The Most Reliable Source of Grist for the Speechwriter's Mill? The Obits

by David Murray

As I like to say, the obits are a great place to meet people. They're also a great source of ideas for speechmakers, speechwriters, and speech editors.

In one week late last month, I got to know the Chicago theater kingpin Sheldon Patinkin, got reacqauinted with Ohio politician Jim Traficant, and met the writer Alastair Reid.

From Patinkin—or actually, his friend, the actor Jeff Perry—I learned the true size of the job of criticizing a creative product. Directors and actors would beg Patinkin to give them notes on their work, because he was a "world champion note giver," according to Perry. "His process is gorgeous; like movements in a symphony or rules of comedy, it comes in threes."

First are the Socratic questions that lead you to this pleasantly shocked re-understanding of your intent. Then he continues with a great, blunt, nonjudgmental articulation of what he saw compared to what you intended. And finally, as you launch into a spin cycle of anxiety and self-justification about all the obstacles sabotaging your genius, he has the knack of being able to steer you, like a shrink, bartender and rabbi rolled into one, into the belief that the fixes are easy, they are absolutely in your reach, and there’s plenty of time to work them in.

U.S. Rep. Jim Traficant liked to make references to Star Trek, often ending speeches with a request: "Beam me up." Traficant wore an outrageous hairpiece, spent time in jail and had a lot of crazy ideas. But he got heard, with soundbites like this one, from a 1998 speech:

Mr. Speaker, the Lord’s Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, the Declaration of Independence is 1,322 words. U.S. regulations on the sale of cabbage—that is right, cabbage—is 27,000 words. Regulatory red tape in America costs taxpayers $400 billion every year, over $4,000 each year, every year, year in, year out, for every family.

Beam me up.

And then there was Alastair Reid, who only occasionally returned from reporting trips around the world to visit his office at the New Yorker (where the dope smoke often curled out from under his office door). What drove him him to travel all his life? Same thing that drives everyone to travel, to whatever extent they do. Here's Reid's poem, "Curiosity":

Curiosity

may have killed the cat. More likely

the cat was just unlucky, or else curious

to see what death was like, having no cause

to go on licking paws, or fathering

litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious

is dangerous enough. To distrust

what is always said, what seems,

to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,

smell rats, leave home, have hunches

does not endear cats to those doggy circles

where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches

are the order of things, and where prevails

much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

—DM

(This post originally appeared on Vital Speeches.)

Guest post: A Tribute to Hillman Curtis

BY DAVID ALM
This post originally ran on Contrary Magazine's blog.

Here is a truth about ghostwriting that I never knew until now: You can write about practically anything in the first-person—except death.

One week ago today, an old friend died after fighting cancer for three and a half years. He was just 51, had a wife, two young children, and countless friends scattered all over the world. He was famous enough for his obituary to be featured in the New York Times. And he was the only other person in the world, besides myself, whose life, ideas, and work I have discussed using the word “I.”

He was Hillman Curtis, a web designer-cum-filmmaker, and I was his ghostwriter.

We had become estranged in recent years, but I knew he was sick. In 2010, five years after our last book project together, he confided in me over email that he “had a bad case of cancer.” It was meant as a joke, an allusion to one of his favorite films, The Royal Tennenbaums. Hillman liked to lighten the mood whenever possible, but I didn’t catch it. I was too much in shock. He had reached out to me much like he always had: seemingly on a whim, with an idea for a project that he wanted my help with. That’s how Hillman worked with everyone.

Only this time, the project didn’t involve a book. We wrote two together, one in 2001 and another in 2005—but I’ll come back to that. The first time he emailed me, in May 2001, it was simply to ask if I might have time to help him structure his thoughts for a book on new media design he was writing. I had interviewed him a few months earlier for a magazine article about broadcast design, and apparently we’d hit it off. I was only 25. I jumped at the opportunity.

Thus began a unique kind of partnership. When he had time, he would write a mess of ideas—stream of consciousness, really—and then I’d turn the draft into a chapter. Other times, we’d simply sit and talk, and I’d record the conversation. Later I would transcribe the conversation and write a chapter from that. I got to know him very, very well during this process. I internalized his voice, started using his expressions, and even went against my own literary judgement and ended a lot of sentences with ellipses (as he liked to do…).

The book was a success, and we worked on many other projects over the years. He would call me up, or email me, and say he needed my “special touch” on a piece of writing—usually copy for a website, a chapter for another author’s book about design, or a speech. Payment varied—once, when I was very broke, he paid my month’s rent, in addition to the fee we had already established. In 2005, we wrote a second book, about digital filmmaking, a field he waded into and then immersed himself in during his last decade of life, ultimately replacing his web design work with artist documentaries, commercials, and short narrative films. He was a self-described “serial self-reinventor.” And he was successful at practically everything he put his mind to.

Except for the last project he tapped me for, in 2010. He wanted me to train him for a half-marathon. He had begun chemo, he explained, and he was often very tired. He needed something to focus on, and someone to “kick his ass,” as he put it. He even offered to pay me.

I never said no to Hillman, and not because I was afraid to. When he asked someone to do something for him, it was usually a tremendous opportunity. “Do you have time to help me write a book?” Of course. “I just got this new film equipment; will you help me make a documentary about David Byrne?” Are you kidding? Yes. “Will you give me something to look forward to three months down the road, and an excuse to get out every day and breathe fresh air, talk about life, and simply enjoy being alive?” Absolutely.

But this time, Hillman didn’t follow through. We exchanged many emails about running. I advised him, developed a modest schedule for him, and encouraged him every time he reported back about a run he had completed. But we never met to go running in Prospect Park, as we’d planned on doing twice weekly, nor did he ever run a half-marathon.

I never pressured him. When he was reluctant to begin our second book together because he didn’t quite know what kind of book he wanted to write, I waited—for two years, and through many false starts in the meantime. And so, when he faltered on the running, I didn’t “kick his ass,” as he’d asked. After all, he was dealing with a bad case of cancer.

Maybe I let him down. Maybe he wanted me to be Mickey to his Rocky, never backing down, showing tough love from the side of the road, stopwatch in hand as I shouted his quarter-mile splits. But I just didn’t have the heart for that.

A lot of people knew Hillman, and many more respected him. He revolutionized the web. He helped untold numbers of young designers find their way. And he gave a few of us, those lucky enough to have worked closely with him, opportunities of a lifetime.

I wish that I could ghostwrite a goodbye from Hillman, channel his voice one last time. But I can’t. Even so, if I were able to suggest the idea, I think I know exactly what he’d say: “Right on.”