IN THE SPOTLIGHT
“wholly offensive.”
“It attracts the type of crowd that likes to reward simplistic tales of racism like ‘Crash,’ where white people learn how to be good to one another at the expense of black people,” Madison wrote.
After it won the Golden Globe in January, Wesley Morris wrote in the New York Times that, “It’s like a set of postcards from a Martian lured to America by a cable news ticker and by rumors of how easily flattered and provoked we are.” Morris wondered whether the film really did have anything to say about America.
Five days after the Times essay ran, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards. It also became a relative commercial success, with over $121.5 million in box office receipts worldwide.
McDonagh, for his part, disagreed with some of the fundamentals of the backlash.
“I think some of it comes from the idea that Sam’s character is redeemed at the end...I don’t think he is,” McDonagh said in a January podcast interview with Variety’s Kristopher Tapley.
“Three Billboards” co-producer Graham Broadbent even suggested that there is “a degree of success” in the fact that the film has triggered passionate reactions, good and bad. Unlike “La La Land,” “Three Billboards” was meant to agitate.
THOUGHT FOR TODAY “Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It’s more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.” — Theodor Seuss Geisel (GY’-zuhl), AKA “Dr. Seuss,” American children’s author (born this date in 1904, died 1991)