In the original draft I was 27 and Peter was 55 in the script. That’s not the same as a guy in his 40s and a dad in the end of his 70s. It’s a different point in both our lives.

Reiser is emphasizing how age gaps are not merely numerical but shape the emotional and practical dynamics between characters—especially in a parent–child relationship. By contrasting a younger-son/middle-aged-father pairing with a middle-aged-son/elderly-father pairing, he points to different life-stage pressures: dependence versus independence, vitality versus decline, and the shifting balance of authority and care. The remark also underscores how revisions from an “original draft” to a produced script can materially change a story’s meaning, recalibrating what the relationship signifies and what each character plausibly wants, fears, or can still change at that point in life.