Empire Records
Empire Records is a 1995 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Allan Moyle, written by Carol Heikkinen, and starring an ensemble cast including Anthony LaPaglia, Maxwell Caulfield, Ethan Embry, Debi Mazar, Rory Cochrane, Johnny Whitworth, Robin Tunney, Renée Zellweger, and Liv Tyler.
The plot follows a group of record store employees over the course of one exceptional day. The employees try to stop the store from being sold to a large chain, and learn about each other along the way.
Empire Records was theatrically released in the United States on September 22, 1995, by Warner Bros. to generally negative reviews and major box office losses. It has since gone on to become a cult classic, with several of its stars launching successful careers.
Plot
At independent record store Empire Records in Delaware, employee Lucas has been tasked by store manager Joe with closing the store for the first time. While counting the day's receipts in Joe's office, he discovers the store is about to be sold and converted into a branch of Music Town, a large national chain.Determined to keep the store independent, Lucas hatches a plan, taking the day's cash receipts of approximately $9,000 to a casino in Atlantic City to quadruple it playing craps. Though successfully doubling the money on his first roll, he loses everything on the second.
The following morning, fellow Empire employees A.J. and Mark find Lucas, who confides in them about the previous night's events, just before riding off on his motorcycle. Joe arrives and quickly receives frantic phone calls about the missing deposit from both the bank and the store's owner, Mitchell Beck.
Other employees arrive, including overachieving high school student Corey and her uninhibited best friend Gina. Hostile employee Deb, who has survived an apparent suicide attempt, also arrives. She then goes into the bathroom and shaves her head.
Upon Lucas' arrival, Joe confronts him about the missing deposit and Lucas confirms the money was lost. Joe explains his anti-Music Town plan to the employees - he had saved enough money to become part-owner of the store to save it, but will now be $9,000 short as he must cover the missing money with Mitchell.
Joe is distracted from the crisis due to a major store event: Rex Manning Day. The washed-up 1980s pop idol is holding an autograph session at the store for fans of his latest album Back with More. The unenthused staff mock both Manning and the event, and ultimately many of the fans showing up to meet him are either older women or gay men.
Though detained by Joe in his office, Lucas nonetheless apprehends a belligerent young shoplifter who identifies himself only as "Warren Beatty". He is taken away by police but vows to return seeking revenge.
Encouraged by Gina, Corey indulges her schoolgirl crush on Manning by attempting to seduce him, but winds up humiliated and dejected; A.J. then chooses this inopportune time to confess his love to Corey, which she rejects. After Gina and Corey argue, Gina has sex with Manning. When the staff discover this, A.J. attacks Manning, Gina reveals Corey's addiction to amphetamines, Corey hysterically trashes the store, and Joe orders Manning to leave, which he immediately does after the staff insults his lack of talent.
Deb surprisingly attempts to cheer Corey up, and in return Corey holds a mock funeral for her with the whole staff, during which Deb reveals she nearly killed herself because she felt invisible. The shoplifter "Warren" returns with a gun, and Lucas defuses the situation by revealing that he himself was a troubled youth until he was taken in and saved by Joe. Joe in turn offers "Warren" a job at the store and Warren happily accepts.
After the police leave, Lucas admits defeat and suggests confessing the truth about the missing money to Mitchell. The staff try to replace it but can only pool together $3,000. Suddenly inspired, Mark runs in front of the news crew covering Warren's holdup, announcing on live TV a late-night benefit party at the store to "Save the Empire".
An impromptu concert on the roof by Gina and Berko, another employee, raises funds so Joe can hand the money raised to Mitchell for the lost amount. Mitchell then offers to sell the store "cheap" to Joe, no longer wanting to deal with Empire Records.
Corey finally finds A.J. on the roof fixing the Empire Records sign and confesses that she loves him, too. He decides to attend art school in Boston to be near her while she attends Harvard. They kiss, and the staff ends the long day with a dance party on the roof.
Cast
Production
Heikkinen heard a story, while working at Tower Video in West Hollywood, of theft by an employee who later came back to the store. In the second draft, Heikkinen added a storyline of a corporate takeover threat. Heikkinen wrote a draft where Corey wanted to meet Rex Manning, but someone else wrote a draft where Corey wanted to lose her virginity to Rex Manning. Heikkinen tried to write a story like Car Wash, which took place over one day, at a record store.Heikkinen based the film on her time working in the video department at Tower Records store #166 in Phoenix, Arizona, later working at the Tower Video on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. Just the names of real people were used for characters in the script.
Heikkinen's spec script was first given to Alan Riche's producing partner, Tony Ludwig, by William Morris agent Rob Carlson, telling Riche that Heikkinen had attended Riche's high school, in Phoenix. They brought the script to Michael Nathanson, president of Regency Pictures, and director Allan Moyle, known for Pump Up the Volume became attached.
New Regency got into a bidding war with Warner Bros. over the script. Carol Heikkinen was offered $325,000 up-front and $200,000 if the film was made. Heikkinen was also to receive 1% of any soundtrack royalties and 5% of merchandise sales.
Two days after Regency Enterprises executive Michael Nathanson gave approval to proceed with making Empire Records, he was approached with the script for Clueless. As he already had a "teen movie" in hand, he turned down the eventual $57 million box office hit, and proceeded with production of the eventual $0.3 million box-office bomb of Empire Records.
Moyle spent a month on rehearsals, pilates, dinners, and time for the actors.
Allan came to me and he's like, "I think the studio wants to fire you 'cause they think you're kind of too cute to be depressed,"..."I was like, "Well, I could shave my head." And then I shaved my head, which made everyone very nervous 'cause it was live so if the film got damaged or anything went wrong, we could not do that over again. — Robin Tunney
Exteriors for the record store facade were filmed at 15 South Front Street in Wilmington, North Carolina, in a nightclub, then known as The Palladium, that had a few feet of space converted into a replica of the store set which was located at Carolco studios, and backed with a large picture of the rest of the store.
Exteriors in the Wilmington, North Carolina area also include Riverfront Park; Caffe Phoenix at 9 South Front Street; Cape Fear Memorial Bridge; Wrightsville Beach.
Interiors for the record store, as a vast, two-story building was constructed in a warehouse, with views out windows constructed in forced perspective, not CGI. Allan Moyle's then-wife Dianna Miranda is Lilly, on rollerskates.
Interiors for the Atlantic City casino were constructed out of the Coconut Grove room at the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Exteriors for Corey Mason's House were filmed at Forest Hills Drive.
The Rex Manning music video "Say No More, Mon Amour" was shot prior to principal photography, and was shot on Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina in one day. It was intended to be only a 17-second dance move piece for the main actors to make fun of in the film. Jordan Dawes, the director of the music video, shot for the entire day and gave the producers a complete music video that was almost five minutes in length.
Tobey Maguire asked director Allan Moyle to release him from his part in the film, Moyle agreed, and all of Maguire's scenes were deleted from the final film, and Maguire then sought help for a drinking problem.
Release
The film was supposed to be a wide release, that got pulled back to a two-week run on very few screens, due to the negative second test screening reviews from a Latino audience, after the positive reviews from a suburban white audience.Instead of 1,000-plus screens, they put it on 87. Instead of flooding malls in cities across the country, it showed in four. There was no premiere; no national advertising campaign.
Reception
Box office
The film was a severe flop, making only $150,800 in its opening weekend, and by the end of its run in North America it earned a total of $303,841 against its $10 million budget.Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 35% based on reviews from 37 critics. The site's consensus is: "Despite a terrific soundtrack and a strong early performance from Renee Zellweger, Empire Records is mostly a silly and predictable teen dramedy." On Metacritic the film has a score of 47 out of 100 based on reviews from 7 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.Variety wrote "Nice look, great sound and indefinable youth luster will make Records play OK on vid, especially at parties where frenetic aimlessness is not a negative", calling Empire Records a "soundtrack in search of a movie", describing the film as "one teen-music effort that never finds a groove" before adding that "as far as chart action goes, it could use a bullet -- to put it out of its B.O. misery"
TV Guide gave the film 2 stars out of 5, calling it a "lame comedy" that appeared to be little more than "an elaborate excuse to package and peddle a soundtrack CD."
Roger Ebert gave the film a negative score of one and a half stars out of four, and referred to it as a "lost cause", but wrote that some of the actors might have a future in other, better films. LaPaglia, Cochrane, Zellweger, Tyler, Embry and Tunney all went on to varying levels of success in the years following Empire Records.
Caroline Westbrook of Empire magazine, gave it 3 out of 5, saying "For all its faults, the good-natured, quirky humour that this for the most part offers ultimately makes it very hard to dislike." Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly called it "too blatant a throwback to crass '80s teen fodder to really work."
In 2020, The Guardian wrote: "what saves this film is its unselfconsciously optimistic, goofy, principled spirit. Empire Records was about seeing the silver lining even in the most terrible, scrape-the-bottom-of-the-barrel times, forming unlikely friendships and finding family at work, challenging the financial security and mediocrity of signing on the dotted line and “selling out", and riding out the highs and lows of an industry in its doom-and-gloom phase".