Back to Reality: Box Office Rolls Along While Real-Life Tragedies Never Stop

The Christmas season traditionally is a bountiful time for the movie industry, which lets its commercial big guns loose after the fall season of thoughtful, artsy films (you know, all those Important ones that get the Academy Award nominations).

But, while spending a couple of hours in the dark watching Michael J. Fox on a skateboard may help ease the tension from the car wars in the neighborhood mall parking lot, I wonder what we are really getting in exchange for our $6.50 at the ticket window.

This question goes through my mind as I see someone standing at the roadside with a sign that says “I will work for food”--and then read a story like the recent one about Sony paying somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion to Warner Bros. to get two (count ‘em, two) hotshot movie producers for its new subsidiary, Columbia Pictures.

Are these things related? Yes, even if indirectly. Thanks to super-hits like “Batman” and “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” the industry is reporting a record year at the box office, in excess of $4 billion worth of ticket stubs. Because the movie-going public is increasingly willing to spend, spend, spend, studios have no qualms about writing checks for ever-staggering sums in pursuit of the cinematic golden egg.

Universal Pictures simultaneously filmed two sequels to “Back to the Future,” which has grossed something like $400 million to date, and they consider it a money-saving stroke of genius because the pair cost only $80 million. By the same reasoning, Sony views producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber as a steal at half a billion dollars because they were responsible for such blockbusters as “Batman” and “Rain Man.”

And the question arises:

What can a couple of movie producers do that Sony is willing cough up something like 2,500 times what the President is paid, regardless of whether you happen to like Bush.

They are not enlightening the populace. They are not spreading peace. They are not alleviating hunger or homelessness. They are , however, keeping the masses entertained. And because their diversions have reaped millions in profits, Sony wants them. Badly.

In his excellent recent PBS series “The Public Mind,” Bill Moyers pointedly and distressingly demonstrated how image and entertainment, not truth or concern for the human race, are ever more shaping our society.

If we weren’t so busy entertaining ourselves blind with $250 million worth of “Batman” tickets, could we perhaps find ways to spend our money on something a little more worthwhile?

You don’t have to look farther than our own back yard to find plenty of people who are in need of things far more basic than an entertaining night at the movies.

But we don’t have to worry about disturbing issues like those as long as we continue to be more enchanted with figuring out which film is the No. 1 hit, who is the No. 1 box-office attraction, etc., etc.

“If we put the same emphasis on who’s the No. 1 physicist or who’s the No. 1 English major, we’d probably have a lot better society,” said Jeff Rocke, communications director for the United Way of Orange County. The local chapter has collected a little more than $12.9 million to distribute among more than 800 charitable groups in Orange County during 1990.

In Hollywood, that pitiable sum wouldn’t buy gas for the Batmobile.

“$500 million”--the amount paid to Guber and Peters--”comes fairly close to what our total expenditures are for a year,” says Bob Griffith, chief deputy director for the Orange County Social Services Agency.

“We have some activities that we know need to be done, which aren’t able to do with the funding we have,” Griffith said. “If we had $500 million fall into our lap, we’d be able to lower the caseload level in our (social) workers’ laps. In the child-abuse area, a typical worker handles 75 cases a month. There’s just not enough time to take care of the kinds of problems that these kids have. If we could reduce those caseloads, we figure we could have more success not only in saving lives, but in turning lives around.”

I know--let’s lighten their load by sending them to “Christmas Vacation.”

Meanwhile, “we don’t have a good adult-abuse system to take care of senior citizens, who are quite often abused by their caretakers, whether that is family or whoever,” Griffith continued. “The same things we find in child abuse situations is happening to older people who are dependent on others for care. Anywhere in the state we don’t have a good system for services to those people.”

Gee, I wonder what time “Look Who’s Talking” plays tonight?

United Way recently compiled a “Needs Assessment for Orange County” study that identifies the most pressing needs in the community, in no particular order, as homelessness, child care, physical and sexual abuse, literacy, mental and emotional health, health care and substance abuse. Rocke cited some alarming statistics:

* The county’s homeless population ranges from 4,000 to 10,000, according to Orange County’s Homeless Issues Task Force, which notes that “there are only about 600 shelter beds in the county.”

Sounds like a lot of people with nowhere to go but to the movies!

* An estimated 200,000 adults in O.C. are illiterate, according to the American Library Assn. of Orange County. Nationally, the cost of welfare and unemployment compensation to people who are unable to work because of illiteracy is $6 billion annually, according to a 1989 study by United Way of America.

But who needs to read when you can go to the movies!

* According to a study conducted by the Orange County Health Care Agency, “mental-health services are underfunded by more than $2.5 million annually, while increasing demands for services threaten to overwhelm residential care facilities, services for emotionally disturbed children and in-patient services.”

Feeling down? Try “The Little Mermaid”!

The list goes on but the story remains the same. According to Rocke, officials at various agencies trying to remedy these problems report that demand for their services is going up, and not just a little, but an average of 60% to 70%.

Nobody says we should divert all money that goes into entertainment toward remedying this country’s social ills. But maybe just once this holiday season, each of us could skip a movie, and instead of giving the bucks to a business that exists to let people ignore, send them to an agency that tries to help people survive.