September Q & A: No more movies

We kick off the week with a big one, as Rich asks, “What would you do if movies did not exist?”

Well, the short answer is that I’d play a lot more video games. I first started getting hardcore into movies in high school/early college, which corresponded pretty closely to when I stopped playing video games. It was largely just replacing one obsession with another, really. I have been trying to make more of an effort with my video gaming over the past year or so, and I’ll hopefully be getting a PS3 sometime in the next year (yes, just in time for a PS4 announcement, no doubt, or if the luck I had with the PS2 continues, I’ll be getting the PS3 just a couple weeks before a surprise price drop). So yes, if movies did not exist, I’d still have all my video games to keep me company. And my books, which I’d definitely have more time to read. And my comics too.

Of course, without movies, video games and comics would be pretty drastically different too. Both forms of entertainment have pilfered quite heavily from movies over the years, to the point where people seem to feel the need for extensive cinematic cut scenes and dense plots in most of their video games now or they’ll feel they didn’t get their money’s worth. Comics had largely moved on from aping movies for a good half a century, but over the past decade when it was discovered that film studios could actually make tons of money off of comic book movies, the comics industry has been flooded with writers trying to use comics as a springboard for a film career, making overly long stories that take half a year to conclude, and making mainstream superhero comics into the more violent, cynical beast they are today. I much prefer when a medium manages to utilize its own strengths, rather than trying to ape the strengths of another medium.

That’s a tangent for another day, however. Once more delving back to how I had been back before I became a movie addict, we can theorize how else I would be changed today. I went to a lot more concerts, as I had a great deal more disposable income at my fingertips (which would also mean I’d most likely have the money for my own place if I wasn’t always going about buying up all the movies I could find). I was also on the Internet a lot less, as several of the sites I was first obsessed with were movie-related, be they IMDB or Roger Ebert’s website or Amazon. I’m still obsessed with Ebert and Amazon, of course, though the rose-colored glasses have been somewhat taken off with IMDB since their completely ghastly redesign last week. Seriously, go look at that shit, the site looks like it was just beaten with an ugly stick.

I’d almost certainly have a different job today as well. When I finally graduated college, I had no money to speak of, due to my shopping addiction, and so my mom got me a job immediately working for Sony, a job that largely wouldn’t have existed if movies didn’t exist. Without that, I’d have probably knuckled under and become a teacher or something, or possibly have gotten a job in some office or for a theater group. All of which tells me that my life would be nothing but improved without movies, a notion I find I cannot reconcile with how happy I am with my movie collection. I’m already a pretty social person, so it’s not like I’d magically become more social without movies, though I probably would have kept in better touch with my old high school friends thanks to the rise of online gaming, as opposed to my current situation, where I actually have to call them up on the phone, which is really just such a 90s thing to do, right?

I’m not sure if there would be anything else about my life that would have really changed. My daily walks around town are related to how I was becoming a bit of a chunk due to poor eating habits, but none of that has anything to do with movies, and neither does my love of alcohol (my love of expensive alcohol really would just go back to my love of the fancy life), which has mostly just made me a more happy, well-adjusted soul. So yeah, a lack of movies wouldn’t really change who I am all that much, it would just give me a good deal more free time and money, though I’ve found that the combination of those two tends to make both vanish pretty rapidly.