A very typical work scene in films, frequently introducing a character, is the quasi-violent quitting scene, where the character storms out of the garage or factory before embarking on a life of crime. Ironically, Hollywood looks for the accident and the exception even when it is dealing with inherently dramatic subject matter. The effect on us is the same one that Neil Postman identified for t.v. news. Since disaster is entertainment, the net result is to make us jumpier and more hopeless than we already were. Lucky for our survival though not our metal health, the number of real serial killers and mad bombers is dwarfed by the number lurking in our imaginations.
Endings are a special problem for Hollywood, for two reasons.
First, movie people are afraid to commit. The result is that movie people know how to fly the plane from one airfield to another, but are afraid to land it. The best that can be said of most Hollywood endings is that they are conventional, but relatively unobtrusive. Holly Hunter would have been alone at the end, as she was at the beginning. But someone obviously made the decision that in order to sell millions of tickets, a hoky ending would have to be slapped on to a serious movie.