PHOTO CREDIT: @retroist

Mr. Moviefone used to terrify me when I was a kid. I’m positive I wasn’t the only one who felt this way, because at some point they rerecorded the tracks to make him sound less intimidating.

A quick internet search didn’t turn up the recordings, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one. The first recording was very ominous: “If you know the NAME of the movie you’d like to see, press 1 NOW.” The second was the same sentence, but the tone was totally different. Ignore the words in caps and add a friendly, “Hey Buddy!” to the beginning and you’ll get the idea.

Regardless of the incarnation, Mr. Moviefone was a vital cog in making plans for the weekend. It usually went down like this.

On Monday or Tuesday, you’d see a commercial and remember that a movie you wanted to see was coming out on Friday. You’d float the idea out to some friends to see if they wanted to come along.

If they had enough interest, you’d spend Wednesday and Thursday making different plans, based on what time the movie started. There was, of course, no way of finding out what time the movie was going to be playing until the Friday newspaper came, or until you called 777-FILM on Friday morning.

That was it. You had to wait until Friday to really solidify your plans, and if you were at school with no newspaper, you were calling Mr. Moviefone.

Compare that with today. Tickets for the midnight IMAX showing of The Dark Knight Rises sold out seven months before the movie was released. Granted, that’s an extreme case, but could you imagine the mad rush to get tickets to that screening if the showtime wasn’t posted until the night before?

I remember having to drive to a movie theater at like 10AM to purchase hard tickets to a movie that everyone wanted to see. It was insanity. Oh internet, you have made my life so much more convenient.

Looking back, it seems like everything moved at an absolute snail’s pace back then. It was a really big deal to see something you were into in the theater, because if you missed it, you wouldn’t have another opportunity to see it for at least a year.

Now it seems like you can pick up a Blu-ray a few weeks after a movie is out of theaters, especially if the movie sucked. There’s an incredibly small window between the day most movies exit theaters and the day they can be purchased for your personal collection.

I’d imagine the industry hit the hardest by this tiny time frame is the hotel “On Demand” service. Their “Still In Theaters” category (and they use that term very loosely - maybe that one sketchy theater on the other side of town still has those movies…maybe) seems old and busted way sooner than it did before.

Then again, they’re still trying to get you to play Gamecube games for like 10 bucks an hour, so they probably haven’t even noticed.

I said in an earlier post (#16 - I’m not linking because I’m lazy) that going to the movies used to feel like an event, and now it’s not the same. I wondered why at the time, and now I’m thinking maybe it’s because it was such a process to actually go see something back then. When you were in, it was like an exclusive club.

Okay, so that might be an oversell. But the smell of popcorn just doesn’t transport me like it once did. It actually makes me sick now, but I think that’s because I ate too much at my friend’s Jurassic Park birthday party.



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