Matt Seitz's Trip Down Movie Memory Lane Leads Us Back to the NorthPark I & II

By Robert Wilonsky Sat., Jul. 24 2010 at 10:30 AM

Categories: From the RTF Dept., Media

Nickelrocket

The greatest movie theater in Dallas, at least during my lifetime

On Salon, my old friend and former cubicle-mate Matt Zoller Seitz has asked an eclectic assortment of cinephiles, writers and filmmakers alike, to share The Film Experience That Left a Lasting Impression -- as though, really, there could be just one.

Full disclosure: Most of mine involve early, awkward dates at the very sketchy Northtown 6 -- or Star Wars, Empire and Jedi at the NorthPark I & II. Or Die Hard at the NorthPark. Aliens also. And: E.T., Back to the Future, Superman: The Movie, Fletch ... Look, pretty much anything at the NorthPark I & II, where the ginormous screen and THF'NX wall of sound were more three-dee than any low-rent, dolled-up experience being sold for dollars on the penny at your neighborhood AMC Cinemark Tinseltown Googolplex. (I'm guessing my little brother's is of our father taking us and our older cousin Greg to the UA Walnut Hill 6 on December 9, 1983 -- Michael's 12th birthday and the opening night of Scarface. Big Hersch was mortified.)

Anyway. Matt's offering among the Salon submissions likewise transpired at the NorthPark, shuttered in '98 and razed but nine years ago though it feels like it's been since forever. The Movie Experience He Can't Forget also involves a movie shot in Dallas about a man shot in Dallas: JFK by Oliver Stone, good for a giggle during its rare cable screenings. Matt, though, is awful serious about what he saw in 1991: "Whatever you think of Stone's films or his politics, JFK did Dallas, and the world, a service." That's not a spoiler. That's a tease.

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