McDonagh speaks as though in awe of his own ability to make a genuine crowdpleaser, and it’s no wonder: Like many McDonagh stories, “Three Billboards” is loaded with bitter, sarcastic loners prone to lashing out rather than talking about their feelings. There’s something energizing about how tough she is.” So it’s never quite the heavy female picture that you might imagine from the plot. “Because it’s outrageous, and a woman, there’s a joy to it. “Frances’ character is stronger than most male leading parts,” he said. He wrote the part with McDormand in mind, even before they met. It just happened that the first two film scripts I wrote were ‘Bruges’ and ‘Seven Psychopaths,’ and it wasn’t a deliberate choice - but this felt like a deliberate choice, not to do that for a third time.” “I saw the big bucks and went with that,” he said. “The early plays had very strong women,” he said, singling out 1996’s “The Beauty Queen of Lenane,” his first credit, which featured two women as its leads, the four prominent women characters in “The Cripple of Innishman,” and “The Lieutenant of Inishmore,” where “the strongest character was a woman.” While “Three Billboards” marks a turning point in McDonagh’s gender focus as a filmmaker, he’s quick to point out that his playwriting credits tell a different story. “I’m glad that all these pricks have fallen over the last month or so,” McDonagh said. In the movie, as with recent real life developments, the publicity yields some modicum of progress. The parallels were obvious: McDormand’s character, Mildred, buys a trio of billboards on the outskirts of her rural town to publicly denounce the police chief (Woody Harrelson) for not making any arrests. In the weeks following the “Three Billboards” premiere at the Venice International Film Festival - followed by a North American premiere at TIFF, where it picked up the coveted audience award - McDonagh saw reports of countless women speaking out against Harvey Weinstein and so many other sexual predators.
The topicality was pure coincidence, but McDonagh will take it.
It moves on to a more hopeful, human place.” “I think it’s a great film to be put out in this climate,” the 47-year-old British-Irish director said over coffee in New York. Now, McDormand’s expletive-spewing avenger epitomizes the angry feminist reckoning leading up to its release.
The awards will be handed out on 21 January.When playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh first conceived of his dark comedy “ Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” in which Frances McDormand plays a woman seeking justice for the rape and murder of her teen daughter, he had no idea the movie would come out in an environment rattled by tales of sexual assault by powerful men.
You can find the full list of film nominees below, while the TV listings are available at the guild's site.
More surprising was what was missing, as Steven Spielberg's The Post failed to secure any nominations despite the presence of awards magnets Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in its cast. Martin McDonagh's dark comedy logged four nominations, leading a pack that also included such regular awards list representatives this year as Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name and Get Out. And the cast of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri had particular reason to be pleased. Wednesday morning saw the actors, as represented by the Screen Actors Guild, get their chance to nominate their peers for the annual SAG Awards.