Building An Empire

Or,

This Record Store Sure Is Well-Staffed!

I watched Empire Records for the first time the other day (yeah, I know. I'm not a real child of the nineties. Shut up).

I noticed two things about the type of film it is that would have been tremendously helpful to the screenwriter, Carol Heikkinen, and would be worth keeping in mind if one were ever writing something similar in future.

The first is that the film, with very little exception, takes place entirely in the record store itself. What this does is make it incredibly easy to introduce characters. If a scene were taking place, for example, in a couples' apartment in the middle of the night and you wanted to introduce a third character to the scene, you need to think about his/her introduction. Why are they there? Why this time of night? Is it urgent?

Empire Records taking place (almost) entirely within the titular record store means that you can just have characters show up for work. Why is Berko here all of a sudden? Well, he works here. There. Explained. Move on with the story.

The setting being a retail business lends itself particularly well to this; a record store also needs customers. There. New characters. Antagonists, even (like Warren)!

Keeping the film in this setting also lends the story an intimacy, and keeps the audience in the moment. There may have been opportunities to cut away from the store (to check in with Mitchell Beck, for example, before he visits), but that would have disrupted the intimacy and immediacy. The only exception that comes immediately to mind is when Lucas visits Atlantic City and loses the money, which is an incredibly important scene. It's our inciting incident.

The second thing I noticed is the compressed timeframe. The film (with one exception; again, Lucas' trip to Atlantic City) takes place entirely within one day. This has the result of making little things seem more important; that is, reducing the timeframe raises the stakes.

For example, AJ's resolution to tell Corey how he feels about her by 1:37 (I may've gotten that time wrong) takes on enormous significance that it wouldn't have had if the film had taken place over the course of a week.

Worth noting: Other films to fall into this little subgenre of One Crazy Day (...or Night) are Can't Hardly Wait and Superbad. I know there's a lot more, that's just off the top of my head.

I plan to keep both of these realisations in mind on whatever I might be working on in future. I expect them to be helpful.

-Dan