SIFF Face The Music 2015 Preview: All Things Must Pass

All Things Must Pass(Directed by Colin Hanks, USA, 2015)

Festival screenings:Saturday, May 30, 2015 at 7:00 PM - Harvard Exit Sunday, May 31, 2015 at 3:00 PM - SIFF Cinema Uptown [ Director Colin Hanks and Producer Sean Stuart in attendance at both screenings ]

Tune in Saturday, May 30th, as KEXP's DJ Troy Nelson (a former Tower Records employee himself!) chats with director Colin Hanks on the air at 4:30 PM PT.

Many of us have very fond memories of Tower Records. For me, I remember road trips to Austin, TX, to shop at the 24th and Guadalupe location, being blown away by all the 4AD imports (Kristin Hersh UK EPs with different b-side tracks? Yes, please!) and stocking up on zines and comic books (Adrian Tomine's Optic Nerve!).

Everyone's story is unique, yet still the same: Tower Records was a destination. From its humble beginnings in the back of a small-town drugstore in 1960, to two hundred stores, in thirty countries, on five continents, and then, surprisingly, total bankruptcy in 2006. What happened?Director Colin Hanks sets out to answer that question with his new documentary All Things Must Pass, screening as part of the "Face the Music" series at the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival. Through interviews with founder Russ Solomon, and celebrities like Elton John and David Geffen to Bruce Springsteen and former-clerk Dave Grohl, Hanks paints a portrait of this iconic record store, and the music industry itself.

In a press release Q&A, Hanks says, "Aside from my own personal connections and memories of Tower Records, I have always loved music. Music has always been highly personal to me. Like most fanatics, I remember which stores I bought specific records from. I tried applying to two different Tower locations during college but I never heard back. As always, there was a long line of applicants in front of me."

He adds, "I suppose this [film] is a way of living out my fantasy of working at Tower. After becoming an actor, I still wanted to do something that involved the music business, I just didn’t know what. I knew I was never really going to cut it as a musician. As I have gotten older, I have become obsessed with documentaries and hearing interesting stories from the people who actually lived them. So, naturally, combining the two and making a documentary about the music industry seemed like a natural progression for me."