By Caitlin Kitson
Few people leave the ticket stand at the AMC Lincoln Square movie theater complex without a smile when crew member Jeffry Ramirez is on the clock.
Ramirez greets the theater’s guests with enthusiasm, telling newcomers and regulars alike how happy he is to see them and delivering commentary about the films they’re about to see. As he scanned tickets last Thursday, he told viewers headed to the Pixar film “Hoppers” how adorable the lizard character is, while patrons ticketed for the Gothic romance film “The Bride!” were advised to lock in for a gory affair.
Since 2021, when Ramirez started working at the theater on Broadway between West 67th and 68th streets, references to his extroverted nature and film-specific quips have proliferated across social media platforms. One post on X from last August, complimenting Ramirez for the enthusiasm he brings to the theater, garnered 20,000 likes. Another X user wrote that he should host the Academy Awards.
When patrons of the AMC complex first showed Ramirez the social media users singing his praises online, he was shocked.
“Usually, Twitter is the [medium] of hate, and I’m there, like, ‘Is this really happening? Why am I getting the wholesome treatment?’” Ramirez told West Side Rag in an interview. “It just made me happy to see that I’m making an impact to filmgoers.”
Sometime after he started his job, scanning tickets for shows in the 13-theater complex, “I began talking more,” Ramirez said. As he scanned, customers asked questions about what they were coming to see, and “If they wanted to know more, I explained more. I guess, when I get nerdy with all the films, that’s when they started realizing, ‘Oh, maybe this guy might be pretty easy to talk to.’”
After nearly five years of befriending theater regulars, Ramirez says he’s sometimes recognized when he’s out of his AMC uniform and strolling the city’s sidewalks. Regulars who arrived for a show during his shift last Thursday, like Manhattan filmmaker Moses Akempta, spoke of Ramirez with friendly warmth.
“We just started talking about movies,” Akempta said. “And we have similar tastes in some ways. We vary on a couple styles, but I think what really cemented our friendship was our true love of movies. And I feel like if you love movies, you’ll love Jeffry.”
Mohammad Chowdhury, a Bronx resident who has frequented AMC Lincoln Square for about 10 years, said he and Ramirez bonded over their physical media collections (Ramirez has more than 300 DVDs and VHS tapes).
“He engages with every guest very respectfully,” Chowdhury said. “They’re coming into this theater, rather than your average theater employee, who will just kind of nudge you in and out. But Jeffry does feel very personal and very direct all the time.”
“I feel like he’s important to the theater now,” Chowdhury added. “You can’t really imagine this place without him.”
A native of the East Bronx, Ramirez first fell in love with the silver screen at the Regal theater in New Rochelle, about a half hour drive from his childhood home. Its movie-viewing technology fascinated him, like the IMAX screen and 4DX technology — which uses motion-enabled chairs and simulated weather effects to physically immerse an audience in a film.
After the COVID-19 pandemic spurred a lockdown, Ramirez became a full-blown cinephile. Stuck at home and attending high school via his computer, he began exploring the world of arthouse cinema on platforms like The Criterion Collection and Arrow Video.
As his senior year of high school came to a close in 2021, Ramirez set his sights on securing a job at a local movie theater, eventually landing his gig at AMC Lincoln Square that summer.
The job description was ticket taker, but Ramirez always saw it as something more. “I wanted to work the position just to really show the impact of cinema,” he said.
Cinemas across the country are still struggling to recover from the toll the pandemic took on the movie theater industry; last year’s domestic box office revenues were down 24 percent from the pre-pandemic level in 2019.
But Ramirez says he is witnessing a renewed passion for cinema among young people, powered in part by the popularity of the film review app Letterboxd, which allows users to log, rate, and review films and track what their friends and other Letterboxd members are watching. It is not uncommon for AMC Lincoln Square guests to ask Ramirez for his Letterboxd profile after they chat in the ticket queue.
“Many people could ask for their social media, but then the cinephiles will ask for the Letterboxd,” Ramirez said.
In Ramirez’s five-star Letterboxd review of “Sinners” from November, he wrote that he loved hearing the audience’s “screams and laughs” while watching the film in 70mm film on an IMAX screen. His two-and-a-half-star review of “Wuthering Heights” from February simply states, “Truly not for anyone that loves the book.”
As a horror film fanatic, Ramirez is rooting for “Sinners,” to sweep the Academy Awards on March 15. His first “Sinners” screening was in 70 mm film at AMC Lincoln Square’s IMAX theater — the largest IMAX screen in the country — before his shift.
“After I watched ‘Sinners,’ I had to go to work afterwards,” Ramirez said. “And I was working in IMAX, telling them how great this picture was, like, it’s unforgettable. And then I watched it again, and then I watched it again.”
Outside of work, Ramirez uses his free time to soak up filmmaking knowledge – from developing a screenplay based on the video game Hotline Miami, to practicing special effects makeup. He hopes to pursue his passion for cinema throughout his career, whether he becomes a theater manager or directs his own films.
“I don’t have to hold a legacy,” Ramirez said. “I don’t mind if I do or if I don’t, as long as I still show an impact to at least any of these guests, any of the people I get introduced to or I talk to.”
Subscribe to WSR’s free email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.
Our family regularly goes to AMC.
Really appreciate Mr. Ramirez and all the AMC staff.
Thank you for the article.