Private Project

Not Dead Yet Club

Not Dead Yet Club is the story of Miriam and Carlotta, two female artists in their 80s whose friendship becomes essential as their bodies and minds become less reliable. After unexpectedly settling in together, the two friends easily accept Miriam’s dementia-induced hallucinations of silent screen actress Theda Bara.

Meanwhile, their younger caregiver, Rebecca, confronts the stressful contradictions of her unwelcome role in their lives. Ultimately, Theda Bara becomes the calming influence guiding them through conflict with tenderness.

With humor and honesty, the screenplay celebrates the richness of companionship, the importance of self-determination, and the capacity for growth, even as dementia and death approach.

  • Maribeth Edmonds
    Writer
    Love and Germs, Gentle Giant, Telling Our Stories
  • Jane Gillooly
    Writer
    Where the Pavement Ends; Suitcase of Love and Shame; Today the Hawk Takes One Chick; Dragonflies, the Baby Cries; Leona's Sister Gerri
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay
  • Number of Pages:
    90
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • America Reframed
    PBS/World Channel
    January 31, 2022
    Gold TELLY
  • Images Festival
    Toronto, CN
    March 15, 2013
    Best International On-Screen Work, Jury Prize
  • Kinoteatr.doc Festival of Direct Cinema
    Moscow, Russia
    February 28, 2010
    JURY PRIZE
  • Arkipel Experimental Film Festival
    Jakarta, Indonesia
    August 30, 2013
    Jury Prize
  • Santa Fe Film Festival
    Santa Fe, NM
    February 28, 2001
    Best Short
  • Chicago International Film Festival
    Chicago, IL
    October 30, 1999
    SILVER HUGO
Writer Biography - Maribeth Edmonds, Jane Gillooly

MARIBETH EDMONDS is a writer and producer, whose screenplay Love and Germs was optioned by producer Jane Starz (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Tuck Everlasting; The Mighty); and she is co-writer with Bruce Weber of the short film Gentle Giants, which premiered at the Miami Film Festival. She is also the producer of educational films for the MA Judicial Institute and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, including The Life of the Library, narrated by Jay Leno; and Telling Our Stories, narrated by David McCullough. While writing, her parallel career was managing the homes of high-profile clients in NYC and the Hamptons, from Marlo Thomas to Howard Stern.

Maribeth moved from NY to Meadville, PA in 2023, and now writes full-time. She performed her first stand-up in 2024 at Allegheny College’s Oddfellow Theatre, and joined the Board of the Meadville Community Theatre, where she is co-chair of their capital campaign for a new regional cultural center.

JANE GILLOOLY is a writer, director, producer, and non-fiction filmmaker. She is committed to the art of narrative: how it is constructed, and how complex and often hidden histories, can be made accessible. What connects her work is an empathetic curiosity about individuals’ struggles, especially when history, politics, and personal crises conspire.

She recently wrote, directed, and edited Where the Pavement Ends, which was awarded a GOLD TELLY and is currently streaming on PBS/America ReFramed. She produced, directed, and edited Suitcase of Love and Shame which premiered at the Art of the Real at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and won BEST INTERNATIONAL ON-SCREEN WORK at Images Festival in Toronto. She is the producer/director of Leona’s Sister Gerri a groundbreaking documentary nationally broadcast on PBS P.O.V. and the writer/director of the fiction short Dragonflies the Baby Cries named BEST SHORT, Santa Fe Film Festival. Her films have screened internationally and include, Full Frame, Doc Fortnight MOMA, Museum of the Moving Image CPH: DOX, REDCAT, Visions du Réel, and FID Marseille.

Gillooly is a Guggenheim fellow and Professor of the Practice Emerita in Media Arts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She lives in Somerville, MA.

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Writer Statement

As long-time friends ourselves, we wanted to write a script exploring the power of female friendship as we age. Jane then conducted a series of interviews with women artists in their eighties and nineties. Much of our dialogue was informed by their humor, and their frankness about the struggle to adapt to their diminishing physical and mental abilities. Then, as the project developed, we were each thrust into caregiving roles ourselves. We expanded the story to reflect the parallel world of caregivers, dancing on the edge of love and exhaustion, as everyone negotiates the path forward with no clear off-ramp.