Director McDonagh shows his softer side with ‘Three Billboards’
MARTIN McDonagh is known for entertaining carnage, onstage and on screen. In his movies “7 Psychopaths” and “In Bruges” and even in his Oscar-winning short film “Six Shooter,” the blood flows as freely as it does in the plays of this multiple-Tony-nominated storyteller, who made his name with works set in Ireland. His work is as funny as it is grisly.
McDonagh’s latest film, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” is no exception, with a darkly comic heart and a central performance by Frances McDormand as a grieving, foulmouthed mother. The movie is virtually certain to bring her a best-actress Oscar nomination. It also is more substantial, by an order of magnitude, than his earlier work.
Centering on McDormand’s Mildred — a woman whose daughter has been brutally killed — the film takes its title from a series of billboards that Mildred erects to shame the local police chief ( Woody Harrelson), who, months after the crime, has made no progress in the case. “Raped while dying,” reads the first sign, in giant black- on-red letters, followed by “And still no arrests?” and “How come, Chief Willoughby?”
The 47-year- old London-based Irishman — who, like his older brother, filmmaker John Michael McDonagh (“The Guard”), quit school at 16 to pursue a life of storytelling — spoke by phone about his buzzy new film.
Q: Before we get to “Three Billboards,” I want to ask you about a line from your last movie, “7 Psychopaths,” in which a Hollywood screenwriter with writer’s block — not coincidentally an Irishman named Marty — says about his next screenplay, “I’m sick of all these stereotypical Hollywood murderer- scumbag- type psychopath movies. I don’t want it to be one more movie about guys with guns in their hands. I want it, over all, to be about love and peace.” A: ( Laughing) And this is it! Q: Well, is it? Is “Three Billboards” a response to critics who have commented on the violence in your films, or who have dismissed them as entertaining fluff? Or am I reaching?
A: No, no. I think all the films contain that battle, that duality. I guess my plays have also been that way. There’s always been a bit of violence in all of them. At the same time, as I see it, there’s always been a kind of yearning — for humanity, for heart — throughout the plays and the films. That line you quoted is from a film that actually ended
I think all the films contain that battle, that duality. I guess my plays have also been that way. There’s always been a bit of violence in all of them. At the same time, as I see it, there’s always been a kind of yearning — for humanity, for heart — throughout the plays and the films. Martin McDonagh, director
up being more about love and peace than not. Because of the subject matter of “Billboards,” and because of the place of pain and sadness that this movie starts in, it had to be about humanity, about hope. There was no question about it being only a film that loved violence, or, rather, cinematic violence. It had to be something better than that.
Q: And it’s got a strong, female protagonist. Apart from your plays, which do feature some great women’s roles, your movies aren’t exactly known for the complexity of the female characters, are they? A: I’ll say. Q: Did Frances McDormand ask you to write the part of Mildred for her?
A: Kind of. We bumped into each other in New York after seeing a play. We both said we should work with each other. I think I said, “We should do a play together,” and she said, “No, we should do a film.” That wasn’t big news to me. She was always one of my favourite actresses anyway. If I was going to write something for someone, it was going to be for her, more than likely.
Q: You got the idea for the story after seeing something like the billboards that are featured in the film while travelling in the United States several years ago. At the time, you wondered where such anger could come from. You said that once you decided the character in your movie was going to be a mother, the story almost wrote itself. True?
A: Completely. Once I sat down to start writing this, Frances’ voice and her personality were in my head from the very beginning. I don’t think there’s anyone who’s that good, who’s got that amount of integrity — both on and off screen — and I knew she wouldn’t be patronising or sentimental about a workingclass mother in this situation. That’s one of the great strengths of the film. We don’t care about making Mildred softer, or more motherly, or any of those usual Hollywood tropes.
Q: Where is Mildred, emotionally, when the film begins?
A: From page one, she’s in a place of no return. She’s either going to die or she’s going to solve this case. It’s take-no-prisoners. The emotional collateral damage is something we talked about. Even her son suffers. She’s at war. As horrible and as tragic as that is, innocents are going to suffer in this war. That doesn’t maker her right, either. One of the things I like about Mildred is that she’s not a perfect hero, at all. Conversely, some of her enemies aren’t all bad, either. By the end of the film, everyone’s humanity is there for us to see.
Q: The film is very much about taking sides: white against black, husband against wife, parent against child, cop against citizen, Man railing against God. Sam Rockwell’s character, a violent, racist policeman, turns out to have two distinct sides — hero and villain — within himself. Would you talk about that subtext, and how it plays out in the context of today’s culture wars?
A: It’s not even subtext. It’s right there on the surface. One of the early ideas of the whole thing was: What happens when two people go to war, and they’re both in the right? Frances’ character is in the right, but Woody’s character is also trying to do everything he can. It’s an unsolveable crime. What happens when the war escalates between two sides who have a lot of decency, which is probably the nature of most wars? Certainly, this country is pretty polarised right now, but it’s ridiculous to think that five years ago, or 10 years ago, things were any friendlier. The film was written eight years ago, so it’s not a comment on Trump’s America, but it is good to be putting it out right now. It’s all about grey areas. As much as we try to be truthful about the rage and pain that Mildred harbours, by the end of it, it’s more about stepping back from that and seeing that people are people, but not in a hippy-dippy way. It’s not as simple as that.
Q: Nothing is simple, is it? The story seems to be heading in the direction of a murder mystery initially, before it takes a sharp left turn.
A: As a writer, I knew that the crime was never going to be solved. It’s about: How do you deal with loss? How do you deal with life being impossibly unfair? That’s much more important to me than tying a crime case up with a bow.
Q: A couple of years ago, you said that this movie would be your angriest film yet. Does anger hold a particular fascination for you, and why?
A: Yes, I think so. That quote was true when I said it. In retrospect, having made the film, I don’t think it’s about that at all — and that came as kind of a surprise to me. It starts off, maybe, as the angriest thing possible, but it doesn’t end in that place. Maybe I’m growing up a bit, but I think that it’s great that it doesn’t stay simply an angry film. It’s an interesting thing to explore, because I used to be pretty angry, artistically. Not as a person. Q: Meaning what? A: Meaning as a working- class guy who left school very young but had artistic sensibilities, and kind of feeling like there was no avenue for someone like me. That’s why most of the plays I wrote had a lot of anger — but also joy. Exploring that, in a kind of angry, punk-rock sensibility, was always the place I was coming from. But then you get to a place of success. Do you stay angry the whole time, or do you try to get past that? This film is about being true to the anger while also trying to get past that.
Q: Does being an outsider — a London-based writer telling stories set in the American South, or Hollywood, or rural Ireland — make it easier or harder?
A: In all those cases, I’m trying not to have an outsider’s perspective. If it comes across that way, I’ve failed. I wanted to jump in and have it be a completely truthful American film, not a European take on American small-town life.
Q: How exactly do you achieve that?
A: It’s all about empathy. One big help is casting great American actors in all these roles, but it’s also about not sentimentalising or patronising the characters — showing them as human beings first, not types. That’s been true of the Irish plays and everything else I’ve done. I try to see the humanity, not the nationality.
Q: Which is more artistically fulfilling: movies or plays?
A: They’re just different. I’m going to go back and forth between mediums forever, I think. Movies are a lot harder. That’s why I don’t do them quite as often, because I’m very lazy. With a play, you can write one and have it on — it’ll be finished in the same year. With a film, the whole process is a lot more extended, but if you get it right, it’s right forever. A play is so ephemeral and fleeting that even if you do it perfectly, it’s gone. I can’t show you a play of mine that we got right 17 years ago. It’s gone. In 17 years, I’ll be able to show you this film and it won’t have changed, although we, with any luck, will. — WP-Bloomberg