Coming to theatres today, Friday, October 16: ALL THINGS MUST PASS
Colin Hanks’ tribute to Tower Records had its world premiere at SXSW this Spring. It went on to screen at Seattle, AFI Docs, Sacramento, and Greenwich, among other events.
Opening by revealing that the retail giant made over a billion dollars just five years before it filed for bankruptcy, Hanks sets the stage for a rise and fall trajectory that will be of no surprise to anyone old enough to fondly remember a time when you couldn’t buy (or otherwise “find”) new music online. While the film indulges in a largely anecdote-driven history, delivered by Tower Records founder Russ Solomon and a large circle of past store clerks-turned-management, the history revealed here does double duty as that of the larger music industry and its shortsightedness in response to Napster and the digital music revolution. Focusing on the growth, mistakes, and eventual demise of Tower, and, significantly, the group of eccentrics that called the company home for nearly forty years, Hanks humanizes the faceless, corporate industry, and instead offers an intimate, and often quite poignant, reflection of a vastly different, if only relatively recently departed, era.
what (not) to doc 