Following an East Coast screening tour at independent bookstores, the pilot episode of new comedy sitcom Broadway Books was released in conjunction with National Bookseller Day last month. A charming alternative to the traditional film festival circuit, the literary-based television series is advertised both as a handmade antidote to the looming technocratic sprawl as well as a love letter to neighborhood bookstores everywhere. A former employee of the Upper West Side’s Book Culture — where the pilot was filmed on location — the series was created and directed by Carianne King and developed during a pilot writing class at the Upright Citizens Brigade. Originally a self-funded pandemic project, Carianne’s collaborative UCB experiences pushed the endeavor forward. In addition to King, the show’s skillful female creative production team comes courtesy of visual production company Mirmade.
In the pilot episode “The Tipping Point” (indeed, the plot is based around the hosting of a Malcolm Gladwell reading), employees of New York’s fictional Broadway Books haphazardly quibble over canonical staff picks like Anna Karenina, observe the flashy sartorial choices of their co-worker’s eccentric new fling and attempt to creatively utilize social media to draw in attendance for the evening’s in-store event. Elsewhere, a bookseller is faced with the daily dilemma of a confrontational potential customer threatening to alternatively elect for the ease and convenience of Amazon. It’s self-aware and inventive, with a cast including NYC comedians Lauren Servideo, Ruby McCollister, Eric Yates and Nick Naney (who also appears in King’s previous comedic short film Trollify).
In tapping musician Martin Courtney of the band Real Estate as the composer of the series, King has simultaneously emphasized a kismet spirit with the ethos of the likes of NYC’s indie rock lineage and the lens of independent media culture at large (as much as more insular literary circles). Further, musician Carlos Dengler of Interpol stars as the bookstore manager. Martin Courtney joined us to discuss his experience creating the soundtrack, nineties alt-rock sitcom themes songs, his own formative experiences with bookstores and much more.
I really enjoyed this pilot — how did the composition gig come about for you?
Nepotism [Laughs]. No, the creator of the show, Carianne — her husband is a guy named Andrew Cedermark who I’ve known since high school. We played in bands together, we lived in separate but adjacent towns. So I’ve known him forever, I’ve actually been producing a record for him for way too long, we need to finish it. So I’ve known Carianne for a long time as well. I had seen her make some shorts, so I guess I was a little aware of her filmmaking aspirations. But I guess she had been putting this together for a while and asked me if I would do music for it. That’s how it came together.
Given the context of the show, what was your own experience with independent bookstores, growing up or today? Were there any specific ones as influential as, say, a record store from your formative years?
I grew up in the New Jersey suburbs and I always liked books, but I wasn’t … When I got old enough to go to stores on my own or with friends, it was more music and the weird hippie comic book kind of stores. There was one bookstore in my town called Bookends that actually did pretty well, they would have famous authors come through and sign books and stuff. But I didn’t spend much time at Bookends, when I went to get books with my parents there was a Barnes & Noble on the highway near us and that’s where I would always go. I’ll tell this story I guess: at a certain point in high school my friends and I discovered that you could just take books from Barnes & Noble and they wouldn’t chase you – there was a no chase policy, I guess because they didn’t want to disrupt the store and make a scene. I stole a lot of books from Barnes & Noble in high school. In keeping with the indie bookstore theme, you know, Barnes & Noble didn’t need any more money. If I could steal from Amazon, I’d do that too.
But anyway, I got a lot of books that way, and that was a cool thing for me as someone who was seventeen or eighteen and didn’t have any money. I was able to acquire quite a few books that way. In college I spent a lot of time in Seattle, I went to school in Olympia but my girlfriend — now wife — lived in Seattle. I spent a lot of time at Half Price Books, it’s a chain.
I’m in the Cincinnati area and they’re all over around here. I actually thought it was only more of a Midwestern thing.
That’s so funny, I thought it was only a Northwestern thing [Laughs]. Anyway, that’s also not an independent bookstore, but you know, that was a cool shop honestly, the one I went to on Capitol Hill. They had a lot of cool books and records.
I was going to say, you could find a lot of really great records there back in those days. I still have crazy finds like a copy of Eno’s Another Green World from a suburban Half Price Books that I found in like 2009 or so.
Yeah, especially going to the ‘new arrivals’. It was never picked over and always good stuff there. But now I live in Beacon, New York and I should shout out a couple of bookstores. There’s a shop called Binnacle that sells used books, it’s really well curated with a lot of cool events. And then this place called Stanza which is like my kids’ favorite shop. It’s a small independent bookstore with a lot of great stuff for adults but yeah, every birthday my kids will get multiple gift cards to Stanza and they’re always so excited. My kids are really into reading which is great, I feel really lucky. But also we worked at it, I read to them every night and so they really developed a love for it. It was the same thing for me, my dad read to me every night. It’s important for kids, you know.
That’s great to hear. My son is three and a half and we also feel very grateful that he’s always enjoyed it and had a knack for it.
Is he, like, reading? Or starting to read at this age?
Not actually reading, no. But he picked up the alphabet pretty early and, you know how it is when they’re young toddlers. He has his favorite books that we read over and over and he’s actually memorized some of the lines.
Yeah, my oldest daughter had Strega Nona fully memorized, it was freaky. She could just read it and flip through the pages and just recite it. Yeah, once they start Kindergarten and they really start to learn to read, it’s the coolest thing. Honestly it’s so awesome watching your kid learn how to read, and all of a sudden they just do it. It’s like magic.
Going back to what you said earlier about chains, Borders Books was huge for me growing up. Even for music, their CD section was bigger than a proper record store back then. And they had the little cafe inside with acoustic sets going on, like the vibe of a nineties coffee shop. I think that stuff was so formative for a lot of us, but obviously it’s not romanticized like a true independent store.
I think if you grew up in a certain kind of suburb, that was sort of … for me, Barnes & Noble and Tower Records, that was my access to culture. And it’s funny, there was an independent bookstore in my town but I don’t know, for some reason — maybe it was just the way my parents were because they spent a lot of time on the highway going to work. I don’t know, I have no idea. But that’s where we would go. Maybe it was cheaper. Late ’90s, early 2000s — maybe I’m misremembering, but I don’t think people really romanticized or put so much of an emphasis on shopping at small businesses. People didn’t see as much of a difference back then, you know?
Definitely not. Whether solo or with Real Estate, was this your first real composition/soundtrack project?
Yeah, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and I’d still like to do more of it. We had a friend years ago — me and Alex in Real Estate — one of our high school buddies made a movie called Plus One. It’s like a rom com, it’s good. It’s funny. He had asked us to make the soundtrack for that but it didn’t really make sense, so that didn’t come together except they ended up using a lot of our songs in the movie and then I wrote a few original songs for the movie. But that’s different from scoring, obviously. It was more “can you write a song for the ending credits, blah blah blah”. And then I also attempted to get a gig because someone reached out to me — my publishing company was kind of aware that I wanted to get into this stuff, but it seems really hard to get these gigs. They said there’s this Hulu movie that is looking for a composer, so I put something together in an attempt at getting that job.
They sent a few scenes that I scored, but I didn’t get the gig which is a bummer. But it was whatever, I won’t mention the movie, but it was really bad. Anyway, this is the first time I’ve done it. Even this isn’t necessarily … The way this worked was that Carianne asked for an opening credits kind of theme. I sent her probably 12-15 ideas, mostly in the vein of like what it ended up being. Kind of like The Rembrandts theme for Friends, that was a big touchstone for us. Talking about nineties sitcoms and how they always had catchy, kind of alt-rock theme songs.
How about The Adventures of Pete & Pete, remember that one?
Oh, big time. That’s a huge one. It was that, and then when we zeroed in on the one we liked. She sent a list of another 10 or 15 moods that she wanted me to hit for bumpers. Stuff that would play at the beginning of a scene or at the end. It wasn’t like they sent me scenes to score, it was more about sending a big batch of music and then we’ll sprinkle it throughout the show where it makes sense.
As an animator who has one foot in that world, it’s interesting. Obviously not on the scale of television and film, but working with musicians in both of our orbits, sometimes you communicate with people about scoring, and it’s kind of understood that it’s sort of like an artistic collaboration with modest compensation. With others, it’s very professional. Like, “here are my daily rates”. And I get it, artists have to make a living and that’s one of the remaining revenue streams. But, to your point, that world is so nuanced. I understand everyone’s perspective.
I’d love to do more of both. This one was sort of a mix of both. Obviously there wasn’t a big budget for this across the board, this is a friend doing something really cool and I’d love to be involved. But being someone who is forty and has kids and has been doing this for a long time, there’s an aspect of — if I’m going to do something, I have limited time. You have to get paid sometimes. I think about that a lot, to be honest.
You sort of already hit on this with the nineties sitcom themes, but I wondered if there were any specific soundtrack-related reference points for this.
If I’m known for anything, it’s making guitar-pop music. So I can write guitar parts, but a lot of what I sent to Carianne was sort of different and more – not orchestral but just more “soundtrack-y”. Less guitar-based and more trying out arrangements on other instruments, mostly on Mellotron. Things that were less drum and classic band arrangement-like. I was thinking, maybe she’ll pick something like this, and I’ll have an opportunity to branch out musically on this project. But you know, it made the most sense to go in the direction of like super hyper, poppy guitar. It’s a sitcom, so you have to make sitcom music.
I’m not sure if I completely understand the status of the show, I know there’s a fundraising effort to try to complete the first season. I was wondering if you were tapped to continue scoring the whole thing.
Well, I would love to be. As far as I know, they’re trying to get the money together to expand it into a full season. As of right now it’s just the one episode. Most likely, Carianne has already written more episodes and the season is probably mapped out if not fully written. Obviously I hope it succeeds. I don’t know how many people are making sitcoms. It’s a well thought out world that she built. I hope we see more of it.
Mark Neeley is a writer, animator and illustrator from Cincinnati, Ohio. Working at the juxtaposition of sound and vision, he is a regular contributor for music & arts publication Aquarium Drunkard. His animation works include many music videos and personal short films such as Pure Animation for Now People. You can follow his work at markneeley.com and on Instagram at @markaneeley