Before you could buy movie tickets with your smartphone (and before you could buy and print movie tickets out with your computer and printer), you looked in the paper to see when movies were playing. Or you could call Moviefone. But now Moviefone's cheery welcome and 777-FILM phone number is fading out, as it'll be reintroduced as an app later this year.
Jeff Berman, the president of BermanBraun, which owns Moviefone with AOL, told the NY Times, "The call-in service has been in pretty steady decline. Our customers are much more interested in our award-winning app, and we need to invest our resources in the future, part of which involves a major reimagining of Moviefone." But Moviefone co-founder Andrew Jarecki said, "It’s a missed opportunity and unfortunately characterizes the way AOL has mismanaged the Moviefone business for quite a while. The fact that a lot of people still call — hundreds of thousands a month, from what I have been told — shows that it isn’t some ancient idea." [Sidebar: Did you realize that Jaraecki is also a filmmaker and cowrote the Felicity theme song?]
Moviefone was so ubiquitous for New Yorkers (it was also available in other major cities) and the booming voice—that of Russ Leatherman, another Moviefone co-founder—became so familiar that it was Seinfeld plot device: Kramer's phone number, 555-FILK, was very close to 555-FILM so he decided to give movie times.
Shout out to the olds who remember VHS tapes while living on the Upper West Side: Do you remember hearing a version of the Moviefone voice when you called gone-but-not-forgetten MoviePlace?
