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[0:17] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello, welcome to The Drama Book Show.

[0:19] Dylan Glick: My name is Dylan Glick.

[0:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And my name is Mark-Eugene Garcia.

[0:22] Dylan Glick: What?

[0:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You're here again.

[0:23] Dylan Glick: What would have thought?

[0:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: My gosh.

[0:25] Dylan Glick: We're gonna have a couple episodes with you too.

[0:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Love that.

[0:27] Dylan Glick: It's like a Glick trilogy.

[0:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's a Glick trilogy.

[0:30] Dylan Glick: It's my residency.

[0:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[0:32] Dylan Glick: Glicky.

[0:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I love it.

[0:35] Dylan Glick: How have you been doing?

[0:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You had a reading of one of your shows.

[0:38] Dylan Glick: Oh, that's very nice. I've been doing good. We just did a table read of this play that I wrote in college called Emilio.

[0:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Congratulations.

[0:44] Dylan Glick: I've been working on this play since 2018. It has been a long time coming, and it was very helpful doing a table read, and so now I'm doing some rewrites.

[0:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That's a big deal.

[0:52] Dylan Glick: Thank you. I really should—it's the first table read, right?

[0:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It is. Here's the thing. We did a staged reading of it in college in terms of give us a thesis presentation, and then I have tried messing around with it since, but it's like the first real table read since then, which is great.

[1:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Congrats.

[1:09] Dylan Glick: Thank you. And I want to congratulate you for getting into the Candela fellowship.

[1:13] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Thank you. That means a lot. It's exciting. It's a fellowship of Latin and Caribbean writers, and we're all gonna be meeting every day from eight in the morning until 10:30 at night for six days.

[1:23] Dylan Glick: That sounds great.

[1:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I am so excited, and I have no idea what to expect, and it's gonna be crazy. I'm really grateful for this.

[1:31] Dylan Glick: But that's not what we're here to talk about today.

[1:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, it's not. We're here to talk about Showmance by Chad Beguelin.

[1:38] Dylan Glick: Wow.

[1:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes. Now I have only recently learned how to say his last name, and because he told David how to say his last name.

[1:46] Dylan Glick: If you want a part in Hamilton, you have to Beguelin.

[1:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh my god. That's very silly.

[1:52] Dylan Glick: And also, I'm glad you said his last name because I also was like, Big U Lynn?

[1:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, but I didn't know either. And there's a history there because the very first show I ever saw of a Broadway show when I moved to New York was The Wedding Singer.

[2:06] Dylan Glick: Oh, which is one of his shows.

[2:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hey. And it was a name that was always like it's been in my head since I moved here.

[2:11] Dylan Glick: Yeah.

[2:11] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Like actually on the drive over, the album came out mid-drive. We took an 11-day drive across the country, and we bought it at a Virgin Mega store in Chicago.

[2:21] Dylan Glick: So halfway across the country.

[2:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. And then from Chicago to New York, that is all we listened to.

[2:26] Dylan Glick: Slides.

[2:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Was The Wedding Singer. I had it memorized by the time we arrived.

[2:31] Dylan Glick: And then yeah, that was the very first show I saw. And it's so wonderful. In addition to The Wedding Singer, I do really love The Prom.

[2:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I feel like of his work, he brings a lot of joy to Broadway, which I'm so into.

[2:43] Dylan Glick: He really does.

[2:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Now he also wrote for this show On the Record.

[2:47] Dylan Glick: Okay.

[2:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Which is something I—it's like a secret, like guilty pleasure of mine.

[2:52] Dylan Glick: It's a Disney album that it's every Disney song, basically.

[2:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I don't know how they were able to do it, but they imagine it every Disney song. And like different things will merge together. There was like one that's Supercalifragilistic and Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.

[3:06] Dylan Glick: And like I feel like the Mickey Mouse March all rolled into one.

[3:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[3:10] Dylan Glick: It also has my absolute favorite version of Everybody Wants to Be a Cat.

[3:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[3:14] Dylan Glick: Because it's this really cool, like jazzy number that is like my sing-along number in the living room by myself.

[3:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We love.

[3:21] Dylan Glick: Oh, absolutely love. It's just a really cool album.

[3:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Is now was this—so this was an album.

[3:26] Dylan Glick: This was like—it was an album and it was a show.

[3:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It was a touring show for a while. I remember paying attention to it because I was working for Disney at the time, and so it was like on my radar, but I never got to see it.

[3:36] Dylan Glick: It was On the Record, and it was on your radar.

[3:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It was. I never got to see it, but I did get to listen to it, and I got to like overlisten to it. Like the people in the office at Disneyland where I was working were like, "Please stop." I just kept repeating. I'm just a devoted cast member is what I am. I really love this.

[3:51] Dylan Glick: Also, Everybody Wants to Be a Tramp is on there, and it's so good.

[3:55] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It is so good. It's just—it's a really cool rendition of songs I already love.

[4:00] Dylan Glick: Yeah, and there is a certain magic to it. But he also worked on the book for Aladdin.

[4:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hey, which is one of my favorites. It's my favorite Disney movie.

[4:08] Dylan Glick: Yeah, I grew up—that was the only— that was the only like Disney prince I could see myself playing as a kid because I was like, "Look, a brown prince! I can do that."

[4:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, but it also just—it was a cool story and funny. Got Robin, yeah.

[4:20] Dylan Glick: I remember I feel like I was late to discover Aladdin. I feel like I might have like caught it at like the end of elementary school, and I was obsessed with it. Obsessed with the music.

[4:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, it just—I really love the play.

[4:37] Dylan Glick: Yeah, my gosh, I really do. I've seen it a couple times on Broadway.

[4:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, and that's just one that like it never fails to like bring me joy and bring me magic, and you're right, I feel like Chad brings joy.

[4:43] Dylan Glick: Yeah, he brings the joy. I feel like it is a really excellent Disney stage adaptation of—totally slay, Chad.

[4:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then he brought joy again with—and now I lucked out with this because I got an email, I want to say from a publicist about possibly doing an event here, and I was already like on board. I was like, "Yes, let's do this." And then she said, "I'll send it to you so you can like reference it." And so she sent it to me, and I devoured it.

[5:15] Dylan Glick: And I don't know when, but at some point when I first moved here and Wedding Singer first came out and Facebook was new, I somehow befriended Chad Beguelin.

[5:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So I've never met him.

[5:25] Dylan Glick: And I would go like 20 years. I never met him, but we were Facebook friends.

[5:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[5:29] Dylan Glick: I never even sent a message like that. But I finally sent one that was like, "Chad, I'm reading your book. It is so good." And I would just send updates. I'm sure he was like, "Who is this person?" I'm like, "I work at the Drama Bookshop. I'm the manager there. I promise. We've been Facebook friends for a very long time."

[5:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But it's so delightful. And in a lot of ways, I feel like it was written just for me.

[5:49] Dylan Glick: Yeah.

[5:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: As a gay musical theater writer.

[5:51] Dylan Glick: That's it, it really is. Because the plot is about that. He's a gay musical theater writer. He just had his big Broadway opening, and he's so excited. He's there with his boyfriend, and everything is going right. And then it flops.

[6:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, yeah.

[6:07] Dylan Glick: And he gets terrible reviews, and it's closing. And in the midst of all of that, his dad has a health emergency. And so, in a way, like there's an escape. He gets to get away from New York.

[6:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, but it's also like what a homecoming.

[6:23] Dylan Glick: Yeah, yeah, go back to Plainville, Illinois. And go back there and help his dad. But what he doesn't know is his agent has organized the community theater there to do a remount of this Broadway failure for lack of a better word.

[6:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so he's reliving that, watching these community theater actors perform his show, and they have all of these questions like, "Why don't we do this?" Or "Why did you do this?" "What about this?" They have all these suggestions, and it's driving him crazy.

[6:51] Dylan Glick: And then what's driving him even more crazy is Luke, who is his high school bully, or one of the many high school bullies.

[6:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, yeah.

[6:59] Dylan Glick: And less of a bully, but more someone who allowed it. Like he watched the things happen. And there's this constant presence of Luke. And Luke and his dad get along really well. And Luke and his family gets along really well, and everybody loves Luke. And all of his memories of Luke are terrible. And they're thrown together because Luke also works for the theater and is building the sets for this show.

[7:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[7:21] Dylan Glick: And so really tough.

[7:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[7:23] Dylan Glick: It's wonderfully complicated.

[7:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. But I'm gonna stop there because I want to let them talk about it. But just know it is so good. I just can't even explain how much I loved it.

[7:34] Dylan Glick: Listen, I'm on the market for a good gay rom-com read, so I'm loving it.

[7:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, I let Archer borrow it. Archer read it too.

[7:41] Dylan Glick: Nice.

[7:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And yeah, no. So let's just dive right in.

[7:44] Dylan Glick: Let's do it.

[7:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hi everyone. So happy you're here. I love this book so much. And Chad asked me actually a few months ago to do this, and I said, "Great, I would love to read it." And thank God I liked it.

[7:54] Dylan Glick: I really actually—because you're a terrible actor.

[7:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So I don't like it when I do interviews. I'm glad you're all here. How are you doing, Chad?

[8:02] Chad Beguelin: I'm good.

[8:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's out.

[8:03] Chad Beguelin: It's out.

[8:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Like people, this is something that you've been dreaming of for a long time, and it's in people's hands.

[8:08] Chad Beguelin: It's crazy. It's real. It's happening.

[8:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. And I was actually thinking about it, and I see Matt Scar here, promoted a lot of great code. I was thinking about both of you because I've been doing my job since 2000. And one of the first big things I did, I met both of you at was what was probably one of your big moments too, is a big press event for a show called The Rhythm Club. And I was like, "God, that show looks amazing, and these guys are so sweet, and they're so great." And then I never got to see the show. So anyway. But luckily, like you went on to do all these great, amazing things, but I tie you with my Broadway story. So it's special to be asked to do this. And I still want to see The Rhythm Club.

[8:48] Chad Beguelin: Me too.

[8:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So this book, and also has anyone—I mean, have you haven't read it yet? It just literally came out.

[8:55] Chad Beguelin: Yeah.

[8:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So I think what we would like to do is start with a little reading.

[9:02] Chad Beguelin: Okay.

[9:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We would love to set it up a little show. Just a few paragraphs. Don't get nervous.

[9:05] Chad Beguelin: Opening night. The thing about the opening night of a Broadway show is that it's supposed to be this glamorous, boozy, buzzy extravaganza. There's a red carpet before the performance for the creative types to pose in front of, a step and repeat with the show's logo splashed across it. There's usually a huge party after the show, someplace criminally expensive, with everyone swanning around in tuxedos and Academy Award-style dresses. There's insanely loud music blaring, so everyone has to shout over their canapés and glasses of champagne. And that's exactly how it is. Exhilarating, blitzy, and fun. Unless.

[9:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Unless you're the author. If you're the author of the show, it's as if you swallowed a ticking time bomb. But you have to keep smiling and shaking hands and filming interviews about what a magical night it is. When you're the author of the show, there is a very public reckoning coming that could possibly not only destroy your career, but close the show and throw countless actors, musicians, stagehands, dressers, ushers, and so on out of work in the blink of an eye. Have fun with that.

[10:13] Chad Beguelin: Yeah, so we're on opening night of Stage of Fools.

[10:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[10:16] Chad Beguelin: Yes. Your fictional musical show within a show.

[10:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes. And so it's not going well. And you actually—you also, I don't know, you all saw The Prom, right?

[10:26] Dylan Glick: I love The Prom.

[10:27] Chad Beguelin: You explored opening night in that as well.

[10:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. You actually told me that this—you could— you've been working on this book for—when—well, tell me when you started on this book.

[10:34] Chad Beguelin: I started before we started working on The Prom. I did a few chapters, and I thought, "Oh, this is a marathon. I don't know if I can do this." So I put it away and went to work on The Prom. And then in The Prom, we had an opening number that was totally confusing and not working at all. And I said, "There's this book I'll probably never finish." And this is what happens. They close on opening night. So we were all like, "Let's do that." Bob Martin is here who worked with us with Matt and the honest one. Tony Award winner, unlike me. And so we used that idea. And then I started working on the book again. I thought, "Oh, can I do another piece that starts that way?" And I originally thought what I'll do is I'll start after it's flopped, and they're on the plane, and he says to his boyfriend, "Let's face it, I've got a bomb on my hands."

And then he gets arrested for saying the bomb. But then I thought, "No, you want to be inside his head when he's stressing out, and then when he gets totally crushed and humiliated." And so I was like, "I'll just steal for myself."

[11:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I know that I brought The Rhythm Club, but you've actually never had this happen at your career.

[11:31] Chad Beguelin: No, no.

[11:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, Rhythm Club was going to come, but didn't come. But no, it's definitely—I've had shows that have gotten not great reviews, and it's never ever fun. So it definitely—the vibe changes, and everybody starts smiling at you. "Oh, you poor broken thing." I mean, it's not great. The worst thing is when the review comes out and the party clears out.

[11:51] Chad Beguelin: Yeah.

[11:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. Everybody gets quiet.

[11:54] Chad Beguelin: Yeah. And I've also—I’ve interviewed you on red carpets on opening night, and that's just miserable, right? Having to just like stand there while you're like terrified and no, it's—and you're smiling, and every—it's such a magical night, and I love these people. And I don't care what the reviews are. And then meanwhile, you're just like dying inside.

[12:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We're talking about Noah.

[12:13] Chad Beguelin: Yeah.

[12:13] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That's the protagonist of the play.

[12:15] Chad Beguelin: That's that one. How much of you is in Noah?

[12:22] Chad Beguelin: A lot of me. I hope I'm not as much of a dick as he is at the beginning because he's pretty harsh. But I'm definitely—I'm from a small town, and I grew up in the community theater there.

[12:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[12:33] Chad Beguelin: And I was just always around, and I said when I was 15, I was like, "I want to write and direct shows here." And miraculously, they were like, "Cool, okay, do it. Let's go." So I didn't even—I didn't have a driver's license, and I was like directing shows and writing shows, and that all is true.

[12:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay, so let's get the basic setup here. So the show opens, it tanks, and you said he's on a plane. Where's Noah going?

[12:58] Chad Beguelin: Family emergency calls him home, and while he's there, he gets talked into directing his flop musical at his Ho-Dunk small-town community theater. And he writes everybody off as Hicks and does it begrudgingly, and then they slowly start making these really smart suggestions, and the show suddenly gets better and better.

[13:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, it's a great setup. And so you're in Plainview is your fictional—

[13:25] Chad Beguelin: Yes, Plainview.

[13:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Exactly. And you actually worked in—what was it called?

[13:25] Chad Beguelin: Centralia.

[13:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Centralia, Illinois.

[13:32] Chad Beguelin: Okay.

[13:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And yeah, I love what I love about the book is that the two worlds—and you're right, he's very jaded in the beginning, and he's just been through it. And then he gets back home. Mom and dad are great characters, and he suddenly is facing his past and his future with the show, and it is really cool watching how the show evolves and how these sort of regular people end up maybe being smarter than some of the New York big shots.

[13:59] Chad Beguelin: Yeah, absolutely. I think he's completely thrown for a loop, and at first he's like, "Am I gonna actually take their notes?" But then he realizes, "Oh my god, these are better notes than I ever got from these professional Broadway people."

[14:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. This is also described as a genre of books that's very popular now that I don't think you were—we're basically the same age. We didn't grow up with queer rom-coms.

[14:19] Chad Beguelin: No.

[14:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's so cool to think about who this book could touch. You're dealing with a lot of things here, and there is this—is a romance. Spoiler alert. But is it exciting to get to—and I feel like as gay men of a certain age, 30, that we didn't get the opportunity to be exposed to things like this, and it's exciting to get to create something, isn't it?

[14:45] Chad Beguelin: Yeah. When we were younger, most stories that were queer were very sad and had terrible endings and were depressing. And around when Heartstopper came out, I was really jealous that we didn't have this, and I was like, "Thank God, I wish this would have been around."

[15:01] Chad Beguelin: And that's one of the reasons I was excited to write it, because I thought, wow, we can tell happy stories now, and we can tell romantic stories that don't have to end in suicide or some horrible death.

[15:12] Chad Beguelin: And you're right, this was not around when we were younger. Nothing positive was. Yeah, I also love that you ended up getting quotes from two of my favorite other authors. You're part of this genre now. Andrew Sean Greer, who wrote "Less" and the sequel "Less Is Lost," and Stephen Rowley. I've never even read the gungol bugs, but that was some stealth work by me. Whenever I read a book, I'll put it up on Instagram, and both of them had said on the posting, "Oh, I really love your work," so I guess they like theater. And then I thought, maybe I should just dare to ask them. So I slipped into their DMs, and then I asked Sean, I was like, "Is this tacky?" He's like, "It's totally tacky, but everybody has to do it, so send me the book."

And then I had a mutual friend who knew Stephen, and he's like, "I'm on my book tour, but I'll try. I can't promise." And then, of course, he was wonderful and gave us a great quote. And Molly Glick, my agent, was like, "How did you do this?" And I was like, "What's the point of having a gay mafia if you don't use it?" But they were really kind and continue to be so supportive online and on social media, so it's been really nice.

[16:13] Paul Wontorek: Is it fun? You're a very seasoned Broadway creator now. By the way, excited that "Elf" is coming back.

[16:19] Chad Beguelin: Every 12 years we get out.

[16:19] Paul Wontorek: Every 12 years, it returns. I look forward to the 2030 revival.

[16:27] Chad Beguelin: Yes. And you got Sean Astin.

[16:29] Paul Wontorek: I just said, "Oh, Sean Astin is playing Santa Claus."

[16:31] Chad Beguelin: Yes. It's fun to get to see that. And that show has become the big gift, I'm sure, for all the creators.

[16:37] Paul Wontorek: Yeah. There's always an "Elf" every season. But I don't know why I brought that up. But I guess to point out that you are now a very established Broadway name, and you have a lot of shows under your belt. Is it fun to be a newbie at something and to have to ask and be scrappy like that?

[16:50] Chad Beguelin: I didn't know. There were so many things I didn't know. And I wrote the book when I started writing it again. I was like possessed with it and was just writing it around the clock.

[16:59] Paul Wontorek: Was this during COVID?

[17:01] Chad Beguelin: No, but a little bit, but it was just, I was just obsessed with it. And I was so afraid I would lose the sort of wave. So I was constantly like getting up in the middle of the night, and I was like constantly typing thoughts into my phone or dialogue, and Tom and I went for putting up with that.

[17:15] Chad Beguelin: Yes, no, Tom was just like in the middle of the night, the first few times, he's like, "Where are you going? Where are you going?" I'm going where you're, it's the call of the sea. And I don't know why I said that. Then that became the phrase that he just, but we went on vacation with our friends Daniel and Stephen to Seville, and we're in this castle, and my friend Daniel is like, "Do you want to maybe look up and look at this castle that we flew gazillions of miles to?" And I was like, "Oh, castle." And they're like, "Just go back, just go back." So yeah, it was, and then I finally got it to, I gave it to my theatrical agent Olivier, I was completely neurotic about it, and kept emailing him and saying, "Don't read it yet, I'm gonna send you another copy."

And then an hour later, I was like, "No, don't read that, here, read this." And then finally he said, "I just have to read one chance." So then he sent it over to the literary side and to Molly Glick, and she gave me my first notes, which was hilarious because in the theater the director gives you the notes and you write down the notes, and so she was telling me the notes over the phone, and I was like, "Wait, I can't keep up." And she's like, "We'll write them down and email them to you. You don't have to do that." I was like, "Oh, okay, first thing that's different." And she gave me this one note where she was like, I had this big major kiss happen in like the third chapter, and she's like, "You can't come on, you gotta tease us."

And I was like, "Oh," and so I did that in three days, which was a major structural change. And she was like, "How did you do that so fast?" And I said, "I've been dying for professional feedback. I've been so thirsty for it that I was just so excited to do it."

[18:40] Chad Beguelin: And then once we sold the book, I learned what a line edit was, and Marie Michaels is here, my wonderful editor. And so that was also eye-opening because it would be like, "Oh, I love this," or "I need to know where everything is physically here. I need more blocking," or "this section, do we need it?" Which I always took as code for "calm down, tell story. We got it." Like enough chit-chat. But it was exciting because poor Tom read 18 drafts, but was like, "It's good." Like there was no, so except there was one time our friends Mark and Drew were out, and he'd read it for the 14th time, and we were like sitting at the breakfast bar, and I was like, "So, what'd you think?" And he's like, "It's coming along." And Mark, who's a writer, went, "I'm like, oh, it's coming along." We're throwing, "Oh, it's great, it's great." Yeah, it's just been a learning curve.

[19:30] Chad Beguelin: And Panther, I learned that I'm a pantser, which means writing by the seat of your pants. And I think that's mainly because in musicals, we always start with an outline and we always start with song spotting so that the songwriters can go off and the book writers can go off, and then we come back and we're all on the same page. And so I was like, "I don't want to do that with this. I want to just see where it takes me." So it was very freeing to just be like, "I don't know what's gonna happen." I had a sort of general thrust, but the nuts and bolts just came as I went along.

[20:01] Paul Wontorek: What about the title?

[20:02] Chad Beguelin: I love the word "showmance." It was before Marie saw it, it was really, it had a terrible title called, it was "The Stage of Fools," which is the show, the title of the King Lear musical. And Molly was like, "That is the worst title." So I was like, okay. So we spitballed, and then when we sold it, it was "Second Acts." And then the people at the panel in Dorman Books were like, "We need something punchier." And Marie and I went back and forth, and we finally came up with "Showmance."

[20:29] Paul Wontorek: I like that. That's fun. Have you ever, there's so many showmances. Theater people go crazy sometimes when you're making a show? I'm sure you've experienced, you've seen a lot, you've witnessed a lot of showmances. Do you want to talk about anything?

[20:42] Chad Beguelin: A lot of like top down. I don't want to get sued. But here it's in the context of this adorable community theater community, this group of actors. Tell me about your experiences. I really love in your acknowledgments in the book, you talk a little bit about that group. I want to hear about you as a kid and you finding that community theater, and just tell me about all that. I love stories like that.

[21:02] Chad Beguelin: Like Noah, I saw a production of "Oliver" at my community theater, and I didn't want to leave. I thought they would maybe do it again if I stayed. If my mom was like, "No, it's over, but you can be involved." And I just started doing every single show I could with them. And then when I was 15, I, like Noah, I wrote a really horrible musical version of "Pinocchio." And those terrible lyrics were my terrible lyrics. But they put it up, they let me direct it, they put it up. We did this full-on production, and after that I did your standards like "Dames at Sea" and "Pippin" and all that kind of thing.

[21:34] Paul Wontorek: Performed at all those?

[21:35] Chad Beguelin: No, those are all that I directed.

[21:38] Paul Wontorek: You performed as a kid.

[21:38] Chad Beguelin: As a kid, yes.

[21:39] Paul Wontorek: Was your first time on stage there?

[21:41] Chad Beguelin: I was a young Jewish boy in "Fiddler on the Roof." Yes. And I did not, I always ruined the choreography, but they thought it was cute because I was like really little.

[21:51] Paul Wontorek: But you were, you said you ended up getting the keys to the theater. You were like directing and you were taking on, what a great way to learn about an industry.

[22:00] Chad Beguelin: No, it was funny because at first I just wanted to be there all the time. So I was like, I was organizing their offices and prop closets, and then they're finally like, "Here, just here's a key. You can just come whenever you want. You want to sweep the floor, great." And so yeah, so I just started saying, "I really want to do this." And there was this woman, Marilyn Luck. I love her for this. She was like, "Then let's do it. We're gonna do it." So she was like totally believed it could happen.

[22:25] Paul Wontorek: Is the theater still in operation or no?

[22:27] Chad Beguelin: Oh yeah, yeah. We're stopping there on the book tour.

[22:30] Paul Wontorek: Nice.

[22:30] Chad Beguelin: And they also, they always do, they haven't done "The Prom" yet, but they've done "Wedding Singer" and "Elf," which was great fun.

[22:35] Paul Wontorek: That's awesome. I was gonna ask you if you want, do you want to direct? Do you want to talk? Because any of your shows there is a director.

[22:40] Chad Beguelin: No, no, no.

[22:44] Paul Wontorek: So do you see yourself having more books than you?

[22:47] Chad Beguelin: Are you now anomalous?

[22:50] Chad Beguelin: No, I have a couple ideas that I'm thinking about, so we'll see.

[22:53] Paul Wontorek: Could this become a stage? Or is there any, do you see another version of this on film or stage?

[22:59] Chad Beguelin: I would love that. We'd have to come up with a new opening because we've already done the "Prom" opening. So that's a Bob Martin problem, though.

[23:09] Paul Wontorek: But it's interesting because your collaborators were here, regular collaborators, but I guess you just ended up liking yourself. Did you learn to like yourself more by having to just be around, work with yourself?

[23:19] Chad Beguelin: But it's a totally different experience because you have no one to bounce ideas off of. And I usually have these two brilliant bastards. I was by myself, and I found myself having to like self-motivate. So I found myself like, and Tom got used to it, but it was weird at first. But I'd literally be like talking to myself and be like, "It's okay, we're just figuring things out. You're right where you're supposed to be. Let's try to cheerlead myself," whatever I was like, "I don't know."

[23:43] Paul Wontorek: A big part of a lot of these queer rom-coms or just some of the books from these authors I mentioned is the humor. And there's a lot of humor in this book. It's jam-packed. And I remember when I was first reading it, I thought, "Jesus, you don't write that many jokes for a Broadway musical." You have to get a certain number of jokes that work, but I feel like the number of, that's a lot.

[24:03] Chad Beguelin: That was what was so, when I realized it was like a marathon or climbing a mountain, because you get good five jokes in a musical, you've got a scene. And you get good five jokes in a book, you're not off the first page. So I was like, "This is going to be a huge sort of trek up a mountain."

[24:20] Paul Wontorek: Wow. Are you that funny?

[24:22] Chad Beguelin: No. I have a ghostwriter.

[24:25] Paul Wontorek: Obviously, I think there's a lot of the characters inspired by people you met in your life, or I'm assuming some New York types and some Illinois types. Is that fair to say you took a lot of inspiration?

[24:36] Chad Beguelin: Yeah, the most, the person that's closest is the mother character. And my mom's name is actually Nancy Kay. So after she, after Tom, she was the second person to read the book. And I was like, "I will change the name. You tell me what you think." And then she was like, "No, no, I love it. Keep it." But she's very much a terrible cook. The crock pot pizza, that's real, it is awful. She, we kids in the neighborhood called her the hot dog lady. Because if we were, if she was served hot dogs, you were safe. But if she was making anything else, don't stay for dinner. She cooked bacon in the microwave. She had a little plastic thing in front of the thing. Just disgusting. But she's great, she's wonderful, very supportive. And then the father characters had an amalgam of my stepdad and my dad.

[25:20] Paul Wontorek: And the amazing thing, theme in the book is redemption.

[25:24] Chad Beguelin: Yeah. And my dad, my stepdad was the high school basketball coach and athletic director. And I was dressed like Mary Poppins and singing show tunes, and so we did not get along at all. It was not good. And then in my late 20s, early 30s, I got a call from him, and he said, "I just feel like I need to apologize to you." And I said, "Oh." And he said, "I don't think I treated you very well when you were growing up, and you were the kid, but you were more of an adult than I was, and I would just like to say I'm sorry." And I had always held the belief that people don't really change. So that's like for movies and books. And then it happened, and we ended up having a great relationship. And so I wanted to, that was a theme that everybody has a little bit of a redemption in the book.

[26:09] Paul Wontorek: Yeah, you and you get to have a beautiful scene like that. Just read the book.

[26:13] Chad Beguelin: Read the book. It's very moving. It's funny and moving, and I hope it's fair that I'm a fan of it. Not being paid to be here.

[26:20] Paul Wontorek: Does anyone have any questions about the book or Chad's career? Or I don't know. Anything, anything you're curious, anyone curious about? We can keep chatting, but not at all.

[26:32] Audience Member: I'm a little curious since you said you do possibly have some more books in you. At this point with a theater background, when an idea comes to you, how do you decide whether it's a show or a novel?

[26:45] Chad Beguelin: It's funny. There's usually a feeling there with the next show that Bob, Matt, and I are working on, I originally thought, "Oh, it's a novel." And I started to write it, and I was like, "This doesn't feel like a novel." So I brought it to them and to Casey Nicola, and we're like, "No, it's a musical." But it's just this sense that comes over you where you're like, "No, this could sing," and or it needs to start out in prose.

[27:07] Paul Wontorek: Do you want to sing anything from that new musical?

[27:11] Chad Beguelin: Yeah, right.

[27:13] Paul Wontorek: My fake, my favorite song in it so far is "Raul by the Pool."

[27:16] Chad Beguelin: So that's the actual title.

[27:18] Paul Wontorek: Yeah, that's the title.

[27:19] Chad Beguelin: Yeah.

[27:20] Paul Wontorek: Calls enough the pool boy.

[27:21] Chad Beguelin: Maybe.

[27:29] Paul Wontorek: Anyone else? Curious. You guys are gonna read it, right?

[27:32] Chad Beguelin: So there's an audiobook too.

[27:33] Paul Wontorek: Who did the audiobook?

[27:34] Chad Beguelin: Michael Crouch, and he's amazing. He did such, when they sent me four auditions, and his was by far, he knows it's very hard to do this, not to punch the joke, to just keep going, and he's vulnerable and he's hilarious, and he's sexy, and he's just, he just nailed it.

[27:54] Paul Wontorek: Speaking of sexy, there's a character named Luke in this book. Let's talk about Luke a little bit. I don't want to like spoil anything about the book, but Luke is someone who wasn't great to Noah.

[28:07] Chad Beguelin: No one remembers him very negatively when they...

[28:07] Paul Wontorek: Yeah, so the idea for Luke came when I was in grade school and high school, I got bullied a lot, and there was this one guy that was just relentless. And now I'm gonna beat you up in the parking lot after school, and every homophobic slur you could imagine whenever I passed him in the hallway, it was just like, "What is this guy's deal?" And then once Facebook started happening, I got a friend request from him. And I was like, "Is this guy insane?" And I was like, "If he wants to look at my big gay life, sure." So I accepted it and never heard anything. Just every once in a while he'd like my stuff, and I started to think maybe I'm remembering it wrong. What if I'm wrong? And then I checked in with some friends, they're like, "No, he's a total tool."

But I started to think, "What is that? What if people have two different memories of an experience? And is hindsight always 2020? And what if it's not?" So that was it. And then I also, I did have another friend who is a good friend of mine, but was just gunning for my dad's attention all the time. And it was just like, it was weird. Like in this book, it's what is this? And looking back, I realized that guy's, that my friend's dad was a total jerk and awful to him. And so now I'm like, "Oh, of course he wanted a father figure." So those are the two sort of real-life things that I wanted to instill in Luke.

[29:28] Chad Beguelin: I look forward to seeing Luke and Noah fall in love in the next stage adaptation or whatever. I think it'll be lovely. So now you're working on a show, and you're now you're an author and you're doing a book of book events. What, how do you keep your, if you've been the professional part of this world now for 20 plus years, right? What are your sort of goals moving forward as a writer and an artist?

[29:54] Chad Beguelin: And how do you keep things interesting to yourself? I don't, it's interesting. It's I feel like the ideas just arrive when they're good. Yeah. And it's also my writing process too, because I don't, I'm could never I tried to do the sort of nine to five, and there are people that do that, and they're like, This is what I write. And I it just drove me insane. I was just like, I just would clam up. And so now it's gotten to the point where it's almost like you feel like you're gonna vomit. Like it's coming, oh, it's coming, and oh, okay, here we go. So it's I can feel it in the air. But it's I think you you have an idea and you're like, oh, this is great. But it's also it's writing, I think the best advice I ever got was it's gotta be bad before it can be good, and just taking a turn there.

But uh, this happens all the time too, is that I'll be writing something, and I'll be like, This is gold, where's my punets are gonna go? And then I go to bed and I wake up and I'm like, this is garbage. I can't do anything with this. And I think that it's gotta be bad before it can be good, is that's when you really become a writer when you go, okay, this isn't as good as you thought. So now you have to go through and make it better. And I was working with Jerry Mitchell on a benefit once, and Cindy Lauper came in because she was in the benefit, and I'm a big huge Cindy Lauper fan. And they were talking about a musical that had just opened, and it flopped, and it was just terrible. And she wanted to know why it was what happened.

And Jerry's like, I just don't think the score was that good. And she said, Why didn't they write it better? Why didn't you just write it better? And so I I will sometimes do that when I'm frustrated. I'll be like, okay, Jad, just write it better. Oh you know, good advice from Cindy.

[31:30] Chad Beguelin: So you obviously came to New York with a lot of experience from your shooting trainer days, and I'm sure you were just like ready to get them. So, how did you actually what kind of advice do you give people? How did you meet Matt? And obviously, you guys ended up doing The Wedding Singer. That was your first Broadway musical. What were those early days like? And how did you actually get to that point? Back then there was no email or internet. And so you just wrote a gazillion query letters. And at one point I was like, I'm gonna save every rejection letter. And then my filing cabinet was full. I was like, this is a bad plan. And so one rejection letter I got was from Musical Theater Works. And so I thought it was slightly positive.

And so I wrote the guy back and said, I would like to take you out to lunch and just pick your brain about theater and writing. And so he said, okay, sure. And so we went out to lunch. He's like, I like your lyrics, I like your book. I don't really like the composer you're working with. And I said, not working with him anymore. And he said, I have a guy I want you to meet. And Matt had done uh music directed Godspell at NYU and had put his own spin on it. And so we met at a diner, and we really hit it off, and I knew that he was in a twin it just like I was, and we were going for it. And so we came back and we said, Great, we want to work together. And Andrew Barrett, the literary manager, said, We have a spot in three months for uh reading.

Do you guys think you could write a musical in three months? We're like, yeah, of course, which is insane now. But we did, and we wrote it and they put it up, and it was our first heartbreak because we didn't get the rights to the book. So it was all for naught, but we learned that we could write together and that we liked working together. And then the sort of I used a lot of the Rhythm Club pain in the book for when the show, because it feels so shameful. You feel so responsible. And of course, other people are collaborating, but you feel like as the writer, you're the core. You I felt like I'm better. Right at the better. So we we went to the pain of the Rhythm Club, and I was out pitching movies, and I was at New Line pitching a movie which I sold, a screenplay that I sold that never got made, called Franken Teacher for kids.

And I was uh pitching it to this guy, Mark Kaufman, and you I could tell his eyes were like glazing over. I was like, this is going terribly. And then he goes, Why is your name familiar? And I said, Oh, I mostly write musicals. I wrote The Rhythm Club, and he went, wait. He opens his desk door and he pulls out the demo from The Rhythm Club, and he's I love this. And I was like, Oh, great. And he said, We just did Hairspray, we want to do more musicals. Would you and Matt want to write a musical for us? And I was like, that would be a dream come true. So it's was like one of those life lessons, like sometimes you don't get what you want, it's a good thing. Because who knows, Rhythm Club could have come in and gotten killed, and we would have just given up. Again, another second chance, another redemption story.

[34:19] Chad Beguelin: Go ahead. Are you planning to go do any more playwriting? Because I'm I think if I get a good idea, it's funny. I got very close to I wrote one play and I really missed Bob. I was like, oh, this is so lonely. Um and it's also it's yeah, I think if I got the right idea, it felt like a play, but it's also very when you're getting notes on a play and everybody's waiting for you in the room, and you're like, okay, rewrite the scene right now, by yourself, go. And they're waiting. And it's so the it's a different kind of pressure as opposed to working with the team on a show, or just being by myself and I can take as long as I need.

[34:56] Chad Beguelin: Go ahead. Are there any of these ideas, triggers or trends of when these ideas or where they come from? Any inspiration? I'm usually pretty drunk. No, not sometimes. No, not really. I do find, I did find when we were working on The Prom, I was traveling with Tom, because Tom worked for British Airways, and we got to Paris and we were so jet-lagged. And I knew I had to write that song, and I was about to fall asleep, and it all came to me all in one thing, and I like got up and I like typed it out and I emailed it to Matt. And I think it was because I was so jet-lagged that the critic in my head couldn't go, ah, it's too simple, or and I hear these stories about I don't know if it was Einstein that used to, he loved that state of mind.

He would have ball bearings, and he would when he would get sleepy enough and they would fall, they'd hit the floor, he'd wake up, and it was like, what was I thinking? So that's probably totally made up an apocryphal. But those are times like I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll be like, oh yeah, that could work.

[35:53] Chad Beguelin: Do you have any favorite things? If you look at the shows that we've seen that you've written, are there anything about any specific shows or moments or songs or scenes that you're just like really proud of? Like just little things, granular things. I know them by heart. I know The Prom by heart, by the way. One thing, one song that I think is very cool is the story of Buddy the Elf. Yeah. Because it starts out and they're pitching it, and then it starts they start talking about what's happening in real life, and then they actually the song becomes a book song. And they're both helping each other out, and they're revealing what they feel about each other by saying what these characters would do. So I think that's a cool structure.

[36:36] Chad Beguelin: Yeah, catch it too. Starting an elf. And get a hoodie and a Facebook app. March money. How many times which of your shows have you seen the most in different incarnations? Uh but definitely Aladdin. Yeah. Aladdin we've seen almost in every language, and the creepy thing about it is that they do every prop, every movement, every wig, every single thing is identical. So you see it in Japan, and you know exactly what they're thinking, and you're laughing, and you're like, I don't speak Japanese, but you've seen it so many times, and we've seen it in so many different languages. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of times when you see it's rare that you get to see something that's a wildly different version. So many times, like the Broadway production is like the template, but it sounds like you saw you saw a cool version of The Prom in Amsterdam, which I'm jealous about. Yeah, they were smoking something, but it was great.

[37:25] Audience Member: Anyone else trying to know anything about this guy? You mentioned chat, like you would wake up and go, I thought it was great tonight. We're in the shit now. What about the reverse of a Tolstoy to Atlas? Something that you really loved in an editor or somebody said, Yeah, maybe do you have any of those babies that no, not really. It's funny, Marina had a great relationship with me. And whenever she would say that, I would immediately go, oh yeah. For those of you who read it, there was this whole passage where his friend Chiara is talking about sadness being an empty room, but he's not at it alone. They'll be staring at the wallpaper together. And it's what? And also she would never say that.

And so it's I'm I think because in musicals, you if something isn't working, it's out. It's like you cut it out, you get it out. Nobody holds on to anything. As soon as something doesn't work, you want it out the next performance or the next it's just so I think I my brain just works like that. As soon as somebody gets like, eh, I'm like, oh, okay, great. We'll make it better. We'll write it better.

[38:32] Chad Beguelin: Yeah. Were there any shows you really killed it? And when you were in the community theater, like you're like best performance. I'm trying to picture you as that little boy. So again, the Moonface Martin was true. And Matt and I, bizarrely enough, both played Moonface Martin in high school when Aiden goes. Wow. And my mom brought up the videotape like 10 years later. I'm like, why am I talking about this? And I was like, why am I like gay Jerry Lewis on cocaine? I guess I was making a choice. But yeah, I I was memorable. I don't know if I nailed it.

[39:06] Chad Beguelin: Do you want else there have connections to like small town theater when you were like her like yeah, right? You do. Yeah. It's definitely a very it's something that when you become a Broadway professional, it's sometimes nice to be. I like to go see, I live up near Woodstock, and there's a theater called the Woodstock Playhouse, and every summer they get a group of kids up there to do like a bunch of shows. And I love seeing it's like such a great like reminder, and that was one thing I really loved about this book. You really captured that how special making theater and the arts is and taking it away from the non-stop of the business. It's really that was like my favorite thing about it. It's really beautiful.

[39:48] Chad Beguelin: Yeah, I mean he he says to them before the show, he's I lost my love of theater, and you gave it back to me. But yeah, going to see those shows is always it's always so touching because they're not doing it for money, obviously. They're doing it while they do work a full-time job, so they're giving up their evenings and their weekends, but they're doing it because they love it that much, and it's just really moving. And it's and I went back to see Into the Woods at at the Centralia Cultural Society, and it was this great production. All of a sudden they've never had automation, but they did the original with a look sort of like ramp in the original, and I was like, oh my god, they don't have automation.

I was like so impressed. And at the end, everybody took their bow, and this like 10-year-old kid gets lifted out of the student the whole time. I'm like, is that legal? Can you do that? Well, parents are like, sure. It doesn't need to breathe. It needs automation to get that.

[40:47] Chad Beguelin: Yeah. Put kids under the set. Anything else? So now that you have done a book and you have done you've done many shows, was there a process between the two that you don't get in the other side that you really enjoyed? I think the the one thing, one of the reasons I another reason I wrote the book was in the theater, shows always take seven months, but it's or seven months, I wish, seven years, but it's not the writing process. It's your waiting for a director's schedule or star or us you have to get the exact right theater that makes economic sense. And so there's all of this waiting around. And I realized, oh, I can go as fast, I don't have to wait, I can just go, it's all up to me. So that was exciting because it was and it was also a motivator because I was like, well, you don't do it, then nobody's gonna push you.

There is adrenaline about being in previews, and you've got to make changes right there for the next day, and it's terrifying, but it's also exciting. But uh but I think that was what was really fun for me is that I didn't have to wait for a theater to become available or just go.

[41:58] Chad Beguelin: So who's your dream audio audience to find a reader to find this book and then picture? Young Chad, right? Discovering a book like that. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah, or anybody, really. I think it's it's uh a genre that is crossing over more, so that's also very exciting. Yes, it's not just for kids. Actually, probably not for kids necessarily. Very cool kids. Yeah, cool kids. Theater kids.

[42:25] Audience Member: Anyone else have a final question? Are you gonna autograph some books?

[42:30] Chad Beguelin: I guess I am.

[42:32] Audience Member: I want to auto.

[42:34] Chad Beguelin: He's running.

[42:34] Audience Member: He's running.

[42:35] Chad Beguelin: Yeah. So let's do that. Wonderful. Thank you so much.

[42:45] Audience Member: Oh my god, I loved that.

[42:47] Audience Member: I did oh my gosh.

[42:48] Audience Member: You're right. A gay rom com.

[42:50] Audience Member: I love a romp even.

[42:51] Audience Member: Yes.

[42:51] Audience Member: And there were things in there, like there were references specifically to like Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who were my favorites.

[42:57] Audience Member: And so again, I was just like, it's so niche and so specific that I just felt like this was written for me.

[43:03] Audience Member: I kept running downstairs and showing people underlined jokes and underlined like references.

[43:09] Audience Member: I'm like, you have to read this book. Look at this.

[43:10] Audience Member: It's just for the theater kid in all of us, yeah.

[43:14] Audience Member: And for the gay in all of us.

[43:16] Audience Member: Yeah, my gosh.

[43:18] Audience Member: I'm sure this is going to bring I'm glad it's brought a lot of joy to you.

[43:20] Audience Member: I'm glad it's gonna bring a lot of joy to other queer theater kids or queer theater adults.

[43:24] Audience Member: Totally, yeah.

[43:25] Audience Member: It really did.

[43:26] Audience Member: And I just it was an honor to get to read it.

[43:29] Audience Member: Yeah and to get to read it first and know so many people are gonna read and enjoy this.

[43:33] Audience Member: It's just it's a really beautiful story.

[43:36] Audience Member: And there's even there's some moments with the parents, especially that I was fully tearing up.

[43:41] Audience Member: Yeah.

[43:42] Audience Member: That it just it hit.

[43:43] Audience Member: I think I remember you telling me about this when you were reading it.

[43:45] Audience Member: Yeah, yes.

[43:46] Audience Member: Oh, it's just go get this book.

[43:48] Audience Member: Come to the Drama Book Shop, pick your copy up, you're gonna love it.

[43:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So uh for our next episode, we're going to continue spreading joy, but we're gonna be doing it musically.

[43:58] Dylan Glick: Ooh, you know what I have a problem with?

[44:01] Dylan Glick: I sing, and when I sing, I tend to think, and I really would love a solution to that problem.

[44:06] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Actually, I am the same way.

[44:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I am an overthinker.

[44:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Me too.

[44:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And our next book really delves into that.

[44:11] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Our next book is called How to Sing Without Thinking, and we're gonna jump into that in the next episode.

[44:17] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Don't forget to follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show Podcast.

[44:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Don't forget to follow us on Eventbrite at Drama Book Shop.

[44:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And remember, all our books that we talk about can be found here at the bookshop, and so can we, and we will see you at the bookshop.