If you go back to my Three Billboards script review, you’ll see that I gave it the worst rating on the Scriptshadow scale – the dreaded [x] what the hell did I just read? And I stand by that rating. I honestly had no idea what I’d read. It was a cacophony of bizarre choices surrounding an unlikable hero built on a draft that read like it was written in a week. Things would happen for no rhyme or reason, and the central question posed in the script was never answered.
Let me detail the worst part of the script for you so you understand the depths of my frustration. Deputy Dixon (Sam Rockwell) is a drunk racist cop. There are no moments in the script where racism is a part of the story. So already, his character is confusing. But the one good thing Dixon’s got going for him is that he’s a loose cannon with a mean streak. You get the sense that if this guy ever became Sheriff, everyone in town was in trouble, especially Mildred (Francis McDormand).
Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) committing suicide at the midpoint was a WTF choice in its own right. However, it opened the door up for that Dixon explosion. We were finally going to see what happened when a crazy person who doesn’t play by the rules is in charge of this town. And we get it! In the movie’s best scene, a drunk Dixon, flush with power, charges over to the second floor advertising business that sold Mildred the billboards, beats the salesman senseless, then hurls him out the window, then goes back down to the street, and beats him some more.
This script was about to go LOCO and I was all in.
Then one minute later Dixon gets fired.
Holy shit. Talk about letting the air out of the balloon. Everything that was about to be so awesome had been replaced by a bottle of script poison.
But that’s not all. The guy Dixon is fired by, the new replacement sheriff, is black. So this whole movie you’ve been talking about Dixon’s racism despite the fact that it has nothing to do with the story. Now you FINALLY HAVE A WAY TO MAKE IT PART OF THE STORY! If Dixon doesn’t get fired, he has to serve under a black sheriff. How ironic is that? But no. He’s fired instead and spends the rest of the movie drinking at home. And as for that sheriff? He and Dixon never interact again.
That’s why I despised this script so much. It would make these gigantic crucial story-killing mistakes over and over again.
But then I watched it last night. And lo and behold I was freaking ENTERTAINED. It was a baffling experience as the screenwriting analyst in me was saying, “Wrong, wrong, wrong,” the whole way through, and yet I was engaged. I cared about what was happening. So afterwards I sat back for an extended moment and tried to figure out why I liked the movie. I came up with five reasons. Here they are.
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REASON 1 – IT WAS ORIGINAL
I complain about Save the Cat beat sheet page-specific writing all the time. So I have to give props to a script that went against every obvious story beat a script like this would usually take. The story keeps you guessing, and that’s hard to do with the over-saturation of content these days. Everything’s been done already and yet here McDonagh comes along and says, “Has it?” I almost feel like McDonagh initiated a coda to himself before writing this, saying that every time he had an instinct to do something, he was going to do the opposite. Because that’s honestly the way the story plays out.
REASON 2 – MILDRED WENT FROM HATEABLE TO LIKABLE
In the script, the main character is so damn unlikable, it’s nauseating. She’s a bitch. She’s arrogant. She doesn’t listen. She has no empathy for how this affects people. I hated her. However in the movie, I loved her. Frances McDormand did the impossible. She made this character likable. It was the still moments with her that resonated the most. Scenes where Chief Willoughby was stating his case and you could see Mildred (McDormand) actually listening and understanding him. You didn’t see that in the script. I would still implore screenwriters to stay away from writing characters this unlkable in specs. Keep in mind McDonagh is a writer-director and didn’t need to win over any readers. His plan was obviously to find an actress who could offset the unlikability. And for this film, the plan paid off.
REASON 3 – THE HUMOR
I didn’t see any humor in this script. It would’ve been nice if I had because you needed something to offset all the darkness and anger. I don’t know if the humor was always there and I missed it, if it was added in rewrites, or if it was brought out by the actors. But Dixon is fucking hilarious. I definitely didn’t see that in the script. And Mildred is funny too. I mean, there’s this whole scene where she’s wearing bunny slippers and the bunny slippers, getting their own close up, start chatting about the whole billboard fiasco. That was SO ESSENTIAL for this movie because otherwise it would’ve been a huge downer.
REASON 4 – THE CHARACTERS
I always say that if you can write one memorable character in your script, you’ve succeeded. Writing one big memorable character is a huge accomplishment and much more difficult than people know. If you can write two, you’re flying in rare air. And if you can get to three? You’re going to be in the Oscar race. Which is what happened here. It’s the one glimmer of praise I gave the script when I reviewed it: “If the script has a saving grace, it’s that it’s an actors’ wet dream. Whoever plays Mildred gets to act like a crazy lunatic bitch for 2 hours, which should surely earn then an Oscar nom. Someone gets to play a racist cop when racist cops are all the rage in the news. And every character seems to have a larger backstory, some legitimate depth.” I hated the story so much that it trumped the strong character writing. But having seen the movie now, I can say that every time Mildred, Dixon, or Willoughby was onscreen, I was mesmerized. It just goes to show how important focusing on characters is.
REASON 5 – THE SCENE-WRITING
The scene-writing in this movie is OFF THE CHAIN. Yes, I’m bringing back “off the chain.” That’s how impressed I was by the scenes. I mean, there’s got to be 12 great scenes in here. The Dixon window scene. Dixon getting fired. Mildred burning the police station. The guy who threatens Mildred in her store. McDonagh seems to approach his scene-writing like Tarantino, where he makes each scene a mini-movie. As a result, they all have these big beginnings, middles, and ends. It’s funny that he structures his scenes so well when he structures his story so poorly.
Now don’t get me wrong. This didn’t go from worst to first, like the Los Angeles Rams. The choices McDonagh makes lead to a bizarre and unsatisfying ending, one where the characters maybe-sorta want to kill someone who maybe or maybe not raped someone who has nothing to do with Mildred’s daughter. That’s what happens when you stray too far from a structured narrative. But the characters were so great and the scenes were so good that I left this one thinking, “It looks like I was wrong.” It does happen every once in awhile. :)
Let me know what you guys thought of Three Billboards in the comments.
