Sometimes enjoying a meal at your favorite restaurant can have unexpected consequences.

That’s how David Park, assistant concertmaster of the Utah Symphony, ended up getting a part in the film The Strongest Man, which receives its world premiere this weekend at the Sundance Film Festival.

As Park tells it, he was dining at a Salt Lake City eatery where he’s a regular patron. As he was leaving one of the servers introduced him to the film’s producer, who also happens to frequent the restaurant. They ended up chatting and the producer invited him to do an audition.

“It turned out that he [the producer] wasn’t crazy about the actor they had hired for the part,” Park told Reichel Recommends. “He wanted somebody else to replace him, even though they had already filmed his scenes.”

Park said he was interested and a couple months later he got called for an audition.

Before his audition Park received coaching, since he had never acted before. That paid off, because, “both the director and the producer were very happy with what they saw.”

The Strongest Man is about Beef, a Cuban construction worker in Miami who suffers from anxiety, and his Korean friend Conan. The two decide to attend a spiritual meditation class, where they’re told to find their respective power animals. Not sure what that means they set out on a journey to literally find them. During their adventure of discovery Conan’s relationship with his family deteriorates, while  Beef’s relationship with Illi, his neighbor, starts to pick up. But through all this Beef never seems to be able to free himself from his anxiety.

Park plays the elderly Mr. Yoon, the father of Jimmy Yoon. While most of the film was shot in Miami, Park’s scenes were filmed in Salt Lake City. “It was one very long day of filming, from nine a.m. to nine p.m.,” Park said. It was stressful but fascinating, he said, even when they had to do numerous retakes, and a scene lasting about a minute on screen took 30 minutes or more to film. “I was very nervous, especially the first time doing my first scene. But the crew members were really nice and always complimented me. They made me feel comfortable.”

The most challenging thing for Park was memorizing his lines. “That was hard. It’s much more difficult than memorizing music.” He said that he kept going over his lines right up to when each scene was ready to be filmed. “I studied my lines very hard and I kept studying them right up to the last minute.”

A perk to being a musician/actor is that Park’s playing will be on the soundtrack accompanying his scenes. “They used the “Meditation” from Thaïs and the Bach “Air on the G String” from my CD [Violin Meditations]. I’m not sure what they did with them, because most of the soundtrack is punk rock.”

Park never expected to land a role, even a small one, in a movie, but now that it’s over, he’s amenable to doing some more acting. “I didn’t seek it out, but I’m open to more film projects. We’ll see what’s out there.”

The Strongest Man premieres Sunday at 5:30 p.m. at the Prospector Square Theatre in Park City. There will be three more screenings. Log on to http://www.sundance.org/projects/the-strongest-man for times, location and more information on the film.

For a complete listing of Sundance Film Festival events log on to http://www.sundance.org/festival/.