Empire Records

"Debra: I guess nobody really has it all together. Corey: No. Debra: I feel like I should welcome you to the neighborhood or something."

Empire Records is a movie about a Cloudcuckoolander, a Harvard-bound overachiever, a fun-loving Vamp, two stoners, a laid-back artist and a troubled young woman. They work at a record store under the aegis of a Benevolent Boss and a not-so-benevolent owner. An aging singer is visiting for the day. They must save the store, make discoveries about themselves, and rock out to the very best of mid-nineties alternative music.


 * A Good Name for a Rock Band
 * Aside Glance: At the beginning, just after Lucas loses the store's money at the craps table, he looks at the camera and asks aloud, "I wonder if I'll be held responsible for this?"
 * Attending Your Own Funeral: The employees host a fake funeral for Debra to show how much they love her. It only sort of makes more sense in context.
 * Bare Your Midriff: Corey's sweater which shows off her midriff... rather contradicting when you think of it.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Mark and Lucas. (Although it's implied that Lucas's is a recent case.)
 * Cooldown Hug: Happens twice, one right after the other. First while Gina the resident Good Bad Girl is freaking out. The second with Corey after her stress/revelation induced freakout. One of them is successful.
 * Driven to Suicide: Debra tried to slit her wrists, rather half-heartedly, prior to the beginning of the film.
 * Fake American: Maxwell Caulfield as Rex Manning.
 * Also, Anthony LaPaglia (He's Australian).
 * Fridge Logic: When playing on the roof, in the second verse they hand Gina the microphone again and she acts hesitant like this is the first time she is singing to a crowd. This would be pretty dramatic considering she mentioned wanting to be a singer, except for she was already singing the song solo with them in the first verse without any signs of nervousness.
 * During the first verse, she was a backup singer. For the second verse, she is asked to "take the lead", putting her in the proverbial spotlight. That's the cause of her anxiety.
 * Gender Blender Name: Yes, Corey can be a girl's name too.
 * Good Bad Girl: As mentioned above, Gina.
 * Hadaka Apron: Gina, natch.
 * Ice Cream Koan: Lucas's wisdom.
 * Important Haircut
 * Ironic Echo: "Take care of yourself, Warren. Don't let the Man get you down."
 * Le Parkour: Lucas
 * Mama Bear: Joe.
 * Mushroom Samba: "You play a mean guitar, Mark! It's really a shame that you must...DIE!"
 * My Name Is Not Durwood
 * The Nineties: The movie just screams it.
 * One-Hour Work Week: They seem to have incredibly long all day shifts, but at the same time, most of it is spent hanging out, dancing, listening to music, or performing grunge rock concerts on the roof.
 * Semi-justified in that it's an event day, so it makes sense that every employee would be scheduled for at least part of the day (and some of them want to be there even if they don't have to be, and their manager is extremely lenient), and in that it's made clear that this is an atypical sort of work day in-universe.
 * Only Sane Employee: Joe SCREAMS Liz Lemon Job, particularly when he breaks up the fight between Corey and Gina.
 * Parental Abandonment
 * The Power of Rock
 * Pretty Fly for a White Guy: The 90's grunge version of the wangsta himself, Warren.
 * Rooftop Concert: The end of the movie features Coyote Shivers throwing a concert on the roof of the record store, giving Gina the chance to fulfill her dream of performing with a band.
 * Rule of Cool: Sure, in reality it's against the law to perform concerts on top of roofs in a public area and the fine for it would likely exceed the money they earned, but that doesn't matter because it was cool.
 * Stalker with a Crush: Corey for Rex Manning.
 * The Stoner: Eddie and Mark both fit.
 * Those Two Guys: Eddie and Mark again.
 * Stylistic Suck: Rex Manning's music video.
 * Sweater Girl: Corey.
 * Technology Marches On: Sure, they saved the store that day. But in a few years, in all likelihood i-Tunes and mainstream big businesses would destroy the store's 'fight for your right to party' method.
 * Toyota Tripwire
 * White Dwarf Starlet: Rex Manning, a male singer variation.
 * Why Did You Make Me Hit You?