When the Cord Jefferson-directed American Fiction premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in September 2023 it launched the film’s unexpected awards season journey by winning the People’s Choice Award. From there, the film based on Percival Everett’s book Erasure. Setting the tune to this GLAAD Media Award nominated film about identity and the commodification of culture was award-winning composer Laura Karpman who nabbed her first Oscar nomination this year.
With an arsenal of stylish glasses, Karpman’s work can be heard on an impressive roster of film and TV series including the documentary and GLAAD Media Award nominated Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed, the Oscar-nominated documentary short Walk Run Cha-Cha and HBO’s Lovecraft Country. She also is well-versed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, scoring the Disney+ series What If? and Ms. Marvel (for which she received two Emmy nominations) as well as the blockbuster The Marvels.
American Fiction follows Monk (Jeffrey Wright), a novelist who’s at his wit’s end when it comes to the establishment profiting from “Black” narratives that hinge on stereotypes and dated tropes. As a result, to prove a point he ends up heavily leaning into all of the stereotypes to write a “Black” book — but the results aren’t exactly what he expects. All the while, he navigates his relationship with his aging mother (Leslie Uggams), his sister that holds nothing back (Tracee Ellis Ross), his brother who recently came out of the closet (Sterling K. Brown), an author who is seen as the new face of modern Black literature (Issa Rae) and a new love interest (Erika Alexander).
The film is not of the epic scale of other Oscar contenders like Oppenheimer, Barbie or Killers of the Flower Moon, but a story that explores the human condition through a more intimate lens. That said, many didn’t see American Fiction nabbing five Oscar nods as well as a host of other accolades.
“It’s the best thing ever,” she admitted to GLAAD during a recent interview.
As a founder of the Alliance for Women Film Composers, the first female Governor in the Music Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the co-chair of the Academy’s LGBTQ Affinity Group, Karpman, has been fighting the good fight as a champion for representation and inclusion in Hollywood.
We talked to Karpman about scoring American Fiction and what she sees in the future of queer storytelling and art.
When it comes to composing for a film or TV series, are there particularly things you look for in the narrative that makes you say, “I definitely want to score this project”?
I often tend to look at it as the people rather than there than the narrative. With [American Fiction], it was obviously narrative, too but I think what motivates me is to work with wonderful, smart people who care about what they’re doing. People who have the right sensibility and people who allow creative people like me to be themselves.
When it came to working on American Fiction, what kind of soundscape did you want to create for this story?
It’s odd because it’s such a dialogue-y movie It doesn’t need much but it actually does in it’s funny, wonderful way. The story has so many twists and turns and embodies the totality of a complex life. The score needs to be too big to be doing all that kind of stuff, too. That was the starting point. I composed to recognizable and strong, major themes that that carry us through most of the movie. Then there are a few other themes that are smaller and generally funnier. You know, I think it’s having thematic content that takes you through most of the journey which is [Monk’s] theme, and then the family story, which is the family theme.
You mentioned before that you were inspired by the work of jazz great Thelonious Monk, the namesake of Jeffrey Wright’s character, for this movie.
I mean, anybody who loves jazz and loves Thelonious Monk when you have a character named “Monk” — you got to figure out how to use it. I think that what we decided to do, after working with a lot of different things, but we felt that the best kind of homage to him would be for me to write something that had elements of his quirkiness. The music is a combination of simple and extremely complex simultaneously an that’s one of the things that makes monk so unique as a composer and a pianist. So, I think I started thinking: What do I love about Monk? What can I take from Monk and create something that can get me through a complex narrative.
How did you connect with Monk’s journey in American Fiction?
There are a lot of things about it that are unique to the Black experience, but there are also things about it that I can relate to as a queer person. I’ve lived my life as an outsider. I understand what it is to be an artist working in a commercial medium. As I said, I think one of the things that compelled on [American Fiction] was working with somebody who let me be myself creatively. I think a lot of us who work in the movie business or who work in any kind of artistic capacity, especially in one that that tries to be commercial — we have to grapple with what makes something commercial and what makes something not commercial and when do you lean into one, and how do you play with the other and how can they interact and where do they intersect… I mean, this is something I think about a lot.
How have you seen the Hollywood landscape for underrepresented people — specifically queer people — change since you first started?
Okay, well, I’ll give you two examples. When I was a student at Juilliard, I went and saw…oh my God, I’m forgetting the name of that famous Donna Deitch movie…the lesbian one! [There’s a pause as we try to figure out the name of the movie that we both forgot. In the background, Karpman’s wife and fellow composer Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, says something.]
Desert Hearts! Thank you, my wife… I went and saw Desert Hearts at the theater and I was wearing my tight Sasson jeans — like, way too tight. I saw the movie and I had to look away because I’ve never seen anything like that. In front of me. I mean, I had experienced it by then but I’ve never seen it and I gasped. Now, not even a year ago we were watching the Queer Ultimatum. I was like, “Are you kidding me? We are watching a lesbian reality show.” It was incredible. There’s of course, way better content than that. [laughs]
In our movie, Sterling is a richly drawn gay character. I mean, you’re seeing a lot of improvements in the industry – but I think we have a long way to go. In my personal opinion, television had a huge role in in gay marriage. I think when people invited gay people into their living rooms with shows like Modern Family and Will & Grace, it didn’t seem so odd to them. Well done content can have a fantastic political influence and has had that so I think we’ve come a long way.
What kind of queer stories are you looking to see?
You know, Nora, and I have optioned the film Dance, Gir,l Dance by Dorothy Arzner… she was the only woman working in Hollywood’s Golden Age and she was an out butch lesbian. She was the first female member of the DGA. Nobody knows who she was. You would think people would know her, but there’s been this invisibility of queer people in history – because of the closet, obviously. But even historically, we still have a lot left on Earth. I would really love to see some of those stories told.
The thing is, there have always been queer people and they’ve always been making art. The messages have been there the whole time. I think what I’ve seen in my adult lifetime, is the closet has really fallen – at least for those of us living in major cities. Obviously, that’s not the case for many, if not most people in the world. But the closet held some pretty amazing secrets and so we need to go back and find them.