Interview: Martin McDonagh – “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was written for Frances McDormand”

A few months ago, Martin McDonagh wondered how his latest film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri would be received. He need not have worried. When the film screened at the Toronto Film Festival, critics and the audience loved it so much that the film won the Audience Award. In it, Frances McDormand plays a mother whose daughter has been brutally raped and murdered. Angry and frustrated that the local sheriff (Woody Harrelson) and his department haven’t done enough to catch her daughter’s killer, she resorts to messages on three billboards to express her outrage over how the case is being handled. “I wanted a strong woman’s part because the last two movies I’d done were male-centric.” McDonagh tells me about Mildred.

McDonagh says he saw something similar on a road trip many years ago, inspiring the idea for his story and more importantly, providing him with a way to write a role for a strong, determined woman that he’d always wanted to write. He wrote the story with Frances McDormand in mind. The end result is a film that many consider to be McDonagh’s best work to date.

The brilliantly dark comedy opens this Friday. I had the chance to catch up with McDonagh for a quick tête-à-tête about how the wonderfully wicked Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri came about.

How did you come up with the idea of writing Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri?

The script was written about eight years ago and it could have gone out then but we didn’t go with it. The journey really began because I wanted a strong woman’s part because the last two movies I’d done were male-centric and I wanted to get away from that a little bit.

I saw something that wasn’t too dissimilar from what we see on our billboards back in the UK. I was on a bus going past a field and I saw something that was raging and painful along the lines of what we see of Mildred’s in the story. Once I decided it was a mother who put that up there, everything fell into place.

I was wondering, just because we might have had one or two of those billboards in the UK, but it wouldn’t have necessarily been the right setting.

We didn’t have the landscape you could set the story in for this. There was a lot of traveling around America and I knew I wouldn’t know the road until I saw it. We wanted it to be lonely and not used very much, but beautiful and iconic. We found this place and it was very green. There was a quarry in the mountain behind it and it suggested there was something lonely and tragic. With the small town, we wanted it to be iconic and pretty and a place that hadn’t changed much since the 1940s. We wanted it to be timeless.

You had Frances in mind when writing this?

It was written for her from the beginning and then we sent it to her. We crossed our fingers hoping she’d like it and she did. Then it was about finding financiers who wouldn’t need to see it, to question what the deal was, and that this was the script, and I don’t need any advice on the tone, casting choices or the script. There aren’t a lot of people who do that, but Film 4 have always been good like that, and we also found Fox Searchlight who came in.

How did you write that balance of creating such great comedy against the drama?

When we read what’s on the billboards in the script, I was scared that anyone would continue to read it yet alone continue watching it because it’s so bleak and tragic this whole idea of what happened to the daughter. The most important thing was to do two things, to completely side with Frances’ character Mildred in the pain and the rage, but also to side with her outrage. She is trying to get something done and that’s what takes us away from the dark place that the story starts in. The situation that someone who is a woman and is raging and gets into is what somehow makes it so funny because it’s so unexpected to have someone who just doesn’t give a shit, who won’t take any shit, and goes to war with everyone. There’s something so fun about that and that fun doesn’t have to betray the tragedy. In fact, it pulls us away from it. I wouldn’t want to wallow in the pain and despair, I don’t like those kinds of films.

What did you do to shape the characters we see?

I traveled around America and it’s something I’ve always done. I’d listen to people in small towns to get the dialogue, but really it was about creating these strange new characters and being truthful to them and let them take you on the journey rather than writing that typical racist cop character or a dying cop character. For me, it was about being more interesting than that and treating people as human beings. Even with Frances, we talked about Mildred a lot, we didn’t want to make her lovable. When she’s at home, she’s this loving mother, it’s just when she’s outside, she’s at war. She’s not perfect, but it doesn’t matter because her place of rage and outrage is more interesting than creating this Hollywood stereotype.

Was there a particularly hard scene to shoot. I’m thinking the police station? I’m trying not to give away spoilers for our readers who might not have seen it yet.

Yes. That and the billboards scene. There were a lot of bloody meetings about handing it over to the stunt coordinator, the DP, and the fire coordinator. You’re still trying to get the character detail right and I thought it would be the most nightmarish scenes to do, but you end up handing a lot of that to the professionals who ensure safety. That police station scene took three nights to shoot.

The film won the Audience Award at Toronto and has received rave reviews from everyone who sees it. How is this journey for you?

It’s brilliant. A few months ago, we didn’t know how the film would even be received. People have loved it and laughed in all the right places. It’s been a joy so far and I can’t wait for it to come out and see how it’s received when it opens.

You wrote in In Bruges in 2008 which got an Oscar nomination, and here we are in 2017. How have you grown since making that as a writer and director?

I think I’ve gotten more comfortable with each one. I was always confident with the writing aspect of filmmaking, but now I’m more comfortable on set. I’ve also grown in that I know how to talk to the Powers That Be more. I know what to fight for and I feel more confident and you never know you’re at that place until you’re there.