RECAP: I’ve been collection all of the movie tickets for every movie I’ve seen in the theater for the last 11 years. A few weeks ago, I decided to take all of the information on these tickets and create a spreadsheet to find out exactly how much money and time I’ve spent on going to the theater. For a full description of what this madness is all about, check out this previous post.

Well, the results are in! I’ve successfully tabulated all of the movie tickets in my collection, the first of which dated all the way back to April 11, 1997. It was long, monotonous, boring work, but damn it, it was something that needed to be done. I’m sure I missed a few tickets here and there throughout the years, but this certainly paints a pretty clear picture of my theater-attending habits. Here are some of the results:

Number of Movies Seen: 258
Total Spent on Movies: $1,602.25
Total Amount of Time: 498 Hours 39 Minutes

Okay, now let’s break this down. 258 movies means I’ve essentially seen a movie every other week for more than the last decade and during that time I’ve spent nearly 500 hours watching them. Dizamn. That’s nearly 21 straight days spent in a theater seat being bathed and in the majestic glow of a movie screen… which is roughly 2 straight days a year. Mind you, this doesn’t include any time watching previews, though more often than not, that can be offset by the fact that I didn’t sit through the full credits on most of the flicks on the list. Then we have the fact that the $1,600 figure doesn’t include the thousands I’ve spent on concessions while seeing these movies… as any proper film-fanatic would agree, popcorn is absolutely required to properly view a movie in the theater.

Here are some more interesting facts I established while making my list:

I’m a huge theater buff. Even with a few shitty experiences here and there throughout the years, I still love going to the movie theater to enjoy a good flick with a crowd of interesting and often strange individuals (oh, and some friends too I suppose). A good comedy just seems so much funnier when you can laugh at it with a darkened room full of complete strangers, and the excitement and suspense of a good adventure flick simply feels heightened when you can oogle everything on a seventy-foot screen. So, let’s just say I spend many of my Friday nights enjoying the smell of popcorn and the bright glow of a movie screen.

This leads me to the main point of my little story here. I go to a ton of movies… and out of a somewhat compulsive habit, I’ve never purposefully thrown away a movie ticket stub. I save them… all of them. And I’ve been doing this for nearly 11 years. Now, some may say that this is an insane thing to do. “Why would you save those?” these visionless people would say. “What will you do with them? What’s the point?” Well, this weekend I realized exactly what the point of my strange addiction is.

I’m currently working to compile a list containing the name, date, time and price of every movie ticket in my collection? Why, you ask? To find out exactly how much of my hard-earned money I’ve spent on the theater in the last decade, of course! Not to mention plot the increase of ticket prices over the last 11 years or so using real world data and oh so much more!

So check back soon for an interesting look into where much of my monthly paycheck goes! And if I’m not the only one with this ticket-packrat mentality, feel free to let me know in the comments.

EDIT (07-10-08): I’ve decided to add runtimes for each movie as well (as listed by IMDB) to see how much time I’ve spent in a theater absorbing the warm, soothing glow of a movie screen.

UPDATE (07-12-08): My list has been completed and I’ll be posting the results shortly!

UPDATE (07-24-08): Holy shit, the results have been posted! Check ‘em out here.