Keeping score is the best. Everyone needs to know that they are the best at something, no matter how meaningless or stupid that activity is. Take golf, for example. Grown men obsess over statistics reflecting their ability to whack a ball with a stick into a little hole. They spend hundreds of dollars just to gain a slight bump in their ball-whacking metrics. Golf and movie marathons involve about the same amount of athletic prowess. Isn’t it time we similarly obsess over who is best at movie marathons? I say “Yes!”. And if you say “No!”, you are visiting the wrong website.
That is why I am proud to announce that I have created the world’s first movie marathon scorecard! No longer do you have to wonder: “Do I really measure up in my movie marathon skills?” or “Is this movie marathon really helping me meet my life goal of a movie-watching perfection?” or “How can I brag to my friends about how many movies I’ve watched without sounding like a total dork?”. This scorecard provides you the answer.
If you are wondering if this scorecard is legit, don’t worry – it’s science. The scorecard works by gathering up a master list of movies from four sources: Academy Award Best Picture Winners, the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movies, the British Film Institute’s top 50 movies, and the Internet Movie Database’s top 100 movies. All you have to do is mark which movies you have seen, and the scorecard calculates your personal movie marathon score. Scoring comes in four categories:
- Ultimate Movie Marathon Score – How many movies you’ve seen on the list, with movies appearing in more than one source list weighted more heavily.
- American Film Buff Score – How many movies you’ve seen on the list that appear on the Academy Awards best picture list, the American Film Institute list, or both.
- International Film Snob Score – How many movies you’ve seen on the British Film Institute list, which favors class European movies.
- Pop Culture Hipster Score – How many movies you’ve seen in the top 100 list from the Internet Movie Database, which favors recently made or otherwise popular movies.
Conveniently, this scorecard serves as both a measurement of self-worth and a handy guide for movies that you might want to include in your next movie marathon. This master list of movies pushes you to movies the world agrees you need to go see. For example, The Godfather appears in all four source lists, and therefore contributes to your ultimate movie marathon score by 4 points. The Matrix, despite the fact that it has at least double the amount of Kung Fu than The Godfather, only counts for 1 point. Those who are serious about their movie marathon game know what they should watch next.
My Movie Marathon Scorecard Results
To get started, you need a benchmark to compare yourself against. I ran filled out the scorecard for myself, and the results are below. I’m laying down the gauntlet, world. Beat these stats!
That probably won’t be too hard! Especially for film majors! But no matter – as far as I know right this second, I am the king of all movie marathons!
| Ultimate Movie Marathon Score | 145/338 | 43% |
| American Film Buff Score | 75/186 | 40% |
| International Film Snob Score | 13/52 | 25% |
| Pop Culture Hipster Score | 57/100 | 57% |
The Movie Marathon Scorecard File Download
The movie marathon scorecard is presently available in Microsoft Excel format. I would like to make the scorecard available in other formats as well – such as a dynamic webpage page on this site. That will take a little more effort than just slapping web links and other data into Excel, so you’ll have to wait for that version. But, without further ado – the Excel files!
Photo by shorts and longs 
Need help scheduling your next Movie marathon? Now there’s an app for that! Introducing Movie Marathon Time – the movie marathon app for Android devices, now available as a Beta release on Google Play.
You can create as many movie marathons as you want and share them via text, e-mail, facebook, and many other standard apps on your mobile device.
