I was thinking the other day about the entertainment industry – as in why do we have one, for instance.

Why do we pay $11 to see movies – is it the witty banter, glamourous settings and costumes, thrilling plots? No, for the most part, it’s because we like to see stuff blowin’ up:

But according to Richard Ouzounian, who runs the Youngstown Warren Film Commission, the town is a virtual film set waiting to happen. It has an airport, complete with a new terminal and 9,000-foot runway, which handles only four flights a week. It has a 2,016-bed prison that houses only 21 inmates. There’s also an empty hospital as well as empty schools and libraries.

“You have industrial sites,” Ouzounian says. “Unlike most cities where they don’t want you blowing things up, around here they’d be thrilled to death if somebody came here and blew up some of this stuff up!”

Now, I’m an avowed fan of stuff blowin’ up, although I do like a good cerebral problem-solving story, or well-conceived character development. A decent Stargate episode, for example, does not have to have a big ‘splody finale to be totally satisfying.

Actually, this story of the town willing to let its underutilized infrastructure be destroyed or taken over for weeks at a time by a film crew sounds a little familiar. Wasn’t there a town in North Dakota making a similar offer a couple of years ago?

Here We Are Now, etc. etc.

Anyway – why do we have an entertainment industry that rakes in billions of dollars for somebody that’s not “us,” the consumers? Why are we incapable of entertaining ourselves anymore, so that we’re willing to pay obscene amounts of money for candy and popcorn, sit in a seat with a broken arm in a theater with a sticky floor, and watch flickering images on a screen? Why do we need to be entertained in the first place? What is this need for bread and circuses?

Our species is somehow hard-wired for storytelling. Actually, maybe we’re hard-wired for telling each other big, steaming piles of whoppers. I guess that having big brains and opposable thumbs and language skills pre-disposes us to this.

Perhaps we evolved to swipe stuff from each other and avoid punishment (or getting eaten) by telling a good story in return. It used to happen around a flickering campfire; now a flickering screen is involved, but you probably get the idea.

I’m not sure, but I think that in addition to swiping cash from us, Hollywood has slowly been swiping our capacity for wonder and imagination… which is probably why we have more and bigger ‘splosions in bigger and dumber movies.

That’s not to say that watching movies or TV makes you stupid, but it’s definitely the easy and effortless way to while away a little down time. Most movies are easily forgotten and don’t stay with you. Fortunately, a few movies have a little more campfire-roasted meat on their bones, and they have a little marrow, too.

There are some movies that require the audience to think along with the action on screen; there are some movies that hijack your brain for a while, and there are some movies that transport you to another place and time, so that you’re a little sad or relieved when the end credits come up and you remember “it’s just a movie.”

Besides movies and television, there’s always radio comedy and drama – I like mine science fictiony, but then I’m weird that way.. I was captivated by H2G2, listened to :NPR’s 7-hour Star Wars adaptation with rapt attention, and more recently really enjoyed Leonard Nimoy’s much-missed Alien Voices shows. I’d like to hear more stuff like that – and now it appears that Radio Repertory Company of America is giving some of my favorite genre actors some work.

The above shows started out to be free – nothing was swiped from me except for the time required to listen – but in the end I happily paid for a number of spin-off products, such as cassettes (remember those?), books, :NPR pledges, and so on. In fact, grabbing these links make me hanker for some of the CDs now available, so I may be doing a little more shopping later.

Jeez, these were good. Makes me wonder about the shows I’ve totally missed.

We’ll probably be dropping some cash on Shrek 2 Real Soon, because it’s supposed to be very funny, and the original is one of my favorite funny movies (right up there with Monsters Inc, Princess Bride and so on). I don’t think we’ll feel we’ve been robbed, so long as we laugh our asses off.