EMPIRE RECORDS Didn't Originally Involve a Story About "The Man" and Lucas's Actions Were Inspired by a True Story
The 1995 film Empire Records is one of my favorite teen movies from the ‘90s. It’s one of those movies that I completely connected with when I was a teenager. The movie does have a sizable fanbase, but it was a box office bomb because it didn’t get the proper marketing or the proper theatrical release.
The film was ditched by its studio just weeks before its release, and it barely made it into any theaters with only a two-week run. Then there were the critics who hated it, and it only made $150,000 at the box office on a $10 million budget.
But, the movie found its audience! The writer of the film, Carol Heikkinen, shared some behind the scenes information regarding the film that I wanted to share. That information includes the real-life inspiration behind Lucas’ story arc and how the movie didn’t originally involve the whole “Damn The Man” aspect of the movie.
The movie starts with Lucas, an Empire employee who takes $9,000 from his boss to Atlantic City to try and win some extra cash. Why? Because he just learned that Empire Records was going to be sold off and this was his misguided attempt to save it.
It turns out, this was inspired by a story that Heikkinen heard while working at Tower Records in West Hollywood. When talking about the real employee, she said: "And the interesting part of it to me was he came back to the store, and he did not get arrested. I think he did get fired but they made arrangements for him to pay it back without getting arrested."
From there, she built the story. In the original script that she wrote, there was no threat of corporate takeover. That ended up in the second draft of the script inspired by the anti-corporatisation principle of alternative culture.
When talking about the original script, Heikkinen said: "It was a much more low-key movie. It was about friendships and family and it wasn't about 'the Man'." She added that in the original draft: "Lucas sat on the couch all day and at the end of day he sort of made plans with Joe to pay him back.”
One of the other changes involved the character Corey, explaining: "I never wrote a draft where Corey wanted to lose her virginity to Rex Manning." She shared that Corey wanted to meet him, and that was it. But, during the production of the film, someone decided “a teen movie needed a raunchy storyline.” So, that’s how that happened.
I’m just happy the movie was made and released. It recently popped up on Hulu, and it’s always a great film to revisit. One of the many great things to come from this movie was the soundtrack. But, I’ll get into that another time.
In the film, “Joe (Anthony LaPaglia) runs Empire Records, an independent Delaware store that employs a tight-knit group of music-savvy youths. Hearing that the shop may be sold to a big chain, slacker employee Lucas (Rory Cochrane) bets a chunk of the store's money, hoping to get a big return. When this plan fails, Empire Records falls into serious trouble, and the various other clerks, including lovely Corey (Liv Tyler) and gloomy Deb (Robin Tunney), must deal with the problem, among many other issues.” The movie also stars Renee Zellweger and Ethan Embry.
Source: ABC.net