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"All Things Must Pass," the first documentary feature by
actor Colin Hanks, chronicles the chain spawned by Russ Solomon
out of his father's Sacramento drugstore in 1960, and its global
expansion before a bankruptcy filing in 2006 and eventual
closure.
Growing up in Sacramento, Hanks, son of actor Tom Hanks, said he
used to browse music for hours and even saw the movie "Fargo" at
a Tower movie theater, two decades before he was cast as one of
the leads in FX's 2014 "Fargo" TV series.
"When I heard about that drugstore, that was my lightbulb
moment," Hanks said at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival
where the film made its world premiere and was celebrated at a
party that recreated a Tower Records store.
"If that guy's journey starts in that drugstore in the late
1930s and goes all the way to the stores closing, that's
incredible."
Tower Records did not just sell music. It became a social and
cultural hub during a time when artists such as the Beatles
became phenomenons. Musicians Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and
Dave Grohl, who used to work at a Tower Records store, discuss
what the store meant to them as artists and music aficionados.
The documentary also explores Tower Records' downfall, which was
not, as Hanks said most people believed, solely due to the
Internet ushering in an age of illegal music piracy.
"There's much bigger issues here and we wanted to be able to
discuss those and explain it in a way that any layman could
understand," he said. "That it could be entertaining but also
informative."
After seven years of making the film and being one of the early
adopters of crowd-funding platform Kickstarter in 2011 to raise
$50,000, Hanks and producer Sean Stuart brought the film to SXSW
because of its beginnings as a music gathering in 1987.
"We're here to find a distributor. That's what this whole
festival is about for us," Hanks said. And that could mean
online platforms such as Netflix.
"It's easier for people to see movies now, that has been
incredibly beneficial for documentaries," he said.
(Editing by Mary Milliken and Lisa Shumaker)
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