David Casterline, a 29 year-old photographer living in Fairfax, became the first eager Star Wars fan to camp out in line at the Uptown Theater in Cleveland Park Tuesday. He’ll be sleeping outside for two nights in a makeshift bed made of cardboard boxes to catch the Uptown’s first showing of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Thursday evening.
“Everyone who knows me says I’m the biggest Star Wars fan they know,” he says.
Casterline was also the first fan in line at the Uptown last year, when he camped out for almost a week to see The Force Awakens.
“The theater holds 800 people, and I want to be the first one through the doors,” he says.
The Uptown has a long history of screening Star Wars films and hosting some of its most crazed fans. The original movie first played at the Uptown in the summer of 1977, and was described by a Washington Post reporter as “The Movie That Ate Cleveland Park,” for all the raucousness it brought to an otherwise calm neighborhood.
Casterline expects another satisfying film: “They have the right people on it now, so it’s not going to be bad like the prequels.”
