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 mixed reviews and major box office losses. Nonetheless, several of its stars managed to go on to enjoy successful careers. The film has since gone on to become a cult classic.
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. Has-been 1980s pop idol Rex Manning is holding an autograph session at the store for fans of his latest album Back with More. 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 (ultimately loaded with blanks), 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 based the film on her time working in retail stores in high school and college. She was partly inspired by the 1976 comedy Car Wash, which took place in a single day at a workplace.During high school she worked in the video department of Tower Records #166 in Christown Mall in Phoenix, Arizona. Later, she worked at a Tower Video on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California.
Real-life incidents inspired scenes in the film, including a story Heikkinen heard about an employee who stole from the store but later returned. In the second draft, Heikkinen added a storyline of a corporate takeover threat. Additionally, Heikkinen wrote a draft where Corey wanted to meet Rex Manning, but someone else wrote a draft where Corey, a virgin who got accepted into Harvard, wanted to lose her her virginity to Manning. She also borrowed the names of real-life people for characters in the film: Marc, Berko, and Corey.
Heikkinen's spec script mp3 RSS 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 movie aimed at teens with Empire Records, he turned down Clueless which went on to be a box office success while Empire Records was ultimately a box-office bomb.
Moyle spent a month on rehearsals, pilates, dinners, and time for the actors.
Tunney said she shaved her head for the film because Allan told her studio executives thought she was "too cute to be depressed", but cutting her hair was a precarious scene because she cut her real hair and could only do so once.
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 (now Screen Gems) 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 two-level record store were built in a warehouse, with views out windows constructed in forced perspective, not CGI. Allan Moyle's then-wife Dianna Miranda is Lilly, on rollerskates (scenes deleted).
Interiors for the Atlantic City casino were constructed out of the Coconut Grove room at the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles (Regency President Michael Nathanson's then-girlfriend (Kimber Sissons, as Kimber Monroe) is the woman who tells Lucas, "You're sex").
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 the film, due to what media reports described as unspecified "emotional difficulties" Maguire faced during production. Moyle agreed, and all of Maguire's scenes were removed from the final film, and Maguire then sought help for a drinking problem.
Release The film was initially scheduled for a wide release after early positive responses from largely white test audiences. However, sharply negative reviews from heavily Hispanic audiences led to a change in strategy and thus Empire Records received a limited two-week run on very few screens, only 87 screens by one account, and with no substantial advertising.
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 Empire Records as a "lost cause". However he noted Cochran and Tyler had "real screen presence" and wished they found better scripts in the future.
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".
Music
Background The soundtrack album for Empire Records was curated by Mitchell Leib, a music supervisor for the film. The soundtrack was originally attached to Atlantic Records—an affiliate of Warner Bros. Pictures at the time—because Warner Bros. had a distribution pact with the film's producers, Regency Enterprises. However, the soundtrack album was given to A&M Records in order to obtain the participation of A&M artists the Gin Blossoms, whose track "Til I Hear It from You" was issued as the lead single. Besides the Gin Blossoms, four other A&M acts had new tracks released on the soundtrack album: Ape Hangers, Drill, Innocence Mission, and Lustre.