Entertainment should be an escape from reality

They call for a pie fight.

During the Great Depression, going to the movies was one of the few things almost everyone could afford. Heck, even I can remember when two dollars got me in and a dollar bought a hotdog, a candy bar and a cup of Dr. Pepper, and I'm not that old, no matter what my kids, my joints and my bifocals say.

When these folks went to the movies, what did they go see? The gritty, realistic classics? The suspenseful film noire?

Sure they did -- they went to see everything. But the movies that drew the biggest crowds in those dark times were not the ones you'd think. They were the slapstick comedies and the glitzy musicals.

Why go see Henry Fonda playing poor fruit picker Tom Joad, struggling to make a living in the Great Depression, when you were Tom Joad, struggling to make a living in the Great Depression? Especially when your other entertainment option was Shirley Temple ...

I can understand this reasoning very well. I very rarely watch a movie if I know it doesn't have a happily-ever-after, ride-off-into-the-sunset ending.

Working in the news industry, I get to see the affects of crime, corruption, bureaucracy, greed, obsession, cruelty, hatred, depression and ugliness everyday. And that's just during our American Idol watercooler conversations. Then I have to go out and cover the real news in the real world and it does get depressing. So many people need help in so many ways, and for every person who gives to those in need, there seems to be two who say, "They don't deserve it."

Heaven help us if we only get what we deserve ...

So when I go home at night, or grab a book to read at lunch, I don't go for gritty realism or film noire. I want comedies. I want romance. I want Busby Berkeley and Shirley Temple and I want to be taken to a world where people stop in the middle of whatever mundane job they're doing and break out into song.

Wouldn't it be great if life were really like that? I can hear Bernie Madoff and the other financial crooks singing the chorus from Chicago's, "They had it coming," where all of the women on death row explain why they're there. The Wall Street version would go:

"I was greedy. I was greedy.

I didn't care to know

That they were old ladies,

or having babies

As long as I was raking in the dough ..."

Of course, all of their verses would be identical, so as a song, it would be as much of a bust as, well, a Bear Stearns account.

I would be much happier having the rose-colored world of romantic comedies seeping over into real life than having real life seeping into my world of escapist entertainment. In real life, the day after Scarlett swore she would get Rhett back, she'd find out he was messing around with Prissy all along and they'd have it out on the Jerry Springer Show. Ilsa would insist in staying in Casablanca and turn into a nagging housewife, and the residents of Oz would stage a bloody coup when they realized their newly-appointed leader had feet of clay as well as a head of tin.

The reason I read romance novels is because they always end at just the right place -- right after the man and woman swear undying love for each other. I don't have to live their lives when she loses her job and they have to go on welfare, or she discovers he's been living on the down low with Norton the sewer worker for the 10 years they've been married.

I think some movies are about people whose lives are so horrible, they make ours look good. Kind of like reality TV. I may not be as rich as Hugh Hefner, but at least I don't have to deal with crazy, neurotic, shallow pseudo-celebrities who get into cat fights over the colors of their chihuahuas' toenail polish.

Give me a good old fashioned bankruptcy hearing any day.

There are exceptions of course. Once in a while a tear-jerker sneaks up on me because I love the actor and have to see the movie, happy ending or no. We watched "Finding Neverland" last weekend and I bawled like a baby. It was cathartic and felt good and sad at the same time, but I doubt I'll ever watch it again.

As soon as it was over, and I was still snuffling and sniffling, I lucked out.

"A Night at the Opera" was on AMC. There's nothing so bad in this world that a little Groucho can't cure.

Or at least, make you forget for a little while ...