Who is Frank?

Frank isn’t a person. It’s a state of being. LOL no it’s just the name of my newsletter. Consider it a pop culture inquiry. Frank conversations about popular culture as it was, as it is, and where it’s going. Frank is a newsletter from Ira Madison III.

My career has been a mix of culture writing, outlandish tweets, podcasting, and now television writing. When I left my position as an entertainment writer at The Daily Beast, I didn’t imagine writing culture pieces again. Certainly not for a website where I was essentially a gun for hire, crafting incendiary takes based on whatever was trending. Since I’ve transitioned to podcasting and screenwriting full time, I do find that I’ve missed dissecting pop culture in written form. And since I’m batting two Twitter suspensions, tweets probably aren’t the ideal place for those musings.

Thankfully, Substack has provided me a place to write but to also create a community where I can not only writing about my obsessions, but I can ask questions of culture, and not be afraid of writing some weird shit.

Okay then, what is Frank?

Frank is a newsletter about my pop culture obsessions and as I said above, frank conversations about pop culture as it was, as it is, and where it’s going.

If you’ve followed any of my writing for the past six years of my career, then you know what to expect. Which is to, as Julie Chen says, expect the unexpected! If you’re new to my writing, just know that Stephen Colbert called me a “pop culture expert” on The Late Show and I have decided to always talk about that until I die.

Cool. Who are you?

I’m a writer, cultural critic, and host of the Crooked Media podcast Keep It, alongside my quick-witted and acerbic co-hosts Louis Virtel and Aida Osman. I’m originally from Milwaukee, WI and based in Los Angeles, but spend large parts of my life in New York and Chicago. I have written for television shows like Daybreak, Nikki Fre$h, and Q-Force. Amongst a television pilot for Warner Bros and a Christmas film for Jennifer Hudson, I have several other film and television projects in development. I had a cameo in the Netflix thriller series You. But most of all, I just love culture in all its aspects and every day I’m excited to have a part in making it as well. I have written about culture at GQ, Vulture, The Hollywood Reporter, The Daily Beast, and other publications and I’ll continue to do so at Frank.

You should subscribe!

This is a chance for me to go deeper on topics that a podcast episode or a tweet will allow. I also think wistfully about my teenage years on message boards dissecting my favorite television shows and I really want to create a similar community here.

Frank will consist of a weekly post on a myriad of cultural topics; and it will be free to all subscribers. These pop culture dispatches will will always be free to all subscribers. For paid subscribers ($6 for a month; or $60 for a year), you’ll have access to even more content. My hope with the subscriptions is to build a community where I’ll go deeper on pop culture and share conversations with people whose work I love, share reviews and recommendations, and host discussions with readers to hash out what we’re obsessed with any given week. There’ll also be plenty of candle recommendations. And when this damn pandemic is over, a lot of food and travel content. Every Wednesday and Saturday.