A television production came to Troy this week with hopes of getting picked up this winter.
Market Block Books in Troy is bustling: regulars are coming in and out but there's also a television production team and a suite of extras milling about the aisles.
At a table in the front of the store, the minds behind the sitcom “Books” are eager to begin the day’s shoot — the dinosaur erotica book signing scene isn't going to film itself.
Co-creators Kristina Libby and Tim Cahill say they’re putting a fresh take on classic TGIF-era sitcoms.
“And then we started asking like, well, what's a world we want to spend that time in that hasn't been done already? And we realized that we spend all of our time in bookstores. And then we went to a bookstore, and Tim has this really funny story that he often tells, which is, we went together to a bookstore in Manhattan, and he went in and he just wanted, like, a Tom Clancy book, right? And he, you know, was like, a little just like, went to the counter being like, oh, ‘I want a Tom Clancy book. What do you have?’ This woman just looked at him with so much disdain on her face, and she said, ‘oh, we don't carry dead authors like that.’ And Tim was ‘like Shakespeare?’ Like Cormac McCarthy had just died. And we sort of really had a laugh over that, and thought, ‘gosh, what a world that's rife with characters and humanity and so many interesting people,’" said Libby.
Writing began last spring, and after a table read at the Lake Placid Film Festival, director Micah Kahn and producer Patrick Regan jumped aboard. Choosing the location was easy for Troy native Kahn.
“This is my favorite bookstore,” said Kahn.
Kahn says the show has a deeper meaning.
“For me, this the thesis or show is like – there's a great line in the show that I feel like encompasses exactly what we want to be doing with what I don't speak for everybody, but it's Abby's line. When she says, ‘people want to feel good. They want to come to a bookstore and fall in love. There are aisles and aisles of books dedicated to love. Our party should be focused on love.’ And that's, to me, what this pilot feels like. It's about the love of books. It's about, you know, coming into this space and falling in love with these characters. And that, to me, it was just like always the ‘this is what this show is about,” said Kahn.
Regan also plays a “New York Times” critic in the show.
“And part of that is kind of, and we touched on this a little bit, is spreading that love, like we talked about, because I know I do this, you start going like, oh, you read this. Well, did you read this? Have you read this? Person? I do it with music. We all, we all do it with, with books. We do it with TV shows. You, you, oh, you liked, you liked ‘Silo.’ Have you checked out this? You're like, whatever. And that spreads. And then you it increases your connection to other people,” said Regan.
Regan is a self-described “competitive reader,” so “Books” was an easy project to sign on to.
“A lot of the problems that we face in society, in the world today are because people don't read enough, that that's the only we think that maybe watching a beautifully made movie is going to put you inside someone. But it's not the same as reading a book, where you can actually see why they think the things they think, why, why they acted the way they did, what drew them or what, what pushed them, and you can only get that through books, not your phone, not TV, not even music. Only books can make you think those thoughts. And I think we need to read as much as we can, whenever we can,” said Regan.
The show stars “Rick and Morty”’s Spencer Grammer and “Office Space”’s Ajay Naidu. But today customers have been cleared out so extras, including one in an inflatable dinosaur costume, can line up for a book signing.
As a number of takes are shot, store owner Susan Novotny is watching from across the store. She was sick in bed the first time she heard Libby’s pitch to film in her store, and she’s amazed by what it’s turned into.
“And but I'm going through my emails, and I see, Oh, what's this? Oh, it's from another writer. Oh, it's another writer. Well, I can just go right past this, because I get a lot of emails from writers. But then I went back and read more closely what it was, and I thought this sounds like a fantasy come true. She's written a pilot for a sitcom in a bookstore, and I've been living it for the past 50 years of my life. Boy, do I have material for her! And her request was that they had seen this bookstore, and they thought it was the perfect bookstore to film in. It just had the feel that they wanted, and the character and warmth and antique quality to it. And so, I said, ‘Well, she recognizes how special this bookstore is. I'm going to give them credit for discovering us. And yes, you can film there, and I won't charge you a cent,’” said Novotny.
Libby says they’re set to shop the show’s pilot around by February, and hoping to get picked up and filming the first season, in Troy, by the middle of 2025.