EMPIRE RECORDS 1995
29%
Directed by Allan Moyle
Written by Carol Heikkinen
Starring Liv Tyler, Ethan Embry, Rory Cochrane, Robin Tunney, Renée Zellweger, Anthony LaPaglia
Synopsis
The music-loving employees of Empire Records band together to save their store from a corporate takeover, even as secret crushes and long-building resentments threaten to tear them apart. Oh, and it’s Rex Manning Day.
Why We Love It
Video may have killed the radio star, but it saved Empire Records. Allan Moyle’s movie was a theatrical bomb by any measure, released onto just eighty-seven screens and making $151,000 in its first weekend before disappearing from theaters fourteen days later. And yet speak to any nineties kids worth their salt, and they’ll be able to quote multiple Empire lines (“Shock me, shock me with that deviant behavior!”), recite the soundtrack listing, and tell you the date of Rex Manning Day (it’s April 8). At some point, they probably had the movie’s iconic poster, with a be-skirted Liv Tyler front and center, stuck to their wall. And it’s all thanks to the VHS.
The road to cult classic for Empire Records cut through the video store. In the “Comedy” aisles of Blockbusters across the land, many curious teens were introduced to the single-day story of Gina, A.J., Corey, and the rest of the crew’s efforts to prevent a Towers Records–style company from taking over their shop and, of course, discover themselves in the process. Something seriously clicked about the movie. It wasn’t necessarily the cool kids—the kind of music snobs who actually worked at Empire Records—who fell in love with it; instead, it was the kids who wanted to be like them, who thought that the Cranberries were still cutting-edge and that shaving your head Sinead-style was still the ultimate act of rebellion. Kids who thought the line “What’s with today, today?” was profound. Kids who were playing catch-up.
They were also kids with taste, it turns out. Dismissed by critics at the time, Empire is as endearing a slice of teen life as some of its more celebrated contemporaries.
The characters are what we might call today (or five years ago, maybe) “totally adorkable,” especially Ethan Embry’s goofy Mark. The save-the-store plot gives everything a nice sense of urgency and optimism (this was the era in which Tower and Borders posed a greater threat to small business than cell phones and Kindles, and movies like Empire and You’ve Got Mail romanticized the struggle). And where the script wobbles, the performances elevate—particularly a young Renée Zellweger as Gina, who seems to have it all together until she really doesn’t.
Writer Carol Heikkinen is apparently working on a Broadway musical version of her film. The cool kids might roll their eyes at the thought—musicals are as uncool as Rex Manning, right?—but we’ll be there opening night.