FILM REVIEW: If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast

Last night I watched a documentary released in 2017 that may have changed the rest of my life. Streaming on HBOMax, Carl Reiner's If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast examines why some people live well into their nineties and even hit the 100 mark, and beyond. Many of those folks are Hollywood residents and even celebrities we all know, like Bette White, Kirk Douglas, Stan Lee, Mel Brooks, Norman Lear and Dick Van Dyke. Others are ordinary people who have made news and came to Reiner's attention simply because of their longevity.

One of those is a tiny woman who started running to combat depression when she was 67. At 100, when the film was made, she was still running races and exercising daily on a stationary bike and with weights at home. Others like her, all over the age of 90, fill their days with various passions, like playing the piano, painting portraits, working as a style consultant, teaching yoga, playing the harmonica and parachuting out of airplanes. Every one of them says that committing yourself to something you love is the key to staying alive and well.

Dick Van Dyke works out daily, and at 96 still sings and dances.

Another big component is staying active. Dick Van Dyke is the best example of that. Age 90 when the film when shot, he looks more like a man in his late 60's. As far as I could tell, the only cosmetic work he's had done was a full set of glorious dental implants. Otherwise he's as lithe at he was in his glory days and seems to never sit still. He married (for the third time) a woman less than half his age at 86, and the two of them make a great pair!

Sprinkled among interviews with all of these seniors are hilarious clips from Reiner's recordings and subsequent animated movie he made with Mel Brooks, The 2000 Year-old Man. There are also conversations with "youngsters" in their sixties, like comic Jerry Seinfeld and Dan Buettner, author of Blue Zones, a book that focuses on centenarians from around the world living with vim and vigor.

Since the film's release several of the people in it have died, including Reiner. But they all reached the age of 98 or 99, and apparently had a damn good time doing it. As Van Dyke put it, "Nobody knows what it's like to be old until you're old." Apparently, once you stop looking in the mirror searching for your lost youth, it's a hoot.