Don't Be Rated R
The Best Man's Ghostwriter Ep. 7. Weddings are supposed to be f*ckin' classy as sh*t.
Yes, I fell off my weekly release schedule. I was trying to take my own advice, post-election that it’s okay to not write right now. I’m back though, and I’m excited to tell you that The Best Man’s Ghostwriter was named by Audible as part of their Best Of 2024 for Fiction! I feel everything about this: proud, shocked, lucky, grateful, scared. My ego has never been bigger while also feeling complete and total imposter syndrome.
I just finished reading James by Percival Everett, another honoree on the same list. I’ve loved few books more. Beautifully written, insightful, funny, heartbreaking, familiar yet completely original. I read it in a day. I had tickets to see a movie and I chose instead to read more of the book. Being featured on the same list, to me, feels like being on the same basketball team roster as LeBron James. This isn’t meant to be self-deprecating, so much as acknowledging that I can be proud of my work while also understanding that I still want to get better. I want to be *that* good.
If you’re looking for a show to listen to on your holiday travels, please consider The Best Man’s Ghostwriter on Audible.
Episode 7...You’ve made it to the end of Act 2 of Season 1. The people who have taken my pilot-writing class know that this is where our character gets what he wants and pays a big price for it. I am obsessed with this moment in writing. Giving your character what they want and seeing how it ruins their life is the most fun a writer can have.
I wanted this episode to capture the depths and callousness of male friendship. The question I had going into it was how do we get Nate to a place where he’d be willing to go so far out on a limb to protect Dan? First, we take away Ash as emotional support. Personally, I think waiting for a call that might be a fight is worse than the fight itself. The discomfort of it, ugh, it’s the worst. Then we throw Nate into Tyson’s content-creation nightmare of a wedding. Lukas Gage as a groomzilla and AJ Patton as his toady bro are perfect at pissing off Nate. Lastly, Dan’s gone missing and nobody really cares which negates the importance of Nate’s work. They’ve worked so hard and been through so much. Friendship is better than 21 Pilots! By the time Dan gets on stage and Tyson reveals it has all been an elaborate and mean prank, Nate has been pushed over the edge. The cruelest indignities between men, between friends, are paired with laughter.
I fucking love the performances in this episode.
Nicole Byer as Ky, our best person of the week. Blair Socci as Danadonna. And introducing the Meat Fountain, as themself.
Honestly, Nicole locked up this role many years ago. We were at The Del Close Marathon in New York City, and she was back in town from LA. We hadn’t seen each other for a long time. I said, “Hello” and she said, “Are you still fucking that one lady?” Nicole is a rare performer who elevates anything you put into her hands. One of the hardest fought battles (that I lost) was just how much of her ranting we kept in this episode. I could listen to Nicole cuss and swear at the people at a wedding for hours on end because she’s right, that flower girl is an idiot.
Danadonna owes everything to Blair Socci for bringing her to life, and to Kristen Bartlett and Monique Moses for shaping her. When I had initially written Danadonna, she was just a drunken, sad, side-character. I wouldn’t say she was a cliche, but she certainly wasn’t interesting. Kristen and Mo, in the punch-up room, really went to bat for Danadonna and everything they added made her better. She went from being a punchline to being a selfless doctor in a world that only rewards people who demand attention. The more we talked about her, the more she became one of my favorite characters. Blair’s performance captures all of it; a woman teetering on the edge who made all of the right choices but still ended up with the short straw.
Lastly, the script of this episode contains maybe my favorite sentence that I’ve ever written:
Kudos for the millionth time to Ben Lapidus for making the tiny slaps of meat of my dreams into reality and to Tessa Claire Hersh playing Attendant 3 with unflinching integrity.
Next episode is the most emotionally-devastating thing I’ve ever written, so I’m sure it’ll be fun to talk about here. Okay bye!