Ghostwriting for a Palin
Big Brown Dad as teen mom.
You remember Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, of course. And you probably remember her daughter, Bristol, who in the mid 00's, became tabloid fodder as an unwed teen mom. And if you know the names Levi and Willow, it's safe to say, you were in too deep.
But not as deep as me.
After all, I worked as a writer and story producer on the A&E/Lifetime docu-series, Bristol Palin: Life's a Tripp.
In addition to producing scenes out of breathtaking Wasilla, AK, I was also responsible for writing show voice-overs, including Bristol's recurring contemplative journal entry at the end of each episode.
The premise of the show was that Bristol, her son (Tripp) and sister (Willow) leave lakeside Alaska for the bright lights of Hollywood, CA.
Except when she gets to LA, she faces the hate that hate produced.
What followed was a season mired in heartbreak, betrayal and grit. Bristol said as much during the episodes…because she said what I wrote as if it were her own.
Does that count as ghostwriting? Probably not but maybe?
I did act like a ghost when I was around her. I'm not gonna front, I didn't want her to think too much about the fact that the person writing her script was a thirty-something Chicano named Carrrrrlos. That's not Wasilla. Or even Anchorage. But it is TV.
That's how it works. Men write for women. Women write for men. It's not that a writer's experiences don't make their way onto the page, its that with enough practice, you learn writing for other people is like writing for yourself...but for other people. Got it?
It remains one of my favorite projects, in some measure because of what happened when we shot our series open on the famed Palin compound. We wanted Bristol to act as if she was on a phone call with her toddler son, Tripp. I stood in as Tripp on the other end of the staged phone call.
While taping, and only because I was committed to my role, I said, as if I were a two-year-old, "I love you, Mommy."
Indeed, Bristol looked as if she'd seen a ghost.