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Reprint of this article was provided by Chet Cooper, Publisher of ABILITY Magazine
INTERVIEWING WOMEN LIKE THAT
Virginia Madsen is a Golden Globe- and Academy Award-nominated actress known for her work in Sideways, The Astronaut Farmer, and The Number 23. Her mother, writer-director Elaine Madsen, has a wide range of creative projects on her list of achievements, including a new book of poetry and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary. In their new collaboration, I Know a Woman Like That, the mother-daughter duo join forces to take a close look at grace, age, vitality, and what it means to be a woman. ABILITY Magazine’s Chet Cooper and Nancy Villere caught up with the Madsens to discuss this ambitious and personal project.
Chet Cooper: Your film does a nice job of making a viewer more aware of a relationship between women as they age and their degree of invisibility in society. And, in many ways, I see that parallel how we tend to address social understanding and awareness about disability.
Elaine Madsen: Oh, yeah, I think there’s an attitude towards age that treats it as a disability. But in reality, aging involves recognition of abilities you didn’t know that you had, abilities that you have to find within yourself in order to deal with society. Bookshelves are filled with titles about how to stay young, and telling us all that there’s something wrong with not being young. But the purpose of this film, I think, is to show that the experience of aging can be wonderful, if you don’t get sucked into that mentality.
Virginia Madsen: My mother’s level of activity, of productivity, was exactly why I thought a project like this would work. Originally, when we put the idea together, she had said, “I’m far too busy. I’m going to Holland, and then I’m going here and there and I’m writing my book.” But that’s really what it’s about.
Elaine: One of the most important things at any age is finding how to stay engaged. It seems like some people get to a certain age and sort of sink into a kind of psychic rocking chair. Suddenly they are made to feel that their time is done and that it’s time to get off the stage. Our movie has 17 women in it who are all between the ages of 65 and 95, and every one of them is engaged in life in a particular way. Age is not inhibiting them.
Cooper: Most of the people you interviewed seemed to like the fact that they were at the age that they were, and seemed happy with the wisdom they had acquired.
Elaine: You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy as I am now. At my age, there are all kinds of things you don’t have to battle anymore.
That being said, we’re not glossing over the fact that there are changes in these people. One of the people we spoke with uses a walker, and we do feature people who have overcome cancer as well as some of the other things that come along with age. So we’re not glossing over the fact that these issues are a part of aging. But hopefully, we are advancing an attitude.