Frankie goes to Hollywood: A comedy script

Adam is a television producer with an enviable track record. He has produced 10 factual shows, including the Logie-winning Australia’s Best Gardens. Frankie is a younger ‘rising star’ within the production company, climbing her way to executive producer in just a few years. Her impressive show Pensioners Win Prizes has kept the company and her job afloat – even if there are awkward looks and hushed allegations of rigging whenever it is mentioned. So when Adam and Frankie are thrown together to work on a new family-based factual entertainment show, all hell breaks loose. Frankie has, after all, just returned from Hollywood – with a fresh way of thinking about narrative structure and character conflict. Frankie Goes to Hollywood is a black comedy that, through exaggeration, parodies the way that factual entertainment shows are put together – or at least are critiqued as being put together. Drawing on scholarly research from film, television, media and cultural studies, the screenplay expresses ideas and concerns about the manipulation of subjects, presenters and experts into characters for the sake of gaining a bigger audience.