This Won't Hurt a Bit

Following a passion for country music, Ralph leaves his father’s sheep farm in a remote Australian town, armed with a guitar and a plane ticket to Nashville, Tennessee. He hopes to hitchhike to Sydney Airport where his take-off into a successful country/western singing career will hopefully begin. However, fate and his naivety find him hitchhiking with a psychotic drug thief named Boyd, and Boyd's mesmerising girlfriend, Patsy. The plot then splits into a series of parallels, flash forwards and flashbacks. One depicts Ralph’s imprisonment after being framed for drug trafficking. The other follows the dramatic ascent of his career to hype status and the pairing between the dynamic Patsy and himself.

Eddy does what he has to do to give his family what they want. For the last 25 years, he has secretly moonlighted as a "standover" man, purely to provide his aspirational wife with her dream house and a privileged upbringing for his only daughter. Eddy finds it hard to express how he feels, especially now that his "little girl" is engaged and will soon be leaving the family home. Chantelle believes her emotionally blocked father has only two feelings "angry" and "very angry" and feels her father just doesn't understand her. Eddy is perplexed: "What's to understand?" Herein lies the problem. Over eager to get on the same wavelength as his daughter and recapture the closeness they once had, Eddy starts reading Chantelle's diary. In the process, more secrets than anyone was prepared for, begin to surface with devastating yet hilarious results. Eddy rides the storm and once the dust settles, all is well... for now.

A thriller and a mystery of distortions and reflections about friendship, flowers and carving knives. A haunting, stylised tale of escape.