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Matthew
Hello and welcome back to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today I have Jessica Plummer, one of my favorite returning guests, and I get to ask her one of the most important questions in cinematic history. Jessica, what’s with today? Today.
Jessica
Excellent question. As you can probably tell, today we are talking about the movie Empire Records, which to my younger audience, some of you may never have heard of, in which case please sue your families right now.
Matthew
Your parents have failed you. It is an utter cult classic, a beloved movie, a favorite of sleepover parties everywhere, particularly to older millennials and younger Gen Xers, which I think Jessica and I together fall into. It’s 30 years old and it’s a favorite of both of ours. It was one that we wanted to go back and take a look at again. I saw something on TikTok about it that got me thinking about it, that made me want to rewatch it. I said, Jessica, you must be a fan of this movie. Let’s talk about it. It’s really a genre that doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t even know how to fit it into our modern conversation, but there’s definitely some fun ethical questions that are raised both within the movie itself and about the production of it and why we don’t see movies like this these days. Jessica, say hello. For those who haven’t seen it, how would you describe Empire Records to someone who hasn’t seen it before?
Jessica
I guess it’s a teen comedy — I think that’s the best way to describe it — but it’s very slice of life. It’s like 24 hours in the life of an independent record store in some unnamed town where everybody is very, very cool.
Matthew
It’s funny because on the one hand I want to call it a rom-com, and there are some rom-com elements to it, but it is much more of an ensemble piece. Like you said, it’s a slice of life. There’s an ensemble of weird teen characters, and they’re kind of older. The record store manager is kind of an adoptive uncle to all of them. The romance is a little bit at the center, but there’s so much else going on in the heart of this movie. What are the elements that you think we just don’t see in movies these days?
Jessica
I mean, I think a big part of it is the — I’m going to say small budget, although I was looking at Wikipedia last night to prepare for this episode — it’s relatively small budget. I think it cost like $10 million to make, but it made like $12 at the box office. It was such a flop. I’ve never seen numbers like that. But really, that relatively low budget, small scale — it almost feels very indie, very homemade, which of course was a very popular aesthetic of the early to mid ’90s. The cast is pretty much entirely unknown at the time. Some of them have gone on to be famous — Liv Tyler, Ethan Embry, Renée Zellweger — all obviously went on to have very successful careers in the ’90s and 2000s. But at the time this was very early career for all of them. The others mostly didn’t make a lot of other movies I’ve seen.
Matthew
Yeah, I took a look at a bunch of their cast bios and some of them have been in things, but it’s kind of a weird break between those top three you mentioned — especially Liv and Renée Zellweger — and then everybody else. In many ways, I think this movie really helped launch both of their careers. Liv Tyler, of course, had already gotten famous for the Aerosmith video she was in, but this was, I think, one of her first real mainstream movies. And I think this was Renée Zellweger’s first big part as well. She’d been in a couple of other things. So as you said, it is about the story of a record store on the day when there’s a crisis. This could have easily been the season finale episode of a show today about this group of kids. But it manages to introduce all of them and make you care about all of them in a pretty tight — I think it’s an hour and forty minutes or something like that.
Jessica
Just an hour and a half. It’s short.
Matthew
Yeah. The overarching theme is that the manager Joe wants to keep the store independent, but they’re having money problems, and the owner wants to sell to Music Town, which is the insert-big-corporate-record-store that will put in all of the top 40 hits and get rid of all of the quirky, fun music stuff that’s happening in an independent place. Lucas, who — it’s a very small plot point — basically was a foster kid whose parents treated him really badly, and he was adopted by Joe, the manager of the store. He kind of works at the store but also has one of the most clearly defined family relationships with Joe, although really they all do in some way. He figures out that Joe is in money trouble and the store might become this terrible thing. So he’s closing for the first time that night — closing means getting all the money together from the registers — and there’s somewhere, I believe in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, close enough that he can drive to Atlantic City that night. He drives there utterly convinced that the music gods are going to bless his endeavor. He puts all the money down on craps, wins, puts it all down again, convinced he’s going to have enough money to save the store and everything will go great. And of course, he loses it. So the main story is what’s going to happen with that? What’s going to happen with Lucas? Meanwhile, among the many teenagers and young adults at the store, Liv Tyler is playing the romantic lead. There’s this teen idol guy she utterly loves named Rex Manning coming to the store to do a record signing — because you’re so, oh, Rexie, you’re so sexy — a line that many people will remember. She has decided she’s going to give her virginity to this man. Meanwhile, another guy at the store secretly loves her — AJ — and wants to be with her. Her best friend is a much more adventurous young lady who is always teasing her about not being as sexually active as she is, and of course gets into her own hijinks. It sounds like we need like a ten-episode season. There’s also the kind of goth stand-in who has self-harmed recently and is questioning whether she wants to continue living. There’s just so much going on in the store.
Jessica
Oh, and there’s also Mark, the lovable stoner comic relief. And then two other guys who don’t really need to be in the movie — Eddie and Burko, the useless employees.
Matthew
Well, one of them has to be in the movie because he writes the song that Renée Zellweger gets to sing, because her character’s plot is that she never actually tries to do what she wants — and therefore gets to challenge that and of course find her resolution on the roof of the store.
Jessica
But I was thinking about that, and Mark at one point says he wants to start a band. They could have just had him already have a band. Those two guys, they’re just also there.
Matthew
They’re definitely there. It feels like a lot got left on the cutting room floor, because one of them is sort of the ex-boyfriend of the goth girl and apparently something bad happened with them, and it isn’t really explained.
Jessica
Not that he’s the reason why she’s upset, but that he’s not able to help her.
Matthew
Yeah, there’s a lot going on in this movie.
Jessica
There’s a lot going on, and the movie will very frequently stop the plot in its tracks to do an extended gag or have a little musical interlude or just have weird shots of stuff in the store. There’s also a shoplifter — a 14-year-old kid who comes in, shoplifts, and then sort of gets folded into the group. There’s a lot happening. I can see why it bombed — or rather, I can see why all the critics hated it — because I feel like if you watch this and you’re 14 and you want to be these kids, then it’s a perfect movie. And if you’re an adult, you’re like, is anybody going to ring up the customers or do anything?
Matthew
Yeah. How they do the musical montage is the idea that each of the workers gets to pick what album is on at certain moments. There are some fantastic musical montages and great moments, and a lot about two strong pot brownies and how that can affect your watching a war video. But we’re talking about a lot of reasons why people might not like this movie. Why do you think so many people loved it? Why was it so beloved?
Jessica
I mean, I think a big part of it is just the coolness factor. These are the coolest kids you’ve ever seen in your life. Especially as you said earlier, this movie particularly appeals to young Gen X and elder millennials, which is our sort of overlap. I am just old enough to remember looking up to teens exactly like this. I’m not saying that someone who was born in 1990 instead of 1984 wouldn’t appreciate the movie at all, but it wouldn’t have that really strong nostalgia element. And the screenplay is extremely witty — it’s just a really sharp, funny screenplay. But at the same time, even though they are unrealistically cool and unrealistically funny, they’re really relatively realistic as teenagers. Not always, but a lot of the time. There’s the bit you were describing — all the interpersonal drama. When I was rewatching it, I was really struck by the scene after Corey — Liv Tyler’s character — has decided to lose her virginity to Rex Manning and then changes her mind and is kind of having a panic attack about it. AJ decides this is the perfect moment to tell her that he’s in love with her. She does not handle it well, and he does not handle the rejection well. They have a big fight and they’re both basically flouncing around unable to cope. Or the bit where she gets into a huge screaming fight with Renée Zellweger’s character Gina, and they’re both having these massive meltdowns and sobbing hysterically, and Joe the manager is just standing there —
Matthew
— like —
Jessica
— they feel so real, just with way better hair than you or anybody you’ll ever meet.
Matthew
Yeah, it was really interesting how the movie is for everybody. If you think back to what high school was like — either because you know it or because you watched My So-Called Life — really all the different kinds of groups we had are represented in this movie. There is the daddy’s girl, super driven, has to get into Harvard or nothing else will be okay. There’s the person coming from a pretty bad family background whose mother has never really done much with her life, figuring out what it means to be a sexual person without letting herself be defined by that. There’s the stoner kid. There’s the young struggling artist who just has too many romantic feelings and doesn’t know what to do with himself. There’s the goth woman dealing with feelings of self-worth and self-doubt, questioning the optimism and happiness of all the people she sees around her. It’s funny, because it’s not that all these kids work at the store and therefore all love each other. A lot of them really don’t like each other, but the store brings them together and allows them to relate to each other in some really powerful ways.
So let’s go kind of story by story and talk about this main one, because in doing some deep dives around this movie there are really interesting theories about it. It does continue to be beloved. I know that you and I talk about the nostalgia factor for our own childhoods. For me, this came out in ’95 right when I was graduating high school, and I wound up not seeing it for a number of years, but by the time I was in my mid-twenties I had a friend group where I was mostly the one who dealt with people’s problems. So I related to Joe probably more than anybody else — and unsurprisingly went on to become a pastor a few years later. One fun theory I’ve heard is: is Lucas supernatural in some way? One of the things that happens in the course of the movie is that Lucas sets a plot in motion whose end result is that Joe accepts that he doesn’t want to work for a big boss who wants to sell out — he wants to own his own store and take that risk, but he’s never really thought he could. The events Lucas sets off by losing all this money lead to a big party at the end, they raise all the money and more, and none of it makes any sense, but it’s a ’90s movie so you just go with it.
Jessica
Yeah, they have like one of those big plastic cheese-ball jars and they’re like, yeah, it’s $6,000. And I was like, it’s $273 — are you kidding me? People were not putting $100 bills in that thing.
Matthew
Also, somehow the amount that originally was supposed to just replace the $9,000 that should be in the registers now becomes that plus enough to buy the store outright.
Jessica
Well, Joe does say he actually did have the money, but he’s not going to use it because he has to pay back what Lucas stole, so that is covered.
Matthew
Because $10,000 is a down payment for a major record store either way.
Jessica
I mean, also the real estate — this thing is like three or four stories high, but it’s only one big room with balconies.
Matthew
There are balconies, there’s this incredible view — but the point being, towards the end when everything is kind of coming together and everyone is in a better place, in part because of wisdom that Lucas has passed down to all of them in his very weird but very Lucas sort of way — Joe realizes he’s going to get to live his dream and he looks at Lucas and says, “You knew, didn’t you?” And Lucas just kind of says yeah. So from this there’s been some idea that Lucas is supposed to be a supernatural figure — the representative of the music gods who didn’t make it work at the craps table but actually did make it work by throwing this whole thing into motion.
Jessica
I mean, I suppose that’s possible. I think Occam’s razor would suggest that what Joe is saying is “you knew I didn’t want to work for Music Town, I wanted to own the store” — or something along those lines. But I can’t prove that.
Matthew
Yeah, he might have a cape somewhere. We don’t know. But okay, putting that theory aside — what do you think of the Lucas and Joe storyline?
Jessica
It’s one of those things that’s overall great except for that one moment, and I think you know what moment I’m thinking of — that’s really not okay.
Matthew
I remember thinking that for the most part this movie didn’t have a lot of the kind of homophobic or transphobic humor that I tend to associate with movies from this time. But I feel like I saw one moment when I watched it two weeks ago and was like, oh, I forgot how horrible that was, and then blanked it out. So remind me.
Jessica
Oh no, I mean there are a couple of passing gay jokes — this is a movie from 1995, so yeah, that’s just going to happen. No, what I mean is the fact that Joe beats Lucas at one point. Joe is his foster father, and it’s really weird. Right at the very beginning of the day, everybody knows that Lucas did this — it’s not a secret — and Joe is clearly furious, as he should be. He lays out his dilemma really clearly: if he tells anyone — if he calls the cops, if he tells his boss, if he doesn’t deposit the money in the bank, anything like that — Lucas is going to go to jail. And Lucas, as you mentioned, was a foster kid, and he specifically says his mom gave him up for being a bad seed, so presumably he has a record, which makes his relationship with Warren really interesting. So if Joe calls the cops or in any way reports this, then Lucas is screwed. And Joe says if Lucas gets arrested, he’s the one who’s going to have to bail him out because Lucas doesn’t have anybody else — and that’s his savings, covering what Lucas stole and bail on top of it.
Matthew
It should also be mentioned that all of the characters are older teenagers. It’s mentioned that two of them are in high school, one of them has an apartment of his own — my point being that all of them seem to be on whatever side of the line of 18 is most convenient for that moment. So Lucas is not going to be tried as a child at this point in time.
Jessica
No. The ages are pretty unclear, because yeah, Liv Tyler is definitely still in high school because she’s not at Harvard yet. But AJ talks about paying rent, and Deb mentions she has no idea where her mother is, which would imply she’s kind of on her own, also lives on her own.
Matthew
But I think we don’t want to think too much about AJ possibly being a lot older — I think he’s supposed to be the same age but maybe like a year older in school or something like that.
Jessica
Yeah, because he’s debating going to art school. I think we can safely say she’s probably a senior in high school and he graduated the previous year — I think that’s a safe bet. And then there’s the question of is she underage and what does that mean for the whole Rex Manning thing. But we’ll come back to that. So yes, Joe is furious with Lucas, and Lucas does nothing to mitigate this — he’s a complete little shit the entire day. It’s pretty far into the movie that Joe finally loses his temper, not at the theft but at Lucas continuing to be a little shit, and he drags him into his office and shuts the door. All the other kids stand around wincing while they hear violence and the wall shaking. Then the door opens, they come out, Joe hands Lucas a paper towel because he’s bleeding and has a bloody wound on his forehead for the entire rest of the movie. Joe says, “You deserved that,” and Lucas says, “Yeah.” And like, other than that their relationship is really great and fun and nuanced, because it’s so clear that Joe is going to fall on his sword for Lucas because he loves him, and Lucas did this incredibly stupid thing for Joe because he loves him. And then there’s that weird moment. For the record, younger viewers — this level of domestic abuse was not normal in ’90s movies. More normal than it is today, but it was not par for the course.
Matthew
It’s so interesting because I’ll admit I didn’t have anything like that reaction to the scene, and I think part of it is that the movie plays with this a bit. I said earlier I kind of wish more of the father-son relationship between Joe and Lucas was spelled out. I’m not a fan of violence in any circumstances, but I think there are times where my eyebrows will be lower than they might otherwise be. An employee of an independent business steals a significant amount of money from an employer, and then does nothing to help him — instead just spouting truisms or whatever. Do I think the employer should hit him in that situation? No. Is that employer going to go to the top of my villains list if he does? No. Adding the father-son dynamic — I think maybe it’s because that really hasn’t been spelled out by that point in the movie yet — and then on later viewings it just didn’t click for me in that same way. And the fact that it is kind of handled off screen. Because yeah, the way you spell it out, especially when it is not just employer-employee but also father-son —
Jessica
Oh yeah, that makes it way worse.
Matthew
Right. There definitely is some element of that. Although I do think that this kind of domestic abuse of a parent towards a son is by no means normalized in movies at the time, I can think of other instances where things like this happened — especially in this kind of setting of an older parental figure dealing with someone who has had a bad history. It doesn’t make it right, but part of what stopped it from hitting me as hard is it didn’t feel wildly out of character for that dynamic. Part of what I’m thinking of is Gilmore Girls, with Luke and Jess — I remember being like, I don’t love the fact that I think Luke hits Jess a couple of times when Jess is being a complete and total idiot and putting himself and others into legal danger. But I can understand the circumstances. Which again — with today’s sensibilities I’m like, no, that’s never ever okay.
Jessica
The movie really presents it as this is part of their dynamic — that Lucas had this coming, everybody knows it, he needed it, and Joe deserved to work out some of his frustration. The movie presents it as the correct response, which is part of why it’s so messed up. If it were played as “this isn’t cool,” it would ironically be less disturbing to me. And there’s a few different ways this comes up, but I think there’s a real disconnect in this movie — it draws a really direct line between coolness and morality in a way that it really shouldn’t.
Matthew
No, I hear that. It’s funny that I’m thinking about this now, because yeah, it’s very much a silly teen movie that has a romance at sort of the center of it, but it’s very much about everyone finding their own personal growth. There are a couple of other more direct acts of violence as well, and I think Joe is actually involved in them too. This one I think comes off as much more understandable. We can get into the Rex Manning of it all. Rex Manning is supposed to be kind of a washed-up pop star who had some big hits ten years ago and now puts out stuff that — I don’t think auto-tune existed at that point, but it does not feel like it is written for the most artistically-minded of audiences. It’s definitely an aging pop star trying to hold on. He clearly treats all the people around him pretty badly. His manager winds up quitting on him. And in the kind of big scene for Liv Tyler’s character Corey, she basically — she’s had this dream of sleeping with him since she was a young girl. She insists on taking his lunch, goes in to take his lunch, and then starts stripping for him. In what I think she imagined would be this beautiful, romantic, becoming-a-woman kind of moment, he clearly just treats her as yet another groupie. He unzips his pants and is just like, okay, go to town. And she is deeply offended and upset. There’s been tension building with her and Renée Zellweger’s character Gina, in part because it comes out that Gina worries that Corey sees her as a slut, and Corey feels like Gina has been pushing her into being more sexually active or more active with drinking or drugs.
Jessica
I don’t know that she even thinks that. I think she’s just taking everything that happened with Rex and everything that happened with AJ out on Gina. I don’t think it’s necessarily justified in any way — which I’m not saying to make her a bad guy. I think it feels very real in that moment.
Matthew
Yeah. For sure, I think all of them do. And Gina especially — because part of the point is that Corey comes from a much wealthier background; Corey’s planning to go off to Harvard. Gina is the person who has just never considered any of those possibilities. Gina winds up going back into the store, and with her very much clearly being the aggressor — although again she’s a child — Rex Manning should know this. It basically leads to a situation where the two of them are having sex in the storeroom. When everyone else figures that out, she walks out looking kind of disheveled, he walks out zipping up his pants. And if I’m right, I think AJ tackles him?
Jessica
AJ tackles him, Rex punches AJ — that’s why AJ has a black eye for the rest of the movie.
Matthew
That’s right. So AJ definitely initiates a physical confrontation with him.
Jessica
It’s pretty funny too, because if you’re watching closely — I mean, bless AJ’s heart, he’s 90 pounds soaking wet, maybe 95 with that cardigan. He’s flailing — he doesn’t even have fists made. He’s like, I’m going to fight you with the power of poetry.
Matthew
He’s such a little white knight, and it’s just adorable. And I’ll say in that moment, I don’t even think he knows exactly what this guy did to upset Corey.
Jessica
Yeah, she said she threw herself at him.
Matthew
That’s right. So to some extent, is he angered by how Rex treated Corey? By how he treated Gina? By the fact that he now sees this guy as his rival for Corey? It’s because he’s a teenage boy and he has no idea what he’s feeling.
Jessica
Yeah.
Matthew
But I just thought it was interesting, juxtaposing those two moments. This isn’t a superhero movie, it’s not a fight scene by any means, but there is that moment of violence as well as the moment between Joe and Lucas.
Jessica
Yeah, and there are other moments — I don’t think anybody else throws a punch, but shortly after that, when Corey has her meltdown, it takes four of the guys to carry her into the back room while she’s trashing the store. And then Warren shows up with a gun — although it only has blanks in it, we find out. So there are definitely outbursts of violence throughout the movie. But yeah, the Joe and Lucas one is jarring because of the power dynamics underlying it. It doesn’t feel random. It feels like a glimpse into a pattern, and that’s just a jarring note for me.
Matthew
No, and that’s fair. I think in part because for the most part I related to Joe, it didn’t click for me in that same way. But yeah, it definitely puts a different weight on it.
Jessica
And I’ll fess up to the thing that I’ve been wrestling with, because I really don’t think it’s that bad — okay, so the Rex Manning of it all. There are a couple of things I want to unpack. You mentioned that Gina is a child. I don’t know that we know she is.
Matthew
No, they specifically say that — I think Gina goes to high school with Corey.
Jessica
Oh, I didn’t catch that. So she may be 17, which I think is probably the youngest Corey could be. But I was thinking about the scene where Corey comes on to Rex, and later the same thing happens with Gina coming on to Rex. He does ask Corey — he says, “Are you sure you want to do this?” and she says yes, and he says, “How old are you?” and she says something like “it doesn’t matter, old enough.” And that’s when he takes his — yeah. So he’s not really checking and not too concerned about it. But in his defense — and he’s a sleazebag, don’t get me wrong — he made no overtures towards any of the young women working in the store. They were both the ones who came on to him. Now, that doesn’t excuse him if they are underage, but —
Matthew
I think this gets us into some much more difficult issues. I think it’s important for society to have lines. I don’t think there’s something magical that happens the day you turn 18 that means everything before then was a childlike act of innocence and everything after that is fine. I think it is entirely possible for a person to take advantage of a 20-year-old in a way that a 17-year-old might actually be a little more savvy about.
Jessica
Even here — I think if Gina is 17 in this scene, I don’t think she’s damaged by sleeping with Rex Manning. I think what’s upsetting to her is the reaction of everybody else. Sleeping with Rex Manning means nothing to her, whereas for Corey, even if she is 18, this was an extremely upsetting incident. So yeah, 100% — a birthday is not magic.
Matthew
It’s funny, I appreciate you saying that because I remember the first time I watched it, I was an idiot. Part of me was like, isn’t that what Corey wanted? I don’t get what the big deal is. And I later came to understand — of course — because she had this one idea of making love to Rex, and Rex was like, oh, you’re a groupie. And for me, the thing — it feels like, for Gina to do that with Rex, totally apart from everything else, I think fine. And I think for Rex, you’re kind of sleazy, but she’s clearly the one coming on to him in many ways. If she’s over 18, sure. Still sleazy as hell, but not like, oh my God, you’re the worst of the worst. To me, though, what she’s doing has nothing to do with Rex in that moment. It is very much about her believing that Corey thinks she’s better than her, and I think with some justification. This is the “I’m going to go get what Corey couldn’t have, what Corey was afraid to” — so great on Corey.
Jessica
Yeah, because Corey hurt her feelings. 100%. Absolutely. And again, like I keep saying — Corey and Gina and Deb, I think all the female characters in this — the three teenage girls — feel very, very real, and the way they all interact with each other feels very, very real. But the other thing about Rex Manning — and I absolutely was a teenage girl obsessed with pop stars. I was a diehard Backstreet Boys fan. Like, documentaries-of-Beatlemania-level Backstreet Boys fan. There’s footage of me from an MTV event where I wanted to chase them through Times Square. Like, physically. It was crazy. So yeah, like you said, you relate to Joe — I big time relate to Corey. I was a little goody-two-shoes, A-plus student who was in love with a pop star who has since turned out to be kind of a turd. A couple of the Backstreet Boys have turned out to be not great. I was not a Nick Carter fan — and there are quite a number of assault allegations against him on his Wikipedia page. But I know that feeling. I know what it’s like to be that girl. And I mentioned before that the movie really conflates coolness and morality. I think it’s noteworthy that Rex is sleazy, and he’s very clearly contemptuous of his fans, and he’s occasionally a diva — like, I don’t like that chair, I want a different chair. But he doesn’t actually do anything terrible. He and Mitchell, the store owner, are both played as the villains of the movie because they’re losers according to the coolness ethos of the movie — not because of any of their actions. And one thing that always runs in the back of my mind when I watch Empire Records, as much as I enjoy it and as cool as I think these kids are, is that they would all hate me because of my taste in music.
Matthew
Yes.
Jessica
There is a very consistent message that you are only a good person if you like rock and alternative and that’s it. And if you like pop music — particularly pop music that appeals to women — and there are one or two visibly gay guys in the crowd who are pulled out for a little bit of mocking. They are so ridiculous that even the pop star who makes the music can barely keep from being contemptuous to their faces.
Matthew
In many ways — of course I knew this would happen, but this is a good conversation to have — it’s about pulling some of this apart. And at that age, I would never deign to listen to something that had been recorded in my lifetime, with the exception of like artsy folk music — I was listening to all like Bob Dylan and Tom Waits and stuff like that. So I really was Joe in a lot of ways. Now I’m a huge Sabrina Carpenter fan. And in the ’90s I kind of loved Backstreet Boys but would never ever admit it to anybody. Now I’ll happily do their karaoke anytime, and I love One Direction. But yeah, like I think you’re very right. Joe never grew up. And it’s funny that Rex is very much portrayed as the villain in some ways I think are justifiable and some that are kind of not. I think he has one of the best lines in the movie that says so much about his character — his parting insult to everyone: “Why don’t you all just fade away.” Such a perfect encapsulation of losing fame being the only thing that matters.
Jessica
And like, he’s a great character, and Maxwell Caulfield does an amazing job. He portrays that really specific character so beautifully. You watch him and you love to hate him. But when you think about what he actually does, it’s not actually that bad. And it’s the same as the Joe and Lucas beat-down scene — the movie is so compelling that you’re kind of rolling with what it’s put forward as right and wrong. The music thing in particular really struck me. Everything with Rex Manning, but also there’s a bit where Lucas is going through the CDs that Warren was shoplifting, and he’s like, “rap, metal, rap, metal, Whitney Houston” — like, these are terrible, and if you’re going to steal you should steal good music. And I’m ashamed it took me this long, but that’s when I went: there are no Black people in this movie.
Matthew
Yeah, I was going to point out earlier when we were talking about the music — there’s no hip hop, no rap, because they’re all white kids in this movie. Which again doesn’t make it stand out for a ’90s movie like this. But especially a movie that’s about music, in a place that’s supposed to be pretty close to New York City — music is so heavily inspired by non-white —
Jessica
— artists, and the origins of music by Black people are dismissed as bad. Rap and metal are bundled together as “these are violent and we don’t need to think about them anymore.” And then Whitney Houston is laughable — excuse you, she’s one of the greatest vocal artists to ever live.
Matthew
Yes. Lucas has poor judgment in pop artists he could have picked. Whitney Houston especially seems like — I definitely picked up on the rap thing, I made a note that was one of the things I wanted to ask about, but I hadn’t picked up on the Whitney Houston moment. Yeah, that kind of adds to the oddness.
Jessica
Put some respect on her name. Seriously. I’m sorry, I know your soundtrack has Toad the Wet Sprocket. I can’t live with that.
Matthew
I have to say that was one of my objections to the modern music of that time. I remember doing this thing where — we had computers that were pretty impressive but the internet was still pretty new — you could have like a random word generator. And Toad the Wet Sprocket and Temple of the Dog were the two I think I made fun of the most, because they just felt like you’d fed a bunch of things into a random word generator and spat them out.
Yeah. The Lemonheads might have been a perfectly good band and it’s not their fault, but someone came up to me and said, “Have you heard this amazing new song called ‘Sound of Silence’ by the Lemonheads?” And that’s a candy.
Jessica
What? The Lemonheads? It’s a candy.
Matthew
Well yeah. I mean, I’m not knocking the band name, I’m just saying it’s another one.
Jessica
Yeah, yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong — the soundtrack slaps. The movie very explicitly posits that only the music in this movie is great and if the music is not in this movie then it is categorically bad — except I guess Lucas says jazz is okay.
Matthew
Yeah.
Jessica
So let’s talk then about — it’s not really a rom-com, but it has like, it feels like a rom-com where they started writing the background characters and loved them so much they kept writing them. But it does have your pretty basic rom-com plot: the girl is so obsessed with someone else that she doesn’t see how wonderful the guy in front of her is; the guy in front of her doesn’t think he’s good enough for her; she’s going to go off to a great college; they don’t know what’s going to happen. And of course it all works out wonderfully because she says “no, you’re right, I love you,” and she says she’s going to go to Harvard and he says he’s going to go to art school in Boston somewhere. How do we feel about how the love story turned out?
Matthew
I think it works because of how little time it has, and if they had spent any more time on it they would have needed to put a lot more work into it. And it also works because those two are serving up ’90s hotness so hard that you don’t care. AJ — Johnny Whitworth — I think is the absolute platonic ideal of what a cute boy looked like in the mid-’90s. Like, they made him in a lab.
Jessica
Yeah, it’s absurd. The center-parted shiny soft hair that he’s constantly running his fingers through. And they’re like —
Matthew
If you think about ’90s boy archetypes — after Jordan Catalano has broken your heart, you go to AJ, who will make it better again.
Jessica
Exactly. He looks like — I know Rider Strong did have an older brother in Boy Meets World, but he looks like Rider Strong’s older brother. Just absolute peak cute boy. And it’s not just the actual physical look and the costuming, but the fact that he is a sensitive artist who does nothing but stand in the background and make deadpan jokes and pine after a girl — which of course was the hottest thing you could possibly do as a boy in the ’90s. And then Liv Tyler with the little plaid skirt and the cropped mohair sweater and again the perfect hair. I just want to watch the two of them be in a Delia’s catalog together.
Matthew
And I was always much more for the bad girl than the good girl, so Renée Zellweger was the one I was obsessed with from that movie. But I do think it’s interesting how you just described the outfit, and it says a lot about the ’90s. Corey is the good girl, and her outfit says that. And Renée Zellweger is — the slut, the bad girl — and again, I’m using the moral judgment of the times, which the movie is very much not my understanding of now. With the exception of when she puts on the record store outfit, Liv Tyler is actually showing more skin than Renée Zellweger for most of the movie.
Jessica
Oh yeah, that skirt is not any longer.
Matthew
And again, I don’t think that has any judgment whatsoever on someone’s sexuality or promiscuousness, none of which are bad things to begin with. But it is a very funny statement about ’90s aesthetics — what read as preppy good girl and what read as girl from the wrong side of the tracks.
Jessica
Well, it’s pastel. But also I think one of the best moments of comedy in the movie is when she’s seducing Rex and she takes off her sweater and she has that sexy red lace bra, and then she slowly unhooks her skirt and drops it, and it’s just these white cotton panties. The contrast between the two is so funny and so adorable — there’s so much character in that. Especially later when she’s sitting talking with Gina and she takes the bra out without taking her sweater off and hands it to her, because it’s Gina’s bra that she borrowed. The movie communicates so much so well with so little, and there’s so much character and so much of their friendship in that moment. But it’s also very, very funny.
Matthew
It really is. I think it’s just a great character study of all these different people. You’re right — I found it a little bit later, but when talking to a lot of my friends about it, what people would often say is, at slumber parties or things like that, people would always talk about which one was their favorite, which gives you some idea of who different people were. It really captures so much of the experience of teenage girls figuring out their sexuality, teenage boys figuring out what it means to have strong feelings and when it’s appropriate to express them. The AJ scene is painful, and I feel like the movie is a little more sympathetic to him than I might want it to be. The idea is that he is so focused on telling her what he feels that he has absolutely zero awareness of what she is going through in that moment — because a big part of love is seeing the other person. I remember that. And now I can, almost 50 and married for many years, sit back and both judge that and completely remember what it was like — because once you decide what you want to do, you want to do it right now. I probably declared my love to more than one person at the worst possible time because in my mind, I loved them, and so anything else — what do you mean, notice what they’re feeling? They’re going to hear that I love them and that’s what matters.
I want to say as well — you mentioned his kind of throwaway character, and I think you’re definitely right — but also say that as someone who was goth for many years and did spend time dating people who were going through a lot of mental health challenges that I didn’t understand, and wanted to help because that’s what I was taught to do as a good white-knight boy — Burko, thank you, his feeling of wanting to help Deb, not knowing how, and her then saying “don’t worry, it’s not your fault, it’s not anything you did” — the implication, I think, is that they had some kind of a fight, but that’s not really what upset her more than what caused her to try to hurt herself. His helplessness — but also his obliviousness, because he probably did do something stupid and doesn’t know it — were things I’m just meant to love and also very much related to.
Jessica
It’s interesting that you read that as them having some kind of a fight, because I was wondering — and we don’t know this, there’s no indication one way or another — but I got the impression, or I guess jumped to the conclusion, that it was something sexual. Like, they had sex that upset her. Maybe he pressured her into it, maybe what they specifically did was upsetting to her, maybe she — we don’t know anything more than that. Like, maybe they just had a fight. We have no idea. That character — we don’t know anything about him. He does come off as older than the others, which I think he probably was, because apparently the actor was Liv Tyler’s stepfather at the time, which is weird.
Matthew
Which — Liv Tyler had already been the super-sexy girl in a number of Aerosmith videos. Her last name is Tyler because Steve Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith, was her father — but Steven Tyler apparently didn’t know they were filming those videos. No. There are all sorts of crazy things around that.
Jessica
I feel a little bit better about those videos now, actually.
Matthew
Yeah, I remember reading that, and those videos came out a couple of years earlier and had an effect on middle school and high school boys.
Jessica
Oh, those videos are so hot — the crazy video with Alicia Silverstone where they go to the strip club. Oh yeah.
Matthew
Not just the teenage boys. Teenagers of all genders remember those videos. But yeah, all the stuff in the Tyler family — I don’t understand it, and I don’t think commentators do either.
Yeah. There’s a lot of creepy things about him. But I just love that song at the end so much, and it’s great. It is a wonderful moment, and I will say — Renée Zellweger I think has now gone on to have the biggest career of all of them. Liv Tyler did Lord of the Rings and some other things, but Renée Zellweger with Bridget Jones’s Diary and all of that has unquestionably had an incredible career.
And again, if you want to talk about acting in the smallest ways — they’re on the roof, it’s kind of the big party song. It could be a complete throwaway moment, but it winds up being this huge character moment for her. At the start of the song she is just kind of the backup singer, singing the chorus vocals. And then after a guitar solo, Burko’s like, “No — you take the mic now.” And she’s clearly nervous, and on the first line she messes up a little bit, which — I remember the first times I performed in coffee houses or in bands. And then as she’s singing, her hands are kind of flapping around her like little birds. And then you see that by the end of the verse she’s become confident, and she just flips into being so happy and proud of herself and bouncing all over. In many ways, to me, that’s the moral heart of the movie. I guess it’s also because I had a huge crush on the actress, but to me that story is so much the moral heart of the movie, and the role that that song plays in telling so much of it — I think that’s just so incredible.
Jessica
Well, that’s the thing. Like, I joked about it before — can you imagine what it must be like to try to shop at Empire Records? It’s a nightmare. You go in there, nobody’s working the register. You try to buy a CD or a cassette — I do think it’s charming that this movie was made during a transitional time in music, so you see people with vinyls, cassettes, and CDs. You try to buy your CD and the employee tells you it sucks and you shouldn’t buy it. You walk past the listening booths and people are having sex in there. There’s a 14-year-old kid waving a gun around. There are people gluing quarters to the floor, a pothead jumping on the furniture.
Matthew
And in one of the weird things we haven’t even talked about — and we need to wrap up in a second — there’s this whole “damn the man” attitude in the movie. But it’s funny, because one way to say “damn the man” is to say “up the empire,” because it’s Empire Records, and I think again it’s probably outside New York City. But “the empire” is not only what you think of when you say “damn the man.” There’s a scene where when Warren steals something, Lucas demonstrates that he’s very good at chasing down shoplifters and knows exactly how to do it. There’s a fun chase scene through the store, and Renée Zellweger’s character Gina gets on the mic: “Hey everybody, we’re about to catch a shoplifter, and we’re going to deep-fat-fry him and feed him to you.” If you buy into the idea that the store is awesome and good and therefore anything that harms the store must be stopped, it makes sense. But if you step back you realize — wait a minute, this is coming down really hard on the shoplifter here.
Jessica
I don’t think that’s cop behavior you’re allowed to protect with yours.
Matthew
I get you — I’m being intensely hyperbolic given our previous conversations.
Jessica
That’s true. And this made me think of that, because it was also like — are we calling somebody a cop because they are a cop, or because they’re not cool? Yeah, that’s fair. But yeah, like you’re in there just trying to buy an Ace of Base album please.
Matthew
Well, that’s a — you know what has happened with Ace of Base?
Jessica
No.
Matthew
They’re straight-up Nazis.
Jessica
Never mind, I don’t want it anymore. I want to buy Jagged Little Pill.
Matthew
Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s definitely a much better one. Yeah, Ace of Base was a band I was very into in middle school. Swedish pop. And then later I learned that Ace of Base was apparently full-on Swedish Nazis.
Jessica
So, well, no thank you. Yeah. But you’re like trying to buy your CD and you’re suddenly in the middle of performance art, or everybody has to dance now to whatever song they just put on. And all of this is to say the movie does such a good job of catching you up in that and saying: yes, this is absurd, yes, a lot of the things these people are doing is not good customer service, it’s antisocial, none of this would be permitted in a massive chain store — which is made very clear, that they would not be allowed to be themselves in a chain store. But if you just want to go somewhere you really love music and have a found family, then Empire Records is your home. And the final scene and that song — it does such a good job of selling that, even though the movie at no point has really made it clear that it would be bad to be bought by Music Town. Like, they haven’t made a case for why Music Town is bad or why it’s “the man.”
Matthew
But it doesn’t matter, because you feel that found family and that quirkiness and that love of music. And I just want to say a quick thing about the “damn the man” thing in closing — and we can wrap up after you respond, of course. For me, it sounds like “you young kids today, you don’t understand.” But today, I think we’re all deep in late-stage capitalism, everything’s falling apart around us. Gen X and then millennials — I think that was really when the idea of the capitalist dream started to fall apart. You’re going to go to school, get a college degree, get a good job, buy a home, have a family, live a life even better than the generation before you. That was when it really started to crack and we started to see: maybe this doesn’t actually make sense. In some ways it started much earlier — The Graduate questions this in many ways, from the ’70s. But especially so much of ’90s culture, and thus millennial culture, is about: wait a minute, I don’t want to just have a 40-hour work week, I don’t want to just be part of — and the ’90s also saw the real expansion of chains kick into high gear, local Italian restaurants being replaced by Olive Garden and stuff like that. So I think there really was this strong “independent business, independent music, damn the man” ethos that was very much a part of the time. It doesn’t make any sense and they never explain any of it because it’s just there. But to me, I love the movie not because this movie taught me to “damn the man,” but because it spoke to all of that that was in the zeitgeist at the time, that we look back on now and feel moving.
Jessica
Yeah, I’m going to push back on one thing there. I don’t think this is millennials. I think this is squarely Gen X. And there’s actually a really clear divide there. This movie is Gen X — like, I’m an elder millennial. I saw this movie in high school, not when it came out, but eventually. I love this movie, and I’m nostalgic about this time period. But I was a little kid — I was in elementary or middle school when this movie came out. Everything about the aesthetics, but also the ethos of “selling out is bad” — because selling out is bad, we don’t need to explain it, just by definition selling out is bad — that is a Gen X specific theme. It’s not that other generations haven’t expressed it, but it is a very powerful Gen X theme. You see it in things like Reality Bites, Rent — it’s a huge theme in Rent. With Reality Bites, they actually later did audience testing with millennials, and millennials all thought she picked the wrong guy. Because you have the guy who doesn’t sell out but is an asshole, and the guy who does sell out but is nice, and they were like — she should go with the one who’s nice to her. Millennials actually often do not respond well to that “whatever you do, don’t sell out” ethos. What happened with millennials was that they did buy into: okay, we can participate in the economy and succeed and grow and whatever. And then 2008 happened and we learned that was a lie. So Gen X had much more of the support and rejected it from a place of having support, and millennials embraced the system and then were dropped on our asses. Which is not to say that every Gen X person has done wonderfully and every millennial has done terribly, but that was sort of the generational split. And this movie exudes Gen X so powerfully — which is not a bad thing, I find it very charming. But —
Matthew
No, that’s — it’s certainly made in 1995. I was 18 in ’95, I was born in ’77, which is the tail end of Gen X. But many others start at ’83, so all the kids in this movie are Gen X, to be very clear.
I think you’re right. There was definitely a good deal of economic challenge facing Gen X, but it also was more — you’re right — a lot of also: wait, I have the privilege, but this feels soulless. Why is this the thing we’re supposed to all work so hard for? So you’re correct, there’s definitely a break there. I appreciate you pointing that out. Any last comments you want to make? Anything we didn’t hit, or great lines you want to mention, or plot lines to discuss?
Jessica
I just wish we were recording this on April 8th — Rex Manning Day.
Matthew
Yeah, no. I came to it a little late, honestly, because the clip of the song they sing at the end — it’s called “Sugar High,” I think it’s by Berko, and it’s like the only thing he’s done — but if you Google “Sugar High Empire Records” on YouTube you’ll find that clip, and it’s just so charming. I watched that and it got me to watch the whole movie, and I was like, okay, I need to talk to someone about this. Perfect. I’m so glad we got to talk. I’m so glad we both ruined the movie a little bit more for each other but both enjoyed it a lot. And I hope everyone else gets to enjoy it too if they haven’t already. Send us your thoughts if this was a big part of your childhood or your young adulthood or your teen years. Let us know what you think. And more importantly, more than anything else — damn the man. Save the Empire.
