damn the man, save...empiricism

this weekend ed and i watched empire records (he had never seen it!), only it was the dvd version, and so of course they had to put in scenes (some of questionable merit, as is usual for dvd rereleases) that were not in the original movie. like, after rex manning fucks renee zellweger, and a.j. jumps him and then rex punches a.j., and the kids say 'you're just a washed-up has-been, man,' 'we all hate your new album,' and 'your hair looks stupid,' instead of mockingly bowing and saying 'why don't you all just...fade away' rex says, 'hmm, you may be right' and leaves. they had this whole undeveloped dimension of rex's character being a real person, a guy who was passionate about guitar and who was sad about his campy fame (there's even an implausible scene with rex and berko smoking in front of a lake, and berko inexplicably has his guitar with him so they can have a lead-in for this soft-side-of-rex conversation. and there's even an extra scene in which the band on the roof at the end plays 'say no more, mon amour' in this alterna-rock way, and rex and berko sing together, and rex looks truly happy and isn't wearing eyeshadow anymore. also the dvd includes the whole 'say no more' video, which is hi-larious. lots of frilly shirts and water and ros-ay being splashed orgasmically on the harem of rex women. i recommend the dvd version if only for that. otherwise, you're in for a lot of partially developed subplots, some details you probably would have inferred from the vhs version if you had thought really hard about it, and a graphic comment about blue cheese dressing.