have this window before you feel like you’re really getting old. I saw people getting divorced, selling their houses, starting new careers, and I’m like, ‘Wow, this is a really vibrant story.’ So I wrote it as a pilot because I didn’t want to close this story. I did run into people saying that this is a tough demographic, women 40 and up. Women find parts in television, but to do a story very much about this, I ran into a lot of ageist roadblocks. It just didn’t make sense to me since women watch so much television and control a lot of money.

What were the next steps you took to get this made?I got a lot of feedback from Los Angeles saying, ‘This is a story; somebody should tell it. You definitely have a good script here. Figure out of a way.’ I had been an independent filmmaker and had spent the year learning about web series, which seemed to be the new frontier. I partnered with Kathleen McDonough, who was somebody I had worked with. As a non-mother herself, she said she connected with the characters and their stories. One is not married. Three are mothers with older children and one I wanted to be the New York person who put all her energy into her career and then has that whole experience when you wake up and you’re like, ‘I’ve dated; I’ve had boyfriends, but wait, I’m not married.’ And I spent a lot of time in this grassroots phase of connecting with all these bloggers and online magazines. I found there were a lot of people in the digital space talking about this time of life. And I just was like, ‘I know how to produce things in an inexpensive way in high quality. I just need to know how we are going to get the word out, because obviously we are not going to have the budget.’ I was fortunate because a lot of people have connected with the content and we were able to get the ball rolling with people who said, ‘We want to help you. We believe in what you’re doing.’

Where did the filming take place?We shot a lot of it at Fairleigh Dickinson. A professor there, David Landau, is a fan of my writing and said the school would sponsor the project and have a student crew and equipment. So we shot it during spring break. The rest was on the Upper West Side. We had scenes in Central Park. The park is very easy to work with; they’re very helpful. And I used a lot of my friends. There’s a scene where she moves in with her golden retriever and they have a scene with the dogs in the morning and how you make friends through your dogs. My dog friends from the Upper West Side were in the scene. We also shot a little bit in my apartment. My editor, whom I met through New York Women in Film, lives on the Upper West Side so we ended up shooting a little bit in her apartment.

What do you want viewers to come away with?My goal is to create a show that tells boots on the ground honest, relatable and entertaining stories about an age group overlooked by Hollywood. My hope is that if people who are watching like it, they will share it. I think as women, we feel so invisible during so many stages of life, but we can change that. And this was part of it. I want to show an entertaining, edgy, truthful, dramatic and funny story about women over 40 that people will enjoy. Hopefully the show will have a life beyond season one and people will want more and somebody will want to come on board and fund the project for future episodes.

For more information, visit www.theotherfwordseries.com