The Best Man's Ghostwriter: A Preamble
My show comes out this Thursday, September 12 on Audible!
This Thursday, September 12, 2024, The Best Man’s Ghostwriter will be released as an Audible Original. Real quick, here’s the logline:
When an emotionally-damaged speechwriter (Glen Powell) hired to help men write better wedding speeches gets pulled into the high-profile nuptials of an internet sensation, he must confront the shortcomings of male friendship and the trauma of his (ex)best friend abruptly cutting ties.
I’m hesitating calling it my show because it’s not really just my show anymore. It’s Glen Powell’s show. It’s Broadway Video’s show. It’s all of the cast and crew’s show. With all of that acknowledged, written as an act of love, it’s my show. I wrote it. I directed it. I produced it. I’ve been involved in every creative discussion for it leading up to its release and it’s based on some of the most deeply personal experiences of my life. More on that later.
Over the next ten weeks (maybe more), I’m going to write about each episode and the insane world of weddings that this show explores. For today though, I want to give you a little window into how I got here and how I’m feeling leading up to the world getting to hear it.
I got the call from Mark, my producer at Broadway Video, that the show was greenlit by Audible on September 16, 2022. One week before my own wedding.
Kate, now my wife, and I were on a Zoom call with our friend/wedding officiant Tessa discussing final thoughts on what we wanted for the ceremony. I excused myself to answer the phone on the front porch. I heard Mark tell me that we were greenlit and I think I thanked him and said I was excited but, honestly, that conversation is a blur to me. I’ve never had my own show greenlit before. One thing I’ve found through this entire process is that I am better at handling bad news than good news. I’ve had more practice with bad news at least. I came back inside and told Kate and Tessa. I think we ended the ceremony discussion early but don’t worry, the wedding didn’t suffer. In fact, Tessa plays the wedding officiant in the show as well, so yeah, she nailed it in real life.
Kate and I have talked a lot about how she can’t tell when I’m having a good time. I have to actually say “I’m having a good time” out loud. I know that normally this is work that say, my face should do for me. I don’t know what to tell you other than this made narrative audio a somewhat natural fit—no pesky faces to get in the way. Also, I usually actually am having a good time. I just am also thinking/stressing out about something else. I remember this moment though. Kate and I took a second in our living room and just stood there for a second while the whole world felt like it was spinning around me. It had been a long journey to get to this point and all I could think to say was, “I’m having a good time.”
For context, this is before I knew Glen would be playing Nate, the character based on me. This is before Nicholas Braun, and Ashley Park, and D’Arcy Carden, and Alex Wolff, and Lukas Gage, and Lance Bass were cast. This is before finding out that Debra Messing was going to play my Mom, Neil Flynn my Dad, and Zach Braff my older brother. This is before we assembled one of the most comedically-stacked casts...ever. This is before scripts. This is before stories. That all comes later. When you get the green light call, it’s just you and the idea.
In preparation for the show being released, I’ve thought a lot about the chain of events that lead to this show existing at all. I was only able to pitch this idea to Mark at Broadway Video because he and I had met a couple of years earlier when I was working at Above Average. We had gotten back in touch when my friend/groomsman Achilles had invited me to help develop the story of his Broadway Video-produced Audible Original Christmas Delivery. The only reason I had anything to pitch was because I had created a short film as a proof-of-concept of The Best Man’s Ghostwriter. My friend/extremely talented director Tyler Mercer asked me if I had any ideas that we could shoot in one day. Hopefully that short film will see the light of day someday because everyone who worked on it did an exceptional job, but for now, I’d rather you hear Glen than see me. We spent $6500 on that short film, and the only reason I was able to afford that was because I had been the head writer/EP of a livestream weed talk show that never really found an audience. The only reason I had that job was because I had written for a political show the previous year that also never really aired. The only reason I got that job was because my friend Lauren had posted on Facebook that her company was looking to hire creative people. The only reason we’re friends is because I had first agreed to be her improv coach. All of this is to say, you have no idea what might lead to what.
The team at Broadway Video was kind of enough to let me get married before we really dove in. They even sent over a bottle of champagne to our bridal AirBNB and the whole thing felt a little bit more real. We spent a few weeks negotiating contracts. I don’t remember the details, just that at every stage I was worried that they were going to decide, actually no, this was all an elaborate and mean wedding prank.
While the contracts were being negotiated, I felt like I needed to learn more. I listened to other people’s shows. I spoke with other narrative audio creators. I’m extremely grateful to Travis Helwig, Maulik Pancholy + Zackary Grady, and Claire Friedman for taking time out of their busy schedules to chat with me about approaching a narrative audio series. Travis’s series Edith! showcases some extremely creative audio storytelling. Zackary’s series Gay Pride and Prejudice is delightfully listenable. Claire was in process of working on what would become Trust Fall which is so, so funny. I also found as many BBC4 Radio shows as I could and listened to them, picking out different ways that they were moving from scene to scene or establishing location.
I wanted to make the most of this opportunity, because ultimately, that’s what this was for me: an opportunity. Is a narrative audio series the biggest opportunity an artist can have? I’m having a difficult time, even as I write this, to not undersell this whole experience in a knee-jerk act of Midwestern modesty. “It’s just a narrative audio series.” Something I kept hearing in other narrative audio episodes were jokes that basically lamented the fact that they weren’t making a TV show. “Boy, it’s crazy you can’t see this right now. It’d be way better if you could see it.” Do I want to create a TV show? Absolutely, yes. Was I so psyched/grateful for the chance to make a narrative audio series? Also yes. My goal from the outset was to make the best narrative audio series I could and to celebrate this medium for the creative opportunities it provides. We kept that mentality the entire time we were making this show and I’m so proud of that.
As I mentioned earlier, this show is based on some deeply personal experiences. The show is about my real-life experiences of ghostwriting best man’s speeches for strangers. Yes, it was my real job. That’s not the deeply personal part for me, though. This show is also about male friendship, specifically a friendship break-up. I’ll probably go into more detail about it in future posts but the short version is that we had been best friends for 10 years and then it just…stopped. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t deeply affected by that. Deeply saddened by it. Obviously, I wanted the show to be funny. At this point, I wasn’t worried about it being funny though. I had no idea how to go about figuring out everything I wanted to say, so I just started reading.
Some of what I read was obvious, like All About Love by bell hooks. I’m pretty sure I googled “How should men feel feelings” and the internet was like, “Stop it. Read this.”
Some of it had already been gifted to me and I just hadn’t had a chance to read it yet. My soon-to-be father-in-law had gifted me a collection of poems by Mary Oliver that was helpful.
Some of it felt like the universe decided my reading list for me. At the wedding of my friends Hannah and Greg, one of the speeches was about how Greg had given his brother a copy of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and how it had spoken to him. I bought it on the spot.
Some it was just aspirational. My favorite writer right now is Hanif Abdurraquib (we Ohioans have to stick together) and there were times I was honestly just trying to mimic his ability to say something profound while still sounding human. I am not at all saying I accomplished that, by the way. For a moment I thought about inviting him to be part of the writers room for this show, but honestly, I was too nervous to bother him. If you’ve hung out with me for any length of time, I’ve more than likely recommended you read any of his books. There’s Always This Year is the best book I’ve read in a very long time and I’ll always be grateful to my brother Michael for gifting me They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.
Before I had written a single word of a script, reading helped me figure out what I wanted to say. This quote from bell hooks became a North Star for the show:
“[M]any of us are more comfortable with the notion that love can mean anything to anybody precisely because when we define it with precision and clarity it brings us face to face with our lacks – with terrible alienation.”
This helped me realize that I wanted to explore friendship break-ups as a topic, because we never talk them. Is it because men don’t get their feelings hurt? Or is it because we’re just more comfortable letting love and friendship remain undefined because when we lose it, it’s too painful to stop and think about?
I’m so proud of my show. I hope everyone who worked on it feels just as proud about it and I hope they call it their show because it is. And this Thursday, when it comes out, it’ll be your show too. I can’t wait for you to hear it and if you’d like to come even further into this world with me, subscribe to follow along.
Regardless, I hope you know, without a doubt, “I’m having a good time.”