Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: Based on the famous monologue from one of the most popular movie characters of all time, The Fisherman tells us what really happened to the “Jaws” character, Quint, that terrible week in the ocean at the end of World War 2.
About: People have been obsessed with the story of the USS Indianapolis for 30 years now. At one point, Steven Spielberg himself was going to film the real-life story of the fated battleship. But the fickle director eventually moved on to other projects. The Fisherman is written by Will Dunn and finished fairly high on last year’s Black List. I reviewed one of Dunn’s scripts before – Ion – which was, at one point, going to star Channing Tatum. I didn’t like it. Let’s hope today’s dorsal fin fares better.
Writer: Will Dunn
Details: 109 pages (10.22.15 draft)

The Fisherman ranked high on last year’s Black List, so let me tell you why it’s taken me a year to review it. The script follows a practice I’m not fond of, which is taking characters from previously established works and writing a movie about them, usually a backstory to tell us how they got to be who they are.

What’s your issue with this, Curmudgeon Carson? I’m glad you asked that question, disembodied voice of my reading audience. The way I see it, Jaws has been made. As has Star Wars, Peter Pan, Romeo and Juliet, The Godfather. Why can’t we let the perfection of those stories be? Why do we have to waste an idea on the backstory of one of them when we could – wait for it – WRITE AN ORIGINAL GREAT MOVIE OURSELVES!?

That’s my biggest issue. Hollywood barely gives us anything new anymore. And it’s not their fault. They have to answer to people in boardrooms who, when an original idea tanks, ask, “Why the hell did you make a movie about something nobody’s heard of when you could’ve adapted a bestselling book or commissioned a sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean?”

The amateur screenwriter IS THE LAST PERSON who can still write original ideas. Once you become professional, you’ll be writing episode 7 of the second season of The Exorcist on Fox or a spin-off film of Pinocchio’s character from Shrek. So as long as you still can, why not write something new?

Cause guess what? If you do that and it WORKS? Not only will it get made, but you’ll be heralded as one of the few people in the industry who writes original ideas. And that’s pretty fucking awesome.

There’s a flip side to this argument. Everyone in this business came to it because they loved movies. And Jaws is one of the main movies that made people want to write and direct films. So I get how exciting it is to write one of those characters yourself. But that doesn’t mean I agree with the idea.

The Fisherman follows four storylines. The first is Quint, a few months after the war, in 1946, out on his lobster boat. His boat is rendered inoperable after a great white shark attacks it, and he must defeat the shark or die.

The second is Quint in 1945, on leave from the Navy, where he meets a lovely woman named Laura Foster, and falls in love with her.

The third is later in 1945, when Quint is shipped off to the war, only for his ship, the USS Indianapolis, to get blown out of the water by Japanese subs, and for the survivors to slowly roast in the ocean waters for a week while hundreds of sharks eat them up.

And the fourth is Quint in 1946, right after he came back from that tragedy but before he goes out on his lobster boat. It’s here where he questions whether he’s good enough to be with Laura, and where his battle with the bottle begins.

Will Dunn makes a couple of smart choices with this script. The first is he wraps this screenplay around a love story. That’s a bit of an unexpected choice when it comes to a character like Quint, who’s supposed to be the drunken rowdy badass who you’d think wouldn’t trouble himself with things like “love.”

But it’s a nice reminder that choices tend to turn out well when you go against type. If we only focused on the macho-ness of Quint in this story, it would’ve felt obvious. And remember, guys, if your choices are obvious, your screenplay is boring. Anybody can make obvious choices. Screenwriters make bold and unexpected choices. Good screenwriters, at least.

The other thing Dunn does here is he institutes a multi-storyline approach. Multiple storylines, particularly ones where you’re jumping back and forth in time, can be tricky. They always make perfect sense to the writer, since he’s got the timeline laid out in his head. But it’s never as clear on the page as you think it is.

So you really have to hold the reader’s hand when you do this. You have to make extra sure that you’re being CLEAR on where we are. And the more timelines you have, the harder you have to work at this. Four is a lot.

But Dunn does a good job. Once the timelines are established, I was able to keep up, with the minor exception being the timeline between the USS Indianapolis and Quint alone on the boat.

The nice thing about the multi-storyline approach in this case is that it keeps us off-balance on our way to what we all know is coming – the USS Indianapolis sinking. Dunn knows that that’s his money sequence. So he’s gotta make sure you’re paying attention beforehand and not just speeding through so you can get to that part.

If this were told in a predictable linear manner, readers might have responded like, “Okay, we get it. Quint has a girlfriend. I WANT TO SEE SHARKS EAT BURNED SAILORS NOW!!” and start skimming. I never wanted to do that though, which is a good sign.

But the real reason The Fisherman succeeds is that it does something I’ve been talking to a director friend about a lot lately. It takes a big concept and it approaches it from a CHARACTER POINT-OF-VIEW.

Pay attention to that guys, cause it’s the secret ingredient to writing good scripts. Everything in this script is character driven. When Quint’s on that boat by himself, he’s battling the ghosts of that war tragedy, his place in it, and if he’ll ever be the same person again.

When he’s not battling that tragedy, he’s battling the fact that he can no longer be with the love of his life. Even before the Indianapolis crashes, Dunn introduces us to Quint’s best mates, two guys whose fates will be tied to the sinking of that ship, and how their fates affect Quint to this day

My favorite scene in the script is the last scene involving one of these friends which I didn’t see coming at all. Surprisingly, I even found myself tearing up. So obviously, Dunn was doing something right.

Despite this, this world isn’t my world. I’m not a huge shark guy (even though I recognize their marketing value to a concept) and I’ve always seen Jaws as a solid flick but nothing like the classic everyone claims it is. When you combine this with the fact that we’re going backwards into old ideas instead of building new ones, I ended up throwing my “impressive” back in the water and settling for the “worth the read” I caught.

With that said, I expect Jaws fanatics to LOVE THIS. Let me know what you think ya Benchley cheerleaders.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Note the date of this draft (10.22.15). If you’re trying to make the Black List, late October, and the majority of November, is a GREAT time to send your script out to the town. This way, Black List voters voting on December 8th are highly likely to remember you above scripts sent out earlier in the year.

Bonus Question: Which actor would play Quint in a modern-day movie about him?

THE WINNER OF WEEK 4 HAS BEEN LISTED BELOW

The Scriptshadow Tournament pits 40 amateur screenplays against each other that you, the readers of the site, will vote on. Ultimately, YOU will decide the winner. Today we have the fourth group of entries. You can see who won Week One here, who won Week Two here and who won last week here. Read as much as you can from each of the entries and vote for the week’s winner in the comments section. Although it’s not required, your vote will carry more weight if you explain why you chose the script (doesn’t have to be elaborate, just has to make sense). I say “carry more weight” because a vote for a script without any explanation from an unknown voter may be seen as fake and not count towards the tally. I will announce the winner of this week here, in this post, on Sunday, 10pm Pacific time. That script will then go into the quarterfinals. Good luck to this week’s contestants!

Title: Years of a Clown
Writer: Michael Mchale-Boyle
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure/Drama
Logline: A precocious young boy, struggling through his parents’ divorce, finds comfort in an unlikely friendship with an elderly Clown who recounts the story of his amazing life.

Title: Cartel
Writer: Ben Stoker
Genre: Action
Logline: A vengeful DEA agent plots an unsanctioned mission to kidnap Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord, but soon finds himself marooned in cartel land with his hostage and an army of hitmen in pursuit.

Title: 21 Days in the Amazon
Writer: Ben Koch
Genre: Found Footage Horror
Logline: When the cast and crew of the reality show Bared and Scared film an episode in the Amazon, surviving the deadly jungle proves less frightening than surviving an unhinged contestant.

Title: Raised By Wolves
Writer: Paul Clarke
Genre: Action/Thriller
Logline: After being attacked and accused of murder, a spoiled naïve teenage girl discovers her sheltered little world is a lie and must escape it to discover the truth about her work and her father.

Title: Hellfire Alley
Writer: Kenneth Kleemann
Genre: Western/True Story
Logline: The story of the real Wild Bunch that inspired the classic film.

WINNER OF WEEK 4: “RAISED BY WOLVES” by Paul Clarke. Congrats, Paul! I knew this week was going to be close. You had two commenting favorites in Kenneth and Paul vying for votes. When you throw in a compelling concept like Years of a Clown, I had a feeling it was going to come down to the last day. Then 21 Days came out of nowhere and made things even more interesting. Can’t promise anything but those who were close, cross your fingers. You may get a wild-card slot.

Here are 10 movies I walked into and came out of a more knowledgeable screenwriter.

Matrix: Reloaded – I’ll never forget how excited I was going in to this movie, and how devastated I was walking out of it. Matrix: Reloaded taught me one of the most valuable screenwriting lessons there is. You can’t rush a script. Good scripts need time to breathe.

Deadpool – Deadpool reminded me that one of the best ways to write a hit movie is to locate the end of a trend and then write the opposite. A series of superhero movies that take themselves too seriously? Write a superhero movie that makes fun of itself. A bunch of serious horror movies are dominating the market? Write one that’s not so serious. And make no mistake. When all these Deadpool clones take over the airwaves, the first guy who writes a comic book movie that takes itself seriously again will have a mega-hit on his hands.

American Sniper – I had as much confidence in American Sniper doing killer box office as I did Chris Kyle making an appearance at the premiere. But American Sniper (and more recently, Sully) taught me the value of a real-life hero. America fucking loves their heroes. Find a real life hero in America’s history (don’t bother trying to find a current one – Hollywood’s got’em all locked up) and tell their story. If you do an even halfway decent job, you’ll get a sale. We just saw this with the spec sale, Mayday 109, about a little known heroic deed from JFK. MURICA!

Forest Gump – I still watch Forest Gump today and marvel at how a movie with no structure and a main character who succeeds through the entire film works so well. Wanna know its secret? The disadvantaged protagonist who keeps fighting no matter what is a bulletproof hero. Let me say that again. A disadvantaged hero who never gives up is IMPOSSIBLE TO DISLIKE. An audience will always root for that character. And by “disadvantaged,” I don’t mean retarded. Just that life’s cards didn’t fall in his favor.

Elysium – Remember how excited everybody was for Neill Blomkamp’s follow-up to District 9? Holy shit. I thought this was going to be the bee’s knees. Then I started hearing whispers: “The script’s thin.” I refused to believe them. Maybe they were looking at an early draft. Nope. Elysium was terrible, and it taught us what a half-baked idea looks like. Elysium’s mythology was barely explored. As a result, it felt like a mansion with only half its rooms furnished. Know every inch of your world, guys. It doesn’t all have to appear on the page. But as the writer, you need to know how it all connects.

The Phantom Menace – The Phantom Menace taught me one of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned. That just because you build your story around deep things, it doesn’t make your script deep. Lucas believed that because The Phantom Menace was covering politics, it would somehow make this Star Wars adventure more intellectual and thoughtful. The only thoughts anyone had, however, occurred during their REM cycle once the second act rolled around. The Phantom Menace also reminded us how valuable urgency is to a story. If you look at the four best Star Wars movies (4, 5, 6, 7) they all have urgency. You look at the worst 3 (1, 2, 3), they have no urgency. And no, Episode 3 is not better than 4-7. Stop promoting that overblown pointless film with one of the worst climaxes (“I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND, ANAKIN!”) in sequel history.

Hancock – Hancock had one of the best setups for a superhero movie ever. A drunk superhero? Talk about a conceptual goldmine. The finished product, however, was a disaster, and it taught us a valuable lesson: AVOID OVERDEVELOPING AN IDEA. A lot of times, we’re with our scripts for so long, we become numb to them, and feel like we need to add bells and whistles to keep them exciting, instead of staying true to what was great about the idea in the first place. Hancock felt that pressure and added the ridiculous twist where a local housewife had the same mythological powers as Hancock did, and the movie never recovered after that. When you have a good idea, trust it. Don’t overdevelop it with a bunch of stupid add-ons just because you’re bored.

Cast Away – Cast Away was one of the riskiest movies of the decade. Sure it had Tom Hanks, but he was all by himself! How do you keep that interesting for two hours? Cast Away taught me the power of the mini-goal. The mini-goal is the tool that keeps your character active for 10 minute chunks at a time. Tom Hanks must make fire to survive. There’s a ten minute chunk. Tom Hanks must learn how to fish. There’s a ten minute chunk. Tom Hanks must figure out how to utilize all the Fed Ex packages. That’s a chunk. Mini-goals keep the movie moving 10 minutes at a time. If Tom Hanks doesn’t have anything he has to do RIGHT NOW, that narrative stops and we get bored.

World War Z – World War Z famously filmed a giant war climax between humans and zombies that wasn’t working. They had to stop production, bring a new writer in, and write a new ending. That ending had humans avoiding zombies in a lab-like maze while they looked for a cure. It was a solid sequence that ended up saving the film. The lesson? When you’re writing a big movie, sometimes the answers aren’t big. Sometimes they’re intimate. So make sure you consider both.

Pearl Harbor – Pearl Harbor was trying to be the next Titanic. It succeeded. If you mean it quickly sunk to the bottom of the box office. Pearl Harbor taught us that you should never prioritize an idea over characters. The movie was an obvious excuse to film a set-piece (the Pearl Harbor bombing) with the characters being an afterthought. The reason Titanic was so successful was because James Cameron wanted to explore the depths of his two main characters first, and the depths of the Titanic second. Nobody knows that about Cameron – how much he values character. But it’s precisely why he’s the king of the box office.

Mini-Lessons – The Dark Knight taught me the value of grounding extraordinary characters. The Hangover taught me the importance of finding new ways to explore stale ideas. The Sixth Sense taught me that an audience will be patient as long as your heroes’ objective is compelling enough. Silver Linings Playbook and 500 Days of Summer taught me that the traditional romantic comedy is dead, and that you need some quirky take on the genre to get Hollywood interested. And Ghostbusters taught me that audiences aren’t stupid. If they feel that you’re pushing something other than entertainment (in this case – a social agenda), they won’t show up.

Hey guys. I apologize but I’m running all over town today. Here’s a re-post of my Ready Player One review from my newsletter. This movie’s going to be awesome. Enjoy!

Genre: Sci-fi/Adventure/Comedy
Premise: An eccentric game developer leaves an Easter egg in his massively popular virtual reality game. In his will, he announces to the world that whoever finds that egg will get his entire fortune.
About: Ready Player One was a hit book back in 2011 (it’s currently $4 on Kindle!), which Warner Brothers quickly snatched up the rights for. They’ve been slaving away on the script ever since, and only recently did they feel confident enough to send it out. The patience paid off in a big way. None other than Steven Spielberg himself signed on to direct the film. In retrospect, it’s a perfect fit. The book is built around 80s nostalgia and pop culture, when Spielberg cemented his dominance in the industry. I’m sure a trip down memory lane with his earlier movies doesn’t hurt. This most recent draft is written by Zak “The Closer” Penn, whose impressive skills always leave the studio heads happy. Although he and original writer (and author) Ernest Cline didn’t work together on this draft, they did work together on a documentary that was ALSO about 80s pop culture (Atari: Game Over). That’s streaming on Netflix at the moment if you want to check it out.
Writer: Zak Penn (previous drafts by Eric Eason and Ernest Cline) – based on the novel by Ernest Cline
Details: 121 pages

For all the crap screenwriting gets – for all the times it’s deemed inconsequential compared to all the other elements of filmmaking – the truth is, a good screenplay is very powerful. One needs look no further than what happens to screenplays that AREN’T good. They don’t go anywhere, even if they have substantial intellectual property behind them.

I mean sure, you can get an eager young director or a C-grade guy like Alan Taylor (Terminator: Genysis) to direct anything. But if you want one of the big players directing your film, you need a good script. And this is why, even though they bought the rights to this book 5 years ago, they only recently sent it out to directors. They knew they had to get the script right.

Ernest Cline, the author of the book, is also a screenwriter. So he was the first one to adapt the novel. What I’m guessing happened is that he was too close to the material. I mean, Gillian Flynn adapted Gone Girl, but usually, when you’re adapting your own stuff, it’s impossible to see what can be cut. Everything is just so damn important in your eyes.

In comes Penn, who claims that it “just came to him how to do it,” and he simplified the sprawling story so that it could fit into a single film. And now we’re off to the races.

Literally.

Ready Player One starts off with the race of all races. I’m talking through Times Square. With the Delorean from Back to the Future. And the hover car from Blade Runner. Oh, and a dinosaur pops out and eats one of the cars during the race. Yes, this is that kind of movie. The kind where once you see the trailer, you’re going to walk out of the theater, start a line, and wait until opening day.

Wade is a nobody. A poor kid living in the Portland Stacks, what amounts to a bunch of trailers stacked on top of each other. It’s the kind of place even trailer park kids make fun of. But Wade isn’t sweating it. That’s because he’s really freaking good at one thing – The Oasis. That’s the virtual reality game that everybody in the world jacks into. It’s what allows you to race in Times Square and get eaten by dinosaurs.

In Oasis, Wade is known as Parzival, and he’s searching for what everyone else is searching for – the hidden Easter Egg. 20 years ago when Oasis creator James Halliday died, he announced in his will that whoever could find his hidden egg not only got his entire fortune, which is like a trillion dollars, but also became the owner of the Oasis. Halliday has left three keys people must find to get to the egg, with a riddle accompanying each one. The first clue was cracked early on, but no one’s been able to find the second key for 10 years now.

The big companies who profit off the Oasis aren’t taking any chances. The biggest, IOI, has hired thousands of egg hunters known as “Sixers” to look for the egg. That way, the Oasis stays with companies who can continue to commercialize it. Individual hunters are rare and aren’t taken seriously. They don’t have the resources these IOI drones do.

That all changes when Parzival cracks the second clue and becomes an overnight superstar in the game. Ironically, he’s still a nobody in the real world who can’t even get his Aunt to loan him a few bucks. When IOI finds out who Wade is, they put all their resources into stopping him. Him owning the Oasis would be a disaster. And they will do anything to stop it.

Parzival teams up with his best friend Aech (who he’s never actually met in the real world) and his longtime crush Artemis, and it’s a race to the finish line, a race that hopefully won’t end with the dreaded “Game Over.”

This one’s going to be big folks. I mean, how are people going to see the Back to the Future Delorean, the Blade Runner hover car, and roaming dinosaurs and NOT want to see this movie? At one point in the script, we actually go INTO the Blade Runner film – like become a part of it. Because in the future, they have “immersive cuts” of movies.

It makes me laugh because these are the types of things that if an amateur were to write into a screenplay, everyone would say, “What are you doing?? They’re never going to clear the rights to that stuff! You have no chance of getting that in the film. Everyone’s going to think you’re an idiot.”
Yet as soon as Spielberg is attached, everyone’s like, “Oh my god, what an ingenious way to get a top director on board. What director isn’t going to want the challenge of recreating Blade Runner?” There’s a double-standard out there, sadly, and while it kind of makes sense (if Warner Brothers is giving you the okay to write these things, it’s a little different than writing them on your own) it seems unfair.

The real power of Ready Player One, though, is that it’s audience proof. It is basically impossible to dislike this movie. A lot of that’s because it has the Four Staples of Spielberg – a secret formula Spielberg uses to create his string of hits.

1) Make your hero an underdog. It’s impossible to dislike underdogs.
2) Create a mystery. Find the mysterious hidden Easter egg!
3) Include adventure. Who the hell doesn’t want adventure??
4) Humor. Everyone loves to laugh!

Ready Player One has all these things which pretty much covers any reason anyone would want to see a movie.

The only slip-up the script makes happens to be the same issue I had with the book. The riddles (behind where the keys are) just aren’t that engaging. They’re based on this unique universe, so when the characters talk about them, it all sounds very “inside baseball” and after they figure out where to look next, you’re not really sure what they’re looking for. There was a 20 page sequence in the second act where I had no idea where we were or why we were there.

But races with T-Rexs kind of make up for that. Oh, and did I mention Ready Player One has samurais too?

I give Penn a lot of credit for wrangling this story into shape. The book wasn’t exactly Lord of the Rings, but the mythology was very extensive and required a lot of explanation to figure out how we got to where we were. That’s usually the challenge with these adaptations and maybe why Cline was having trouble nailing it. You gotta get rid of a lot of the backstory and make the present story more action-based. Indeed, that’s what Penn did. And if Spielberg stays on this project,then we’re going to get a hell of a movie in 2017.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you have a TON of exposition, you might want to just go with a voice over. We’re all taught to hide exposition. Which is good advice. But if you have 10 times the amount of exposition as a normal story, you’ll have to hide exposition in almost every scene. And when you do that, the scenes never feel natural (“Hey, how you doing?” “Oh fine. I mean, I’m upset that I only have 4 days to steal the Tesserect or else the Barleycorn Canyon blows up my dad but other than that, I’m cool. How bout you?”). It’s in your best interest, then, to just do a big voice over sequence and get your exposition out in one fell swoop. Here we get about a six page scene of Wade explaining, via voice over, how the Oasis works and how Halliday’s egg came to be. It was long, but this way, for the rest of the script, Penn could just focus on the fun stuff.

Genre: Drama?
Premise: After her daughter is brutally raped and killed, a woman living in a small town erects three billboards that ask the local police chief why he’s not doing anything to solve the murder.
About: This script was written and will be directed by Martin McDonagh, who famously wrote and directed, In Bruges. I’m one of the few people who didn’t connect with In Bruges (hey, I couldn’t understand half the things coming out of Colin Farrel’s mouth!). Nor did I like his later film, Seven Psychopaths. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that today’s entry into the McDonagh film club left me disappointed. You may be asking, “Carson, if you hated those films, why did you read this one?” I didn’t know it was written by McDonagh when I read it. I avoid knowing the writer whenever possible for this very reason. I don’t want to go in with any prior bias. The film has a great cast with Peter Dinklage, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, and Frances McDormand. I had assumed the odd premise had to have been based on a real life story. But keeping up the strange vibe of Three Billboards, it’s complete fiction.
Writer: Martin McDonagh
Details: 102 pages

Today’s script was written by someone it feels like has never written a script before. Now I know that’s not true. Because I can look on IMDB and see that he’s written other screenplays, one of them beloved by many. But it still feels that way.

This screenplay makes so many frustrating choices, goes against the grain so many times, that it stops existing as a screenplay, and teeters on the edge of becoming some giant inside joke, or a piece of performance art whose purpose will be revealed many years from now.

It sure makes for an unexpected read. And you guys have heard me say many times that that’s a good thing. Except when you make so many strange choices, that the story stops having a point. That’s what frustrated me most about Three Billboards. I kept wondering what the point was. I thought I’d get some answers by the end. But even then, this baffling monstrosity has you asking why the hell you just wasted two hours of your life on it.

Mildred Hayes is a mean bitch. I suppose losing your daughter to a rape-murder will do that to you. But you get the feeling that Mildred was a horrible person long before that happened.

With that said, she’s a woman who takes action. And as nine months have passed since her daughter was raped and murdered, and the local police haven’t done anything about it, Mildred decides to buy three billboards for the month which she uses to ask the police, “Why haven’t you done anything about the people who raped and murdered my daughter?” (in so many words).

Those police are beloved Chief Bill Willoughy, and racist cop Officer Dixon. Why do we have a racist cop when this movie’s central concept has nothing to do with race? One of the many strange choices that you have to get used to while reading “Three Billboards.”

Anyway, these billboards were put up to put pressure on the police to figure out what happened to Mildred’s daughter. But do you think we actually follow that storyline? No. Since this script reads like it was written on drugs, the billboards inspire NOBODY to do anything about the investigation. That’s right. Not a single second is spent by anyone to look more into the case after the erection of the billboards.

Instead, Bill Willoughy dies of cancer (WHAT??????), a new black chief takes his place (remember, race has nothing to do with the concept here, yet race keeps getting brought up), and a lot of locals take pot shots at Mildred for stirring up trouble with the billboards.

SPOILER ALERT. All of this leads to… NOTHING. At the end of the movie, we’re no closer to solving the crime than we were at the beginning. In fact, Mildred instead decides to kill some random dude who raped someone in Iraq. Cause, yeah, that makes sense.

All I wanted with Three Billboards was SOME kind of connective tissue. I wanted any two parts of the story to come together in a cohesive manner. For example, this weird subplot of making the deputy a racist. Race is a non-factor in Mildred’s death. So why have a subplot about it? Remember what we said yesterday in the great “Storyville?” If the subplot has nothing to do with the main plot, DON’T INCLUDE IT.

If Mildred believed that a black man had raped and killed her daughter, now we at least have SOME connective tissue to tie that into Dixon’s racism. But nope. Dixon’s racism stands off on its own island, leaving us to question its inclusion the entire running time.

Or what about the concept itself. There’s something empty and boring about a woman putting up billboards to remind the police to look into something. Hey Mildred. Ever hear of e-mail? I heard it’s a lot cheaper. Had Mildred heard that the police were covering something up? And her billboards implied that? NOW YOU HAVE A FUCKING STORY!!!! But we don’t get anything even resembling a compelling setup like that. Just a glorified flier telling the cops to spend a few more hours a week on her daughter’s investigation.

I guess the argument for this story’s existence is that it’s less about the murder and more about grief and the uncontrollable feelings that come with being the surviving mother of a rape victim. But here’s the problem with that. If you set up a murder at the beginning of your story, and you build your concept around the idea that a mother wants answers regarding that murder, the audience is going to want to find out who the murderer is!!! If you don’t bother, then, investigating the case, don’t you think you’re pulling a bait and switch on us?

It’d be like in Silence of the Lambs, if they set up Buffalo Bill kidnapping this woman, and then focused the story on corruption in the FBI. We never went after Buffalo Bill. We just watched Clarice deal with bureaucratic red tape inside her division. That’s what the setup and execution of Three Billboards felt like.

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.

But when your hero is the least sympathetic person in the script and the villain is the most sympathetic, it leaves the audience utterly confused about what and who they’re supposed to root for.

To top it all off, Three Billboards has an ending that is so shamelessly anti-mainstream, it’s begging you to hang a “keeping it real” gold medal around its neck as you walk out the theater. I’ll be surprised if anyone in the theater makes it that far though.

[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Making your hero unsympathetic and your villain sympathetic will certainly win you style points with the film school crowd. But assuming you aren’t a director with the ability to get a film made, this is the fastest way to make your script unsaleable to every single producer in town.