All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records

Actor and Sacramento native Colin Hanks takes a fling at documentary movie-making, recounting (with writer Steven Leckart) the heady rise of Tower Records from a cubbyhole at the back of a Sacramento drugstore to a billion-dollar global industry by 1999. Then, ruefully, its ignominious collapse six years later, a victim of overextension and the rise of the Internet. As founder Russ Solomon and a gaggle of talking heads testify—from Tower employees and administrators to the likes of Elton John and Bruce Springsteen —it was a hell of a party while it lasted. Hanks and Leckart tap into a latent nostalgia for Tower's free-and-easy heyday, and the movie is an intensely bittersweet experience for anyone who grew up with Tower Records as a home away from home. J.L.