Interview (Written): Martin McDonagh

Conversation with the writer-director of the new movie ‘Three

Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’.

Kate Hagen, Director of Community at @theblcklst, goes into depth in

this interview with writer-director Martin McConagh about his latest
film: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, starring Frances
McDormand, Sam Rockwell, and Woody Harrelson.

What inspired this film?

I saw something similar to what we see on the billboards about

seventeen years ago on a bus trip through the states, and it passed me
by in, like, a second, but it stayed in my mind — the idea of what kind
of pain, or rage, or bravery would cause a person to put up some kind
of signage like that, because it was similarly calling out the cops about
a crime. And I wanted to write something for a female lead, a strong
female lead, for a while — I’d done that in plays, but I hadn’t really
done that at all in the films I’ve made. Once I coupled those two ideas
together and once I made that person a mother, it felt like Mildred kind
of sprang fully-formed onto the page.

Martin McDonagh

How do you go about creating such well-rounded characters that

grow? You have this knack of redeeming characters who initially
seem like complete scum-of-the-earth assholes, but you somehow
manage to make them lovable and relatable to everyone in the
audience.

Well, in answer to the second question, you just kind of have to see the
humanity in everyone. And it’s not simple Hollywood heroes and
villains — it’s hopefully something more interesting and more
surprising than that, because if you’re not adhering to, “the heroes are
the heroes and the villains are the villains,” you can go to anywhere,
any place with them. The hero can become more villainous, and the
villain can become more heroic, I guess. But in terms of the well-
rounded characters, I think the thing is to think that every character
could be the lead character in their own movie, as we all are the lead
characters in our own movie. Like Peter Dinklage’s character, he’s
really interesting and you kind of think, “what do you do in your daily
life, are you thinking about Mildred all the time?” He could have a film
of his own, and most of the characters are that way. And then you just
reduce those people to two or three scenes, but their personality and
their joy for the world is big. So it’s about that, I think, just seeing no
one as secondary.