Don't Bum Everyone Out
Good advice for speeches, bad for friendship. The Best Man's Ghostwriter Ep. 4.
Honoring this week’s theme of Don’t Bum Everyone Out, I want to take a second to share how much I appreciate all of the kind words people have shared about the show. It’s a true thrill to see the show connecting with it’s audience.
I don’t know what this says about me as a comedian, but the notes I am most touched by are the ones where people tell me they teared up/cried/full-on sobbed. What made creating this show exciting was the part where because you start by laughing, you open yourself up to the world, to the characters and their emotions, and through that connection, you allow yourself to feel what they’re feeling. Hearing that you teared up makes me feel like you’re actually listening, and I am incredibly grateful.
Okay, so Don’t Bum Everyone Out. This is good advice for the best man’s speech but bad advice for friendship. Sometimes being a good friend means being supportive when the other person is going through something difficult. Sometimes you’re the bummer and hopefully they’ll listen and support you. I can’t imagine having a best man who isn’t willing to listen to my problems and be emotionally supportive. That said, we don’t want that emotional outpouring to come out during the speech. I’d like to think this one is pretty straightforward, but it’s worth mentioning that if the best man and groom never have emotionally open conversations and then you give the best man a microphone and tell them to speak what they feel, you have no idea what they could say. It’s like Storage Wars of the heart.
Reflecting on episode 4, where the big idea is that straight men generally don’t give/receive emotional support from one another, I’m struck by just how much my community made this episode possible.
The episode starts with Nate having a dream about his former best friend Xavier. The friendship break-up between Nate and X is based on real-life experience, but the scenes in the show for the most part didn’t actually happen. For instance, I never bought weed in college. I didn’t smoke weed in college. I didn’t try weed until I was 30. I am...not cool. One of the hardest parts of a friendship break-up is remembering the good times. Remembering something good that happened in a past friendship is like finding a perfectly good donut in the garbage. It’s like, this is supposed to be trash! What’s this doing in here? Why does it completely disgust me but I still want it?
Nate wakes up expecting to talk to Ash about his dream only to find that Dan is already laying all of his emotional trauma about his divorce on her. A big thing we talked about in the writers rooms for this show is how often men expect women to do their emotional labor. Part of writing about male friendship is noticing the places where men naturally undercut these relationships, and this is a big part of that. More on this later.
Episode 4 is the acting debut for my real-life nephew Theo Starr as Baby TT. That’s Theo saying, “Guh-mo-mo.” And sure, Baby TT gets gendered female in the show but my hope is that Theo’s generation won’t care about such constructs. Cookie is so excited by his child speaking, he wants to share the victory. Cookie is a natural at friendship, just like my real-life older brother Michael.
Cookie believes that Nate can have real friendships, and I can’t say enough what a gift that can be for someone who struggles to make and maintain friendships. Cookie offers up the idea of a bachelor party for Nate. Cookie is there to emotionally support Nate when he gets freaked out at the movie. Cookie gets upset when Nate undervalues his friendships with Rhys and Dan. Sure, Nate is his brother and there are things we do for family that maybe we don’t extend to friends, but I don’t think that’s true for Cookie. One thing I find fascinating about male friendships is that they are rarely 50/50. Eventually the friendship becomes a habit that both people practice, but especially in the beginning, it takes one person to carve out the space. By the end of the episode, when Nate is trying to apologize to Cookie and agrees to a bachelor party, it’s only because Cookie has laid the groundwork for this to happen.
Writing something so personal, generally it’s healthy to maintain a distance between the writing and the people you’re writing about. I don’t want my Mom looking over my shoulder and giving her notes on the story because at best I’ll feel guilty for ignoring her. At worst, I’ll resent her for making it harder to make the thing. Still, it felt meaningful to get to involve my family more in the process. For months, my brother listened to me talk about this project, so to get to call and ask for his son to be involved, it was a cool moment. Am I coming around on the concept of Nepotism? Maybe. Just to be safe, I’d like to apologize to all of the hard-working babies at acting conservatories out there who aren’t my nephew.
Emotional support is something that you have to notice in your life. You have to underline it. You have to understand where it comes from in order to really appreciate it. EJ, our ultra-realist downer Best Person of the Week, owes their humanity to two of my favorite people in the world: Alex Song-Xia and Lennon Parham.
Coincidentally, I know both of them initially through the UCB Touring Company. Lennon visited Ohio State with UCB TourCo when I was a college sophomore, and managed to not tell me to go fuck myself when I paid for her (and the rest of the Touring Company’s) meal with a swipe at one of our campus’s most average dining halls. UCB TourCo’s visits to campus were what made me want to move to New York and perform at UCB. When I got the opportunity to join UCB TourCo myself, it was alongside Alex. Alex is one of my best friends, and they are an extremely talented writer/comedian/person. And yes, Alex and I were definitely treated at times to meal hall dinners by well-intentioned college students. Karma.
Writing a character like EJ, everyone can come up with a downer specific, a sad detail, something that is so heartbreaking, it’s funny. I love that part, but it’s the emotional impact that really excites me. Alex pitched the idea for EJ’s poignant speech: 5 things you can smell, 5 things you can hear, 5 things you can see. It’s such a creative and thoughtful interpretation of a best man’s speech that came from their own personal experiences. While I wrote the actual words of the speech, I never would’ve gotten there without Alex. Alex, also an incredible friend, consistently checked in on me while creating the show just to make sure I was doing okay. You can hear Alex in this episode as the person taking tickets at the movie theatre for Ghost Bugs.
When thinking of who could embody a character like EJ, Mark the producer and I were discussing lists of names. Lennon isn’t a hard sell. She’s Shelly on Minx, Nick’s Boston cousin’s wife on New Girl, she’s wildly talented, but that’s not why I felt like it had to be her. Whenever I see Lennon in anything, in media or in real life, I immediately get the feeling that that’s a room I want to be in. You know how you can just tell that everyone on set is having a great time? Watch anything Lennon is involved in, on either side of the camera, and you’ll see joy and I bet you’ll want to be a part of it too.
Having people like Alex and Lennon in the show just feels good, not because I know them personally, but because they are people who embody the empathy that the show extols.
Like Nate, I don’t do well with scary movies. There are scary movies I love: Scream, Get Out, The Sixth Sense. These are great films. I thought I had gotten better about scary movies, until a couple of weeks after my wedding, AJ Patton who had been one of my groomsmen (and who I also became friends with on UCB’s Touring Company), asked if I wanted to hang out and go bowling. I said sure. Then, a couple of hours before we hung out, he changed his mind that he didn’t want to go bowling, he wanted to see the new horror film Barbarian.
AJ had spent the previous let’s say 9 months but honestly probably more listening to my wedding concerns, going suit shopping, going to the bachelor party, being there for every complaint, every concern, every freak-out. Basically, being an amazing friend. I couldn’t, the first time post-wedding where everything was no longer about me, in good conscience say, “No, I don’t want to do that thing you want to do.” So I went. Barbarian scared the fuck out of me. God, that basement. The creature. I get shivers just thinking about it. I don’t trust AirBNBs anymore. However, we grabbed a beer afterwards and it was so fun! That to me is kind of the point of friendship. Friendship provides comfort in discomfort, and vice versa. After watching that movie, I immediately took note to remember it for the series as a way for Nate and Dan to bond. Getting Nate out of his comfort zone creates space for his budding friendship with Dan. They don’t have the conversation at the bar about Dan’s divorce without first bonding over the movie. You can hear AJ in this episode as one of the hot teens in the first scene of Ghost Bugs, opposite the great Taylor Ortega.
Last but not least, Lance Bass plays Rhys the bartender. Getting to know Lance while touring with the UCB Touring Company-- just kidding. Lance was so giving and fun, and brings Rhys to life. This is going to sound ridiculous to admit, but I was worried...that Lance Bass...of NSYNC...would be uncomfortable... talking into a microphone. I had no doubt of his talent, but my fear was more like, what if all of my teeth fall out while we’re trying to record kind of nightmare. It took about two seconds of seeing how bright and playful he was with the text to realize, he’s amazing. I’m pretty sure he could deliver these lines while doing full choreo and still be funny and great. Truly an amazing talent and kind person.
WEDDING GOSSIP: Seriously though, it’s so crazy to be in the same room as Lance Bass, let alone to be part of his recorded audio history. If I was making a playlist, it would go It’s Gonna Be Me, Bye Bye Bye, Episode 4 of The Best Man’s Ghostwriter, and then probably Space Cowboy. Also, Lance wrote a book! Check out Trick or Treat on Scary Street!
To bring it back to male friendships and the places where men undercut these relationships, Rhys says:
As long as you’re programmed to treat platonic and romantic relationships differently, you’ll never comprehend the depth of friendship.
This is the whole thing, right? Friendships get devalued because we allow ourselves to undervalue them. It’s a lesson I learn over and over again. This episode, this whole show never would’ve happened without the friends in my life who are willing to let me be emotionally vulnerable with them and they with me. When I talk to my brother or Alex or AJ, I don’t worry that I’m bumming them out. I know that they are my friends and friends like to help each other. I’m even grateful for the friendships that have ended, but we’ll talk more about that later.
Next week is an insane episode, Don’t Snitch, and I’m excited to tell you about it.