Jason Schwartzman Picks His Ideal 'Bored to Death' Soundtrack

On top of his acclaimed acting career, 'Bored to Death' star Jason Schwartzman is also a respected musician, first from his days with Phantom Planet and now with his own Coconut Records project, which provided the show's noir-ish theme song. As both the star and a musician, it would seem natural that Schwartzman would have a lot of input into the program's just-released soundtrack.

But that's not the case. As Schwartzman tells Spinner, he's so busy working on the show that he doesn't have time to interact much with the music supervisors. In fact, when he got the soundtrack in the mail, he listened to it as a fan. "The soundtrack has got really great, great songs and really pretty songs," he says. "I didn't have anything to do with it. I would watch the shows going, 'Wow, great song,' so I was happy. I was sent a copy of the soundtrack just yesterday and I opened it up, put it on and it was just great."

Like any fan, Schwartzman has his favorite tracks. "First and foremost, I love the Young Marble Giants song 'Salad Days.' That's my favorite one on the soundtrack. I like the Andrew Bird song and the Dan Auerbach song, those are my favorite ones, and the M. Ward featuring Zooey Deschanel song is good," he says. But for him, 'Salad Days' was a special choice. "I really love Young Marble Giants and that song especially. When I watched the first episode it was on, I was really happy that song could be on there."

Television show soundtracks are a relatively recent phenomenon compared with their film counterparts, and as someone who's been involved in both mediums Schwartzman thinks TV offers an actual leg up. "Something that's nice about television is with a movie it takes almost a year to make a movie and you only have basically one shot to get the music together. That's it, the movie's done," he says. "But with a television show, because it's weekly, you have so many more slots to fill with music. The feeling I get is because it's television, you can have X amount more music so you have a real opportunity for songs."

With that opportunity what are some of the songs he'd like to get on there? "I would love maybe Arthur Russell, I love a song called 'Eli.' There's a band called Coasting that I really like. I love Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill so much. I love Caribou, so that would be good," he says. "There's a song by Julian Casablancas called 'Glass,' it's just so beautiful to me. Anything from 'Pinkerton,' some Bill Say, Emmitt Rhodes, Chet Baker. I love the Morning Benders, this song called 'Nice Clean Fight.' I tried to see if we could get that song because it's really short but really catchy and I love the lyrics and the sentiment of it. Also, my brother Robert is in a band called Rooney and they have a song I really love called 'Not in My House' and I wish we could do that too."

So, with the show now in its second season, will we see more Coconut Records on there? "Basically, you work all day and you come home and then you play music, that's kind of my life. Even if you just walk around strumming a G-chord for an hour it feels good to do," he says. "So, for me, I let the people at 'Bored to Death' know that if they ever want a song or if they have a gap of 30 seconds they need to fill that I would love to throw my hat in the ring."