The Cambria Film Festival, running February 5-9, has given SLO Review the opportunity to preview many of the more than 80 full-length and short films that make up its 2025 program schedule. All-access passes, live screening only passes, and passes to view films virtually after the festival are available now.
The festival is honoring Sy Rosen, an American producer and screenwriter who started his career writing for the television series The Bob Newhart Show, then went on to write and produce many shows, including Taxi, The Wonder Years, Maude, M*A*S*H, The Jeffersons, and Rhoda. Three of his short films will be shown during the festival.
A Comedic Visit with Getting Old
One of the ironies of our lives as humans is that if we’re lucky, we will have to face old age and enter the world of the elder members of our society. Elders, senior citizens, or as has been acceptable for at least a couple of decades, “seniors,” are a large part of our society, and it may be news to some, but they have a distinct and developing culture.
While laws and businesses dictate different ages for being a senior citizen, the exact transition time is unclear (how do we know when we’re “old”?) and it’s a different continuum for different people.
Veteran TV screenwriter Sy Rosen takes a close and endearing look at these mysteries in an ongoing series of short shorts. Let’s call them “The Flora Sequence.” In these stories, Rosen brings us into the world of retirement communities and wistful park benches and seniors either acclimating or now comfortable in the culture of senior living. Although I just referred to Rosen as a “veteran TV screenwriter,” in a recent interview he stated that a colleague once told him “veteran” meant “old fart.”
Here we see that those who have not transitioned to “the golden years” often have preconceived notions about old people, and smugly think they must know better than their seniors, especially if the latter seem to be slipping into the dreaded dementia or “Alz” (the hip term preferred by Sarah, the adept narrator of Rosen’s The Matchmaker).
Rosen’s stories reveal that often our senior family members are doing better than we think, and many of our preoccupations are rooted in our own fears and insecurities about the challenges of aging.
“The Flora Sequence” begins in 2018 with the The Matchmaker, followed by Little Victories in 2019, and then 2024’s Death Pays Flora a Visit. One of the consistencies throughout the films is the use of vintage actors and real residents of retirement communities where they filmed.
There’s something refreshing about these shorts, minimalist in their low-budget production and natural settings.”
One of the sequence’s pleasures is seeing actors that we swear we’ve seen in countless productions, even if we don’t know their names. Film afficionados may be able to name some, and it’s fun looking up the others and being surprised at their credits. There are too many to name here, but it was good to see the uniquely stylish camera presence of Sy Richardson (Repo Man), the streetwise voicing of Robert Romanus (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), the skilled and beautiful Barbara Bain (from the original Mission: Impossible TV series), matter-of-fact Mimi Kennedy (Dharma and Greg), and the wonderfully curt Rhea Perlman (need we say it? Cheers).
In each short, Flora is acted by a different woman showing her in different lights across the loosely related films. There’s something refreshing about these shorts, minimalist in their low-budget production and natural settings. These conditions are perfect for emphasis on plot and story, and story is the focus of these deceptively simple vignettes.
The first two shorts involve Flora (here, Bryna Weiss) and her son’s concern about her mental well-being and his worries about her slipping into dementia (or Alz) as he witnesses her close friend Sarah (Barbara Bain) repeat statements and questions in daily conversations; Sarah can’t seem to remember that Sam (here, Robert Romanus) is Flora’s son. After considering a rogue’s gallery of female residents as intellectually stimulating friends for his mother, Sam finds Irene (Rhea Perlman), who eventually tires of the set-up—but there’s a happy ending.
In Little Victories, Sam is played by Matt Walsh, who once again is worried that Flora (here, Lila Garrett) is losing it when she tells him that she had a long conversation with “Sam” the day before, at a time her son clearly wasn’t there. She’s also gained a new habit of compulsive cussing. This revelation sends Sam into a worrisome self-reflection on his own mental status and intermittent absence of mind. In a chance encounter, he meets another Sam (Sy Richardson), an old gentleman who enjoys long intellectual conversations with young Sam’s mother (and maybe a little hanky panky). Old Sam is also a compulsive cusser. So perhaps Flora is doing much better than young Sam thinks—a little victory that may help reach understandings that must continually be updated in a changing social structure.
These fun little shorts handle some big life issues and enter into a world many of us are not only outside of, but fear entering someday.”
Death Pays Flora a Visit is the only film in the series that employs a sort of magical realism and takes the form of an archetypal story. This one takes place in a park outside the habitat of the senior living communities.
Eric Roberts gives a great, subtly comic performance as the Grim Reaper in a stylish black suit and glasses. Death comes for Flora (here, Mimi Kennedy), but since it’s a slow day (“those damn booster shots”) he offers her a way to postpone it with certain conditions. The film takes a twist as Flora uses Death’s game against him (okay, as she points out, he’s not really gendered in spite of his appearance: “You’re an entity”) and we get to play with gender, take a trip to Paris, and explore a possible lesbian love, all in less than 15 minutes.
Rosen’s experience as a comedy writer comes through acutely in these three films.
The heart of good comedy often involves reversals and discrepancies between expectations and outcomes, and each of these films delivers comedic reversals while offering looks into the lives of seniors, which ultimately don’t look so different from most people’s. Some controversial social issues of our time like gender switching, interracial relationships, and even meatless hamburgers are handled with empathy and humor, and yes, old people are still humans with hopes and fears like the rest of us.
These fun little shorts handle some big life issues and enter into a world many of us are not only outside of, but fear entering someday. Rosen has been writing screenplays going all the way back to TV staples such as The Bob Newhart Show, All in the Family, and Rhoda. His ongoing ambition as he deals with the challenges of getting older is inspiring to witness as he shows us through “The Flora Sequence” that old age can be scary and complex, but if handled with trust, grace, and a warm sense of humor, it too can be faced and lived well. Pretty good for an old fart.
Screenings of Death Pays Flora a Visit, which is in competition at this year’s festival, as well as The Matchmaker and Little Victories, are scheduled during tributes to Sy Rosen at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, February 5 and at 4 p.m. on Friday, February 7.