In Maia Mulcahy’s funny and incisive Fountain of Ruth, Grand Prize Winner of the Final Draft’s Big Break 2024 TV competition, a woman goes to a retirement community where people can shed decades to recapture their youthful appearance. It’s a provocative, high-concept sitcom pilot that Mulcahy says was inspired by an unlikely source.
“I was watching the cinematic classic Twilight: New Moon,” she explains.
She was struck by the opening scene in which Bella (Kristen Stewart) sees a woman (Christina Jastrzembska) she mistakes for her grandmother, only to realize the woman is her future self, still paired with seemingly ageless vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson).
“I was seeing that image of this old woman standing next to Robert Pattinson and thinking, ‘What if your longtime spouse for some reason looked like they had a vastly different age than you? What would you do?'” Mulcahy says.
She had always thought a retirement community would be a good setting for a sitcom, but also knew that ageist Hollywood would demand lots of young people in the cast. Fountain of Ruth addresses that problem elegantly, while offering some juicy acting roles: Ruth, 67, chooses to de-age to appear in her 20s, but her husband, Hank, 68, surprises her by choosing to stay his physical age.
Conflicts and questions abound: Can their relationship survive the apparent age difference? Will Ruth’s head be turned by some of the other de-aged residents of the Happy Daze retirement community? Will Hank fade as she flourishes? You can imagine many seasons of conflicts and reversals that poke fun at one of Hollywood’s most stubborn tropes: the older, established actor coupled with a much younger actress.
The setup also allowed Mulcahy, 27, to indulge in her love of writing older characters.
“I like to think that I was always a little bit like six going on 60,” she says. “I’m Jewish, and I tried to write Ruth as kind of an older Jewish bubbe. I felt like I knew the character, and then from there, just tried to kind of play around with the irony of the situation. I also really wanted to stay away from the stereotypes about the older person and how they would act, trying to make it feel honest.”
In true writer fashion, she’s still playing with the idea of making a major change to her successful script: If the show gets greenlit, she’s interested in potentially reversing the genders of her main characters, so the older-looking woman is with a younger-looking man.
She grew up in Maine and had no industry ties, joking, “if I had nepotism, I would use it unabashedly.” But working at top agency UTA — starting in the mailroom — gave her a great perspective on the inner workings of Hollywood.
“If anyone’s like, ‘How do I break in?’ I would say, go work at an agency. You learn so much about how the industry actually works, and you’ll feel less like you’re on the outside looking in, because that was a big thing for me,” she says. “I had no idea how you’re supposed to make this career work for you — it doesn’t seem like anyone’s followed one pipeline. But it really teaches you so much about how to get there.”
She worked as an assistant to UTA agent Martin Lesak, whose clients include Will Ferrell, which gave her the opportunity to read and learn from a barrage of top-tier comedy scripts. She said Lesak helped her by reading her work and sharing it with his contacts — “which is so sweet. He didn’t have to do that.”
She now works as the assistant to John Wells, the TV mastermind known for such hits as ER, The West Wing and Shameless. In some ways the move felt fated: She earned her MFA at the John Wells Division of Writing for Film and Television at USC. Wells has been very supportive of her Final Draft win — including letting her take time off to meet with industry representatives about Fountain of Ruth.
“I’m very lucky,” she says. “I’ve had supportive bosses.”
Maia Mulcahy on Winning the 2024 Final Draft Big Break Contest
Final Draft’s Big Break competition is one of the most competitive and prestigious of screenwriting competitions, and is in the top tier of those that can actually change winners’ lives and launch them on successful careers.
Winning the Grand Prize includes $10,000, an Apple iPad, a Dell XPS laptop, roundtrip airfare and three nights at a hotel in Los Angeles, as well as meetings with managers, producers and executives, and participation the New York Film Academy‘s online Fellowship program. (You can read more about the 2024 features Grand Prize winner, Laura Kroeger, here.)
Mulcahy’s success is a testament to the importance of realizing that contests, like so many Hollywood competitions, are subjective. She has written other scripts that didn’t fare as well in competitions, and even Fountain of Ruth only made the second round of another big festival — before it went on to win one of the best and biggest.
“Just because one contest tells you that your script sucks does not mean that another reader isn’t going to really connect with it,” she says.
She thinks Fountain of Ruth has benefitted from having a clearer hook than some of her past scripts. But she’s also a little weary of slick elevator pitches, and believes it’s more important to form meaningful connections.
“They tell you that if you’re with someone, you have to really know how to pitch yourself in 30 seconds,” she says. “And I think, actually, you could spend that 30 seconds connecting with that person and getting them to like you. Then they’ll want to meet you later, and then you can pitch them eventually.”
Main image: Fountain of Ruth screenwriter Maia Mulcahy, courtesy of Final Draft.