After winning high praise on the film festival circuit, All Things Must Pass, the documentary about the once-colossal record store chain directed by actor Colin Hanks, will be released in theaters on October 16. The film documents the rise and fall of the company that started with a single store in Sacramento, CA and grew to a 200-outlet international powerhouse of recorded music retailing that pulled in $1 billion in sales.
Run and staffed by music lovers for music lovers, Tower stores boasted deep stock and big discounts and became cultural centers for recorded music consumers in the cities where it operated during the vinyl record era. (See BCB‘s tribute to Tower here.) And was a vital component of the record business in its heyday until it went bankrupt in 2006.
Documentary films don’t generally see wide theatrical release (though the recent Any Winehouse film also did), and it probably doesn’t hurt that the last name of the director of All Things Must Pass is Hanks – son of Tom, and a successful actor whose credits include TV roles in Roswell, Band of Brothers, Dexter, Fargo and The Good Guys as well as starring in the film Orange County, plus a rabid music lover. Variety hails the movie as “soundly constructed, briskly paced and, in the end, affectingly wistful,” and it’s a film anyone who has ever hung around a music store (and especially a Tower store) flipping through the bins should not miss.
