Film used same gag as BBC show

Rachel Givney’s movie Bargain! made the finals of the Tropfest short film festival in Sydney – but its central gag had previously been seen in Man Stroke Woman.

Now the festival’s boss has indicated she probably wouldn’t have landed her place had he known of the similarity earlier.

In Bargain!, a ‘dorky’ girl, played by stand-up Rebel Wilson, convinces her sister’s boyfriend to take his clothes off for $500. The punchline comes when the sister returns home, sees the money and asks her boyfriend: ‘Oh, did she drop off the 500 bucks she owes me?’

In Man Stroke Woman, a man pays his mate’s girlfriend £200 to let him touch her breasts – with the exact same payoff.

Givney told the Sydney Morning Herald she had not seen the BBC show, but insisted that it was an old vaudeville gag, which she had revered by having the man, instead of the woman, strip.

‘It is a really unfortunate and horrible coincidence,’ she said. ‘It really gets to me that people would think I was cheating.’

However, festival boss John Polson said: ‘It’s disappointing. It’s very similar, even the set and the staging. The film is very well made, but to be honest with you if I had seen the skit beforehand, I’m not sure [Bargain!] would have been a finalist. The similarities go a bit deeper than the vaudeville gag.’

Some festival-goers were also angry. Writing the Australian TV Tonight website, a poster called Dave said: ‘Rachel Givney should be ashamed. Her movie ‘Bargain’ is such a direct rip-off, I can’t believe it made it to the finals. It wasn’t just slightly similar, the whole gag, timing, everything was a take off. There is no excuse for this kind of stuff.’

Wilson won the Tropfest best actress award for her role in the short.

Here is the Man Stroke Woman sketch:

Published: 1 Mar 2009