“No one else had done it, so I figured…well I’ll do it!” Colin Hanks laughs, then adds: “he said naively.”
Standing on the red carpet moments before the premiere of his documentary on fallen powerhouse record chain Tower records, All Things Must Pass, Hanks is characteristically calm, dressed down in a bright red checked shirt and denim jacket. The premiere is a long time coming: the film was seven years in the making, mostly owing to difficulties in obtaining funding. “It [funding] was a big reason why it took so long. It was really made piecemeal, we’d get some money and shoot some stuff, get some more money and shoot some more stuff.”
Asked why this film was so important to make, he pauses for a moment. “When I heard the story of Russ Solomon selling the records out of his fathers drug store, I just thought that was such an incredible journey.”
Though the funding and production was a struggle, Hanks says that he always knew that there was an audience for the film – that Tower Records held such an important place in so many people’s lives that he knew the film would be successful.
Solomon – the illustrious founder and longtime CEO of the chain, didn’t make it to Austin for the screening, but Hanks smiles recounts a recent telephone conversation: “he calls me up and says ‘you’ve done it my boy, it’s fabulous’. The the fact he liked it… That was my proudest moment of making this film.”
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