by 
The 1995 movie Empire records is one of my favorite teen movies from the 90s. It’s one of those films that I felt totally connected to as a teenager. The film has a sizeable following, but it was a box office bomb because it didn’t get the right marketing or theatrical release.
The film was dropped by its studio just a few weeks before its release and barely made it to theaters with a running time of only two weeks. Then there were the critics who hated it, and it only grossed $150,000 at the box office on a $10 million budget.
But the film found its audience! the author of the film, Carol Heikkinen, shared some behind-the-scenes information regarding the film that I wanted to share. This information includes the real-life inspiration behind Luca’s storyline and how the film originally didn’t include the entire Damn The Man aspect of the film.
The film opens with Lucas, an Empire employee, bringing $9,000 from his boss to Atlantic City to try and win some extra money. Why? Because he just found out that Empire Records is going to be sold and that was his misguided attempt to save it.
It turns out this was inspired by a story Heikkinen heard while working at Tower Records in West Hollywood. Speaking about the real employee, she said: “And the interesting thing for me was that he came back to the store and he wasn’t arrested. I think he was fired but they made arrangements for him to pay it back without being arrested.”
She built the story from there. In the original screenplay she wrote, there was no threat of a takeover. This resulted in the second draft of the screenplay, inspired by the alternative culture’s anti-corporatization principle.
Discussing the original script, Heikkinen said, “It was a much more understated film. It was about friendships and family and not ‘the man.'” She added in the original draft, “Lucas sat on the couch all day and at the end of the day he made plans with Joe to repay him.”
One of the other changes involved the character Corey, who stated, “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 film’s production, someone decided that “a teen movie needs a raunchy plot.” So that’s how it happened.
I’m just glad the movie got made and released. It recently showed up on Hulu, and it’s always a great movie to watch again. One of the many great things that came out of this film was the soundtrack. But I’ll get into that another time.
In the movie “Joe (Anthony LaPaglia) runs Empire Records, an independent Delaware store that employs a close-knit group of music-loving youth. When the careless clerk Lucas (Rory Cochrane) bets part of the store’s money in hopes of a big return. When this plan fails, Empire Records finds itself in serious trouble and the various other employees, including the beautiful Corey (Liv Tyler) and the gloomy Deb (Robin Tunney), has to deal with the problem among many other problems.” The film also has stars Renee Zellweger And Ethan Embry.
Source: ABC.net
