HARRISBURG, PA – In a feat of cinema endurance that has left local movie buffs both impressed and slightly concerned for his sanity, one Harrisburg resident has managed to watch an unprecedented 777 movies in a single year.
Yep, you read that right: Seven hundred and seventy-seven movies. In just 365 days. That’s over two movies per day, every single day. Mind-boggling, isn’t it? It makes you wonder what this man was thinking, or if he was even thinking at all.
According to sources close to the situation, 32-year-old Michael Smithson accomplished this cinematic record by skipping work, shirking his responsibilities, and spending every available moment in his local cinema – specifically, the Regal Harrisburg Stadium 14. His diet reportedly consisted of stale popcorn and flat soda.
We reached out to Smithson for comment, but he was too busy planning his next movie marathon to speak with us. We thought about going down to the theater to interview him in person, but we’re not sure we want to catch whatever germs he’s carrying.
The obvious question on everyone’s mind (besides ‘why on earth would anyone do this?’) is: how did this guy manage to watch so many movies in one year? Does he have some supernatural power to absorb movie plots and dialogue at lightning speed? Or did he simply give up on sleep and human interaction altogether?
The answer, my friends, is far less exciting than you might think. Smithson apparently had a lot of free time (or made a lot of free time) and took full advantage of his Regal Unlimited subscription, which allows users to watch an unlimited number of movies for a flat monthly fee. So basically, he paid $23.50 a month to rot his brain with unending streams of cinematic drivel.
We spoke with the manager of the theater where Smithson spent so much of his life, who told us that Smithson was their most loyal and “enthusiastic” customer. One can only imagine the looks on the faces of the theater employees as they watched this man shuffle in and out of the theater day after day, his eyes glazed over from one-too-many viewings of “Avengers: Endgame.”
Some have heralded Smithson as a movie-watching hero, an intrepid explorer of cinematic landscapes. Others have called him a sad, lonely man with an addiction to escapism. And then there are those who have simply raised an eyebrow and moved on with their lives, wondering why anyone would choose to spend so much time inside a movie theater when there are so many other things to do.
As for Smithson, he seems content with his life choices. In an interview with local news station WGAL, he said that he has ‘no regrets’ about his marathon movie-watching sessions, stating that he enjoys being ‘transported to different worlds’ and ‘losing himself in the magic of cinema.’
Well, we suppose if losing oneself in the magic of cinema requires sitting in a dark room for 777 straight days, who are we to judge? Perhaps Smithson will go down in history as a film-seeing legend, or perhaps he’ll just fade away into obscurity like so many other one-hit wonders. Either way, we can be sure of one thing: he’s going to need a really big tub of popcorn to get through his victory lap.
