One of our favorite rising actors, David Dastmalchian, is Guest Blogging! Learn his name. He's working with great people -Editor
Photo by Evelyn Leigh"What I Saw..."
-by David Dastmalchian
There are so many films that have a special place in my memory and their impact on my life was made all the more powerful by how and where I saw them. My earliest memories of film-going are the Kansas City drive-in’s where I caught second-run screenings from the back of my folks old station wagon of Grease, James Bond flicks like View from a Kill and Moonraker, and being in my mom’s arms at the back of the theater at a matinee with my family of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I thought the tarantulas in the opening sequence were climbing the walls of the theater… Here are a few spectacular memories that I will always treasure:
What I Saw: THE MUPPET MOVIE
Where I Saw It: The Oak Park Mall Cinemas (KS)
This will remain one of the most profound movie-going experiences of my life. The characters, colors, sounds, music, performances all exploded in front of my little face on the big screen as I sat enraptured beside my childhood buddy, Brian Bishop and his wonderful mother, Kathy. We went to a matinee at the local cinema and this was one of my first ventures into an actual movie theater. At that point in my development, the whole “suspension of disbelief” in my imagination was so strong that I believed wholeheartedly that ‘Sweetums’ the monster Muppet actually crashed through the screen in our theater auditorium at the end of the film. For years I would proudly boast that I had seen the film in a theater where a REAL Muppet made an appearance. The “Rainbow Connection” became my first on-stage performance in a preschool talent show and my wife even chose the song for her processional at our wedding. The effect of this film on my life continues to this day. Several times a year (especially in moments of disillusionment with the entertainment industry), I will watch the final five minutes of the film – from the moment that Orson Welles offers Kermit “The Rich and Famous Contract” through the end. Go do this now. Bring the Kleenex. You’re welcome.
Continue for three more favorite films
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Thursday, August 15, 2019 at 3:00PM 
I fear that in delivering this news I will be able to actually see the liver spots pop up on the tips of my typing fingers and travel with sudden immediacy up my arms -- something like a smaller version of that scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the dude turns to a skeleton and dust in ten flat seconds. But throw all the "Old Man Yells At Clouds" memes at me you must, the news that Crawl director Alexandre Aja and producer Steven Spielberg -- who has recently made headlines about the sanctity of the movie-going experience, cough cough -- are teaming up to bring interactive-by-cell-phone "Choose Your Own Adventure" type storytelling to movie theaters makes my thin skin shudder and die...