A friend of mine and I were talking about Rex Manning Day and how she’s wants it to be a holiday, and then decided that it should be on August 5th because it sounded good.

I say that it’s in late April, probably April 22th but the 24nd or 15th are also semi-likely.

Why?  (if you HAVEN’T seen the movie from over a decade ago… spoiler alert)

My alcohol-addled brain (this conversation happened Saturday night) was telling me that they’re all wearing light jackets in the movie, and why would they be wearing jackets on August 5th in the US if they’re kinda close to Atlantic City?  But that begs the question, “so… when WAS Rex Manning Day?”

We know that Lucas closes the store, rides to Atlantic City, loses the money, and rides back by morning sometime before 9am when the store opens.  Gina’s car appears to have a Delaware license plate, which doesn’t mean much, but for sake of argument let’s go ahead and assume that Gina lives in Delaware and that the store is either in Delaware or just across the border in a neighboring state.  Wilmington, DE to Atlantic City, NJ, is a 1hr 35min drive according to MapQuest, although most of Delaware would have a longer drive.

Leaves were on the ground, presumably either just fallen from the tree, or the snow has melted, it’s spring, and they’re left-over from autumn.  State College picks up leaves from April 2nd ’till sometime in May this year, so apparently April is a good month to be picking up leaves in spring.

Corey is studying calculus and it’s assumed that she’s going to Harvard, graduating class of 1999.  Studying calculus… she’s probably a high school senior.  A.J. is accepted into art school in Boston so he can be with Corey.  That’s a HELL of an early-admissions program if he’s doing this in fall.  I see it much more likely that he applied late, which supports my “probably spring sometime” theory.

Corey’s still in school but is there at 9am.  She doesn’t seem like she’d be skipping school.  The store is also open until midnight, which makes it unlikely that the day is a Sunday.  The turnout for the big party at the end is supported a bit more by the day being a Friday or Saturday. “Warren” is also young but he seems the type to not be concerned with skipping school to go shoplifting instead, BUT no one at the store mentions that he should be in school, so perhaps that’s also in support of the Saturday Rex Manning Day theory.  And again, in the Rex Manning sign in the door of the store when Joe opens up looks like it starts with an 8, which is a lot closer to an “S” than it is to an “F”.

In the office on the whiteboard, the new releases are from May to July.  In the FRONT of the store, you might list the “new releases” as albums that were recently released, but in the OFFICE, you’d use a whiteboard for things to do, therefore, “the future”.  As there were no new releases listed for April, one would assume that the date is the end of April, which is the only reason I’m discarding the 15th as the most-likely date.

There’s a sign for Rex Manning when Joe’s opening the door to the store that lists the Where as Empire Records, the When as something too hard to read (looks like it starts with an “8”, but I think it’s probably an “S”, and the Hours as 3 to some other time that’s also too hard to read.

When Lucas is in Atlantic City, he drives by a light sign that says “April 23 8:00pm”.  BUT… it was dark in Joe’s office when they closed, it was really dark when Lucas rode into Atlantic City… I don’t think it was the current date/time.  I think it was part of the display, and if we had seen the sign for a little bit longer, then either before or after the time, we’d have seen a display that would let us know what event was going to be happening on April 23rd at 8:00pm.
If Lucas was IN Atlantic City at 8pm on April 23rd, then he would have left the office by at least 7, and it would have been pretty bright out beforehand when he was pretending to play drums on the pile of money.

So, until there’s a high definition version of this movie out, or I get ahold of the re-release with more deleted scenes that might have more information, I think that Empire Records took place on April 22nd, 1995.

Now you know.  I heard that knowing is half the battle.