Mark Cuban, Pittsburgh native, entrepreneur, Dallas Mavericks owner
“I’ll never forget. I took a date, Nancy Dzuban, to a drive-in to see the first ‘Star Wars.’ I put a blanket on the roof of the car and we sat there and watched. At least, she did. I was more interested in her than the movie, and she was more interested in the movie than me.”
Keith Fuller, co-owner of Pork & Beans, Downtown
“My earliest memory of Star Wars was playing with my brother’s action figures, but I didn’t see the movie until I was 8.” Mr. Fuller, who has a “Star Wars”-inspired tattoo, said before he married his wife, Kathleen, he had to bring her up to speed on the saga; she’d never seen any of the movies. “She had to watch it in this order: 4, 5, 2, 3 and 6but skip the first one. It was horrible.”
Michael Grandinetti, illusionist, West Mifflin native and a regular on The CW’s “Masters of Illusion”
“I definitely remember all of the kids in school (St. Therese’s in Munhall) being very excited. There were ‘Star Wars’-themed birthday parties and all of the toys and merchandise… they were everywhere.”
In 1999, when Mr. Grandinetti was performing in Hollywood for the first time, “The Phantom Menace” had just come out. “I remember after one of our shows, our entire cast and crew rushed out of our theater and over to the movie theater … which had lines down the street. It was a lot of fun to see that, after all these years the excitement for these movies still lived on.”
Abby Fudor of Arcade Comedy Theater, 943 Liberty Ave., where at 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday the company will present “Laser Eyes: Star Wars Sketch Show” ($12 at www.arcadecomedytheater.com)
“I loved Star Wars before I ever saw the movies. My dad would tell us stories of Luke Skywalker and Darth at bedtime, and my brother and I would try to imagine the space battles from his descriptions.
I finally got to see ‘Star Wars’ when it was re-released in theaters in 1997. My uncle took me, and I was glued to my seat throughout the whole thing. For the nextcouple years, I was obsessed. I mimicked the characters, learned to play the songs on piano, and tried to make my own plays and movies that would continue the adventure. Twentyyears later, I’m still doing all three.”
Tim Hartman, actor, illustrator, storyteller and cast member of Pittsburgh CLO’s “A Musical Christmas Carol”
“I would have been about 4½ years old. The movies were being re-released and my family went to see ‘The Empire Strikes Back.’ I remember us rushing to theater, maybe the Cinema 3, which I think is now a hardware store about near Leechburg or Vandergrift.
“We were late, we hurried in. It was Pittsburgh hot, Dagobah weather. We get in the movie theater, it’s dark and the movie has started. Inside, it’s ice cold and there’s this giant wall of white, with AT-AT’s lumbering forward.
“As a kid, your senses are different. I felt like I was seeing through a window, this felt like real magic. I figured it out pretty quickly, but I just remember that vision, this is like a parallel dimension.”