Every community needs a Broken Bookshop. You’ll find it in town square, over by the Moth-Ridden Mattress Hut, just around the corner from Shaky Sam’s Shattered Stemware Emporium. Because it’s not enough to buy a used book, what you really want is a book that’s been abused, stained, made damp, shredded, and then painstakingly reconstructed into something you would still rather not touch, let alone buy. That’s the sound business model featured in our new short, Beginning Responsibility: Broken Bookshop. It focuses on the sweet old man who owns the shop and happens to secretly BELIEVE THAT BOOKS TALK TO HIM. His delusional senility may seem folksy and charming, until he brings an innocent boy into his world of pointless book repair. When he aggressively insists to young Andy “My books talk to me, and maybe they’ll talk to you too!” you know that this shop deals not only in broken books, but also broken hopes and dreams for the future.

At first glance we thought this short was a documentary on Borders, then we realized the title says “Broken,” not “Broke.” Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they take a brief rest from their busy book-destroying schedule to riff Beginning Responsibility: Broken Bookshop!