The Best Man's Ghostwriter Ep. 2: Don't Copy and Paste
Your Words vs. Everyone Else's.
Sometimes, instead of writing a speech, the best man will just bring in quotes or readings thinking that if they just read that thing, that’s enough. Instead of putting thought into their friendship, they are hoping that the simple act of reading something will make you understand how they feel. We wouldn’t allow this in any other scenario:
Person 1: [Reads the entirety of Oh, The Places You’ll Go]
Person 2: You’re breaking up with me?
In Episode 2 of The Best Man’s Ghostwriter, our Best Man of the Week, played by the truly magnificent George Takei, can’t stop quoting Shakespeare. Let’s talk about quoting in general first, and then talk about Shakespeare.
I feel like it’s a pretty widely known faux pas to start your speech like, “Webster’s defines “quotation” as “a large plant-eating marsupial that travels by leaping.”’ We don’t want someone else’s words. The best man’s speech is your opportunity to say something personal about your best friend, and one thing I can say with almost complete confidence, is that you know your best friend better than Noah Webster, Oscar Wilde, or Maya Angelou. When it comes to talking about your best friend, you make Maya Angelou look like an absolute punk.
It is because you know your best friend so well that you feel like you need a quote. There’s too much to talk about! Why do any of the introspection necessary to figure out just how significant this person is to you when you can just slap a bumper sticker on it and call it a day? If your first thought when someone asks you to give a best man’s speech is to reach for someone else’s words, I’m sorry, you don’t understand the assignment.
And yes, that includes Shakespeare. George Takei’s character Giles St. Poppington (a name pitched by Achilles Stamatelaky that we actually shortened from something longer and sillier) isn’t alone here in loving Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare. I truly believe that a little bit of Shakespeare improves nearly everything.
WEDDING GOSSIP: One of the top moments of the entire experience of creating this show was in studio with George. He had just finished reading the assortment of Shakespeare quotes from the script, and as the Director, I asked him if he has a favorite Shakespeare quote. George Takei, from memory, launched into a monologue from Julius Caesar. There were 4 of us in the booth for this private play, and it just was one of the most magical things I’ve ever experienced. I don’t know where the audio file of that went, but I would love to hear it again someday. I definitely recommend asking actors/anyone what their favorite Shakespeare quote is. Zach Braff had a good one too.
I also don’t want you to get confused here. There is room for Shakespeare in a wedding:
Do a reading as part of the ceremony.
Have a quote on the program.
See a ghost while you’re eating dinner.
Unless you met the groom while performing Shakespeare, the best man’s speech probably isn’t the place for Shakespeare. If you’re looking for quotes to fill out your speech, start with things that the groom said to you.
What’s something memorable the groom said to you?
What’s the first thing the groom said to you about the bride?
What’s the most the groom has ever made you laugh?
Obviously, there are other pitfalls that could come from these questions, but we’ll talk about those later.
You’ve been asked to speak about your friend because of your unique perspective. When the speech goes well, I bet later on, people will be quoting you.
In writing this episode about the dangers of quotations, I kept thinking about something Shonda Rhimes said in her Masterclass:
“[I]n the first season of your show you made this pilot, and then you get to episode two, and a lot of people don’t understand what episode two is. Episode two is just episode one all over again...You need to do that so that people understand what they’re watching and so they feel like they can trust what they’ve seen and that they want to come back.”
Episode 2 is the pilot again, but obviously, you can’t just copy and paste. Story-wise, we’re hitting a lot of the same notes structurally, but we get to play them louder. Every episode has to be challenging in some way for Nate (Glen Powell) and this episode sees him truly thrown by even the idea of the making a new friend. Also in this episode, we really give Dan more to do. Dan (Nicholas Braun) has been tasked with giving a toast at Tyson and Lulanola’s engagement dinner.
I’d love to tell you that I’m an incredible director who managed to craft this performance of Dan from the shapeless clay of Nicholas Braun but wow, that would be wildly untrue. Every time you hear an actor play the role of something you wrote, you understand that character a little more. Either in hearing what they did and thinking, “Yes, that’s right” or in thinking, “No, not quite.” Nick asked me a couple of questions about tone and whatnot, but then just got in the booth and was Dan. The character of Dan on the page could be interpreted a lot of different ways, most of them bad. Dan could be played too big, too rude, too stupid, too gross. It’s all in the performer’s hands to walk that line. If this show had come out in the 90s, Dan would’ve been Chris Farley. In the early 2000s, Will Ferrell. In the 2010s, probably Jason Segel or Seth Rogen. Each of those actors fits in a category while also being unique of one another. Nick belongs in that category. What he brings to the character of Dan feels familiar while being fresh and totally his own.
One of my favorite lines in the entire show is Nick improvising toward the end of Act 2 of this episode. Nick was supposed to say, “Okay, I’m gonna hit the gym before dinner. Want to come?” What he does say is, “I’m gonna head to the gym before dinner, y’know puff up. Want to come?” “Puff up” is such a perfectly idiotic thing to say while still being completely in line with Dan’s character. It’s stupid, but not in a way that makes you roll your eyes at him like you would a typical gym bro. Dan’s just...Dan, and Nick understood that.
Nate working with Dan in this episode allows us to see more of Dan, and because of Dan’s reactions, we also get to know more about Nate. A dynamic that became clearer as I was writing the show was that Nate’s job is to help Dan stay calm while feeling big emotions, and Dan’s job is to make Nate feel his feelings in spite of his need to be calm.
A question that we talked about a lot is “What makes Dan so special?” Nate is used to having his boundaries maintained in his professional life, but also, most guys won’t push back on not getting to know someone new. Most guys won’t ask a follow-up question. One of the hardest parts of being an adult is figuring out who are the people who are actually your friends. Who are the people that actually care about you and how can you tell them apart from all of the other people who aren’t necessarily malicious, but definitely more careless with friendship? I feel sad writing this but it’s true, an easy way to tell if someone actually cares about you is that if you ask them, “How was your weekend?”, do they tell you and then ask you, “How was yours?” Dan is someone who always asks you about your life, and genuinely wants to know. That may not seem like that groundbreaking of a character trait, but it’s rarer than we care to admit. It’s something that I truly value in a friend and try to embody in my own friendships.
An alternate title/rule that we explored for this episode was Don’t Go Long, but ultimately we felt like it wasn’t a specific enough behavior. That being said, the best compliment that a wedding speech can receive is that people wanted more. In writing this episode, I actually cut it short and had to adjust. Initially, we didn’t get to hear Dan give the toast in this episode. The episode was going to end with Dan revealing that his clothes had been stolen. The whole sequence at the end of the episode was going to be the cold open of Episode 3. I received the note from the good folks at Audible that it should be in this episode and they were correct.
It was a funny moment for me. Maybe the most common note I give in teaching my Write Your Pilot! Workshop, is to read an outline or script and give some version of the note, “Act 3 is your new Act 2, write a new Act 3.” And now I was on the other side of the note. Not that I didn’t have empathy for the people I was giving the note to in my class, but I definitely have more empathy now.
The intent of the note is to get the writer to move faster through the story. Fit more in. The note becomes more difficult the later in the process it comes because you aren’t just cutting plot points, you’re cutting characters, and jokes, and cool set pieces. It’s really scary to cut jokes that you like because you’re trying to adjust the story. When you figure out the new story, will you find something as funny? Will you ever write anything funny ever again? Something I have to learn over and over again is that the best joke for the script is the one that is funniest while also supporting the story.
If I hadn’t made the story adjustments and cut some jokes about Dan’s landlord and the uber driver that Nate hires to help him get Dan to the dinner, I would’ve missed out on writing an additional scene with Nate’s parents. Those scenes were my favorite to write and also to collaborate on with Glen. Just how mad is it okay for a character to get with his Mom? Is yelling too much? We definitely discussed it and I can’t speak for him, but I found the conversation cathartic.
WEDDING GOSSIP: As mentioned in an earlier substack, I found out the show was greenlit the week before my actual wedding. I held off on telling my parents the news until they were standing in my apartment in Los Angeles and it remains a moment that makes me tear up whenever I think about it. My parents have commented both that Nate’s parents are complete lunatics that are nothing like them and that the conversations in the script are verbatim from real ones we had while planning my wedding. So yeah...I guess we’re just going to let both things be true. I am truly touched at how many people have reached out telling me that they also have had arguments about ice. It’s nice to know I’m not alone.
Also, as far as casting goes, producer Mark and I have talked numerous times just how much we nailed it with Debra Messing and Neil Flynn.
At this point in the show, we’re forcing Nate to stick his neck out for Dan. Is he doing it because it’s his job? Or are they actually becoming friends? We get to talk a lot about in next week’s episode, “Don’t Rap (Unless You Can Rap)”.