2025-191 / MLZ MAP: **64.30** / Zedd MAP: **47.91** / Score Gap: *16.39*

[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Records?wprov=sfti1#Background) / 
[IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112950/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) / [Official Trailer](https://youtu.be/uvIsvZlk4GE?si=MR9JL7MGCFwaIbxN) / Our Collection

IMDb Summary: Twenty-four hours in the lives of the young employees at Empire Records when they all grow up and become young adults thanks to each other and the manager. They all face the store joining a chain store with strict rules.

Starring Anthony LaPaglia, Maxwell Caulfield, Debi Mazar, Rory Cochrane, Johnny Whitworth, Robin Tunney, Renée Zellweger, and Liv Tyler. 

It’s [Rex Manning Day](https://collider.com/rex-manning-day-explained/) and therefore, we had to pop on this time capsule film from 1995 today and celebrate it! 

Zedd and I used to have a lot of friends who worked “in the music industry” aka, at Wherehouse Music. We actually knew some of the same people as we were growing up and in school in two very close little towns. But we never knew each other. But the cool kids, they were “in the music industry.” They got tickets to the best concerts, got to have items signed by the artists, and always knew who the new, cool, upcoming bands were. We all wanted to be “in the music industry.” 

Zedd and I failed spectacularly in that specific pursuit, having been stuck “in the exotic pet industry” and later “in the legal industry.” We were not cool, it is what it is. 

I have to borrow from [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jun/22/empire-records-90s-cult-classic-starring-liv-tyler-and-renee-zellweger-is-ripe-for-a-comeback) with this little tidbit about the film “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".

So Happy Rex Manning Day our cinematic family! Be good and ***Movie On!***!

Empire Records (1995)