In 2011, Jean Mason saw 409 movies.

Not sitting on his couch surfing Netflix or catching the latest on HBO. We're talking about the whole moviegoing experience: standing in line, buying a ticket, sitting in the darkened theater.

Mason isn't a studio suit or a movie critic. He doesn't do this for a living.

He just really likes going to the movies, and last year he broke his personal record.

As Mason himself puts it: "That's dysfunctional."

Mason's wife, Leigh, doesn't consider her husband's pastime much of a problem. "It's no different than having a husband who plays golf," she said, adding that she goes with him 50 percent to 60 percent of the time, except when the movie du jour is a slasher flick or boxing movie.

The Masons plan their vacations around movies, going to the theater even when they're out of the country. Going to see a movie in London, for instance, is "more like going to a play," Leigh said.

"It's a hobby, just like anything else except a lot of people think it's insane," Leigh admitted.

For Mason, what's on the screen isn't that important. It's the experience of going to the theater that excites him: driving to the cineplex, waiting as the lights dim and anticipating what trailers will be shown. "I know there are so many movies that are dreadful, but I know I'll like the experience," Mason said during a phone chat before he was off to see Roman Polanski's barbed comedy "Carnage." "It's like panning for gold. Every 30 movies, one turns out to be really good."

The former Philadelphian moved to St. Louis after he retired in the early '90s. He splits his time between here and Vero Beach, Fla. Sometimes he'll drive 100 miles to Palm Beach, Fla., if the flick he wants to see isn't playing any closer. But Mason will essentially watch anything, including the Bollywood offerings at the local AMC theater that serves St. Louis' Indian population.

He brings his own food to the movies, a Subway hoagie — turkey and ham on wheat, no cheese, not toasted — a pocketful of Atomic Fireballs candy and a Diet Coke.

Mason is a dying breed when it comes to those who watch movies on the big screen. Projections from the National Association of Theater Owners estimated 1.28 billion people went to the movies in 2011, the lowest number since 1995, with revenue down 3.6 percent from 2010.

So what drives a man to see, on average, 1.12 movies a day for an entire year?

Competition.

Mason is locked in an epic battle with Neil Oxman, president of Campaign Group, a Philadelphia-based political-media-consulting firm, who is also Tom Watson's caddy on the PGA tour. When the Masons lived in Philadelphia, they would meet up every Friday night to go to the movies with Oxman. They began compiling and comparing movie diaries, keeping track of what theater they went to and whether they liked the film. From this innocent beginning, a contest was born.

It's ironic, though, that Mason should be such a devotee of movie houses. Because during the 30-odd years he spent in Philadelphia, he was an early innovator whose company High Speed Video was responsible for the proliferation of the home video market.

Mason bought the U.S. rights to Sony's Sprinter, a high-speed duplicator, which cut the time needed to copy a movie onto tape, making it easier and cheaper to manufacture home videos. Mason ran plants in Malvern, Pa., and the Netherlands, producing tapes with no decrease in quality from the original real-time duplicating machines. In the late '80s, Mason sold his company.

Despite his contribution to the home video revolution, Mason said he's never watched an entire movie at home. To him, it's not a complete experience.

That's why the most important rule of Mason and Oxman's competition is that the movie must be seen in a theater, with the paid-for ticket stub as evidence.

The only other rule is considerably more challenging: The competitors must watch at least half the movie. "Some are so bad that it's hard," Mason said. "I thought (Terrence Malick's art-house hit) 'Tree of Life' was unintelligible."

Oxman agreed with Mason's assessment. "I would rather run into traffic on Lancaster Avenue" then sit through "Tree of Life" again, he said.

For most of the 20-odd years of this competition, Oxman edged out Mason. But four years ago there was a dramatic shift.

"Neil won 19 years in a row but then I started beating him like a drum," Mason bragged.

Oxman is graceful in defeat.

"Look, I bow to him. It's like Ted Williams hitting .400 in baseball. It's Cy Young winning 500 baseball games," said Oxman, who himself averages 220 to 240 movies a year.

It's not just competing with each other that spurs their obsession, but competing with other cinephiles. In separate conversations, they each mentioned other media — in Mason's case a decade-old Los Angeles Times article, in Oxman's a documentary — that profiled passionate moviegoers. "These fools were seeing 150 movies in theaters," Oxman said. "We had blown past those (numbers) years ago."

Mason predicted that in 2012 he won't be as prolific as last year; he doubts he'll see more than 300 films. "It's partly 'been there, done that,'" Mason said. He also made travel plans that make it impossible to see movies.