Rex Manning's music video "Say No More, Mon Amour" was shot on Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina in one day. It was shot before principal photography, intended as a 17-second dance move piece for the main actors and actresses to make fun of. However, the music video director shot for the entire day, and gave the producers a four minute, thirty second music video.
Celebrated annually on April 8, Rex Manning Day commemorates the day that washed-up 1980s pop idol Rex Manning (played by Maxwell Caulfield) visited the fictional Empire Records. On a previous Rex Manning Day in 2018, Ethan Embry confirmed the deeper meaning behind the decision for Empire Records to take place on April 8. "The reason we picked April 8th as the day to have Rex Manning visit Empire is because Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain, was found on the 8th of April, the day the music of the 1990s lost its mascot," Embry said. Cobain was found dead on April 8, 1994, exactly a year before Empire Records took place.
The movie was written by a former employee of Tower Records store #166, at the Christown Mall in Phoenix, Arizona. Some of her former co-workers still working there cited anecdotes and other elements of this movie that related to the store for a long time after the movie's release. The store closed in early 2005.
This movie was severely edited in post-production, removing three significant characters and up to 40 minutes of footage. The story was also condensed from occurring over two days to a single day.
Melissa Caulfield: The ballet dancer from an early scene is the stepdaughter of Maxwell Caulfield (Rex Manning).