Why Movies?

Do you ever wonder why movies are the biggest cultural events? Big movies are really the biggest kind of entertainment event. Movie stars really get the biggest press. TV stars want to be movie stars, not the other way around. When Kiefer Sutherland goes and does 24 after a run of really bad movies, it's viewed as a downshift. When Faye Dunaway steps back to do a TV show and it bombs, oooo, that is bad. It is a big deal to have seen a really good movie "in the theater" (particularly if it is somewhat obscure and gives you some cultural bragging rights). Having seen a particular TV show when it first came on? Not so much (although I do give The Muse and her mom props for watching Cheers from the beginning, when it almost got cancelled). Yes, TV is our daily bread, but we tend to love -- and hate -- movies much more. (Radio/music doesn't have pictures so it's not going to have the impact of TV or movies usually (the Beatles being the exception that proves the rule, I suppose). Theater. Ah, I enjoy it -- Spamalot rocked -- but, no.)

Why is this? Is it just that movies are bigger? Is that you have to make a more significant investment to go see a movie? You can't just sit on your butt and click channels to get a TV show that is 30 feet tall. Is that movies are a "hotter" medium, so they provoke more intense reactions? Can you imagine watching Jack Nicholson every week on TV? That might get irritating.

So why is it that Entourage is about a movie star and not a TV star? As you might have guessed, I have a theory. (I have a lot of theories, like how you get tired after a long car ride because you have seen a lot of stuff in a relatively short amount of time. Your eyes just get tired, man.) Here it is. Movies are longer than TV shows, but more self-contained. Few movies are made with the thought that the story will continue on past their end. (Most of the exceptions are bad -- e.g., Pirates of the Caribbean 2 -- while a very few are brilliant -- Lord of the Rings is the only one that comes to mind.) But they are much more involving than even a good TV episode. There's just more time and room to bring out characters, laying out stories (doing stunts, if that's your thing). It is the very rare TV episode that reaches the same level of involvement of even just a good movie. I'm thinking the X-Files with the thing in the forest with the red eyes, for example.

So that's why I think we care more about movies than TV, why we care more about Tom Cruise going nuts than Roseanne going nuts. As they, it's a theory.