It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film in the way it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Tasha Robinson, here again with Scott Tobias.

Genevieve Kosky.

Keith Phipps.

On the first half of this episode, we discussed State and Maine, David Mamet's antic-black comedy about a hapless director trying to make a film while everything around him is falling apart. Or possibly it's a film about a put-upon screenwriter who's just looking for a second chance. Or maybe it's a movie about a creepy sex offender of a leading man who discovers he can count on his bosses to bail him out of any trouble. It's up for debate, really. But Martin McDonough's three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri is a lot more specific. It's another black comedy with an ensemble cast full of famous faces, but this one is more clearly the story of Mildred, played by Francis McDormid, and how she takes on the establishment in her small town, trying to get the police department to properly address the rape and murder her of her daughter seven months ago. Martin McDonough came to cinema from the stage,

where he originally wrote plays about Ireland and his family roots.

And his film scripts tend to read like opened up stage plays.

They're crammed with characters, full of speeches,

prone to dramatic plot turns,

and often fixed in specific spaces that feel like stage sets,

as his characters fence and banter with each other.

Like David Mamet, he gravitates towards stories about mouthy, nervy criminals. His first film, in Bruges, was about a hitman in exile after a terrible error in judgment.

And he followed up with seven psychopaths, a messy dark comedy in the vein of early Quentin Tarantino,

about a screenwriter who gets involved with a series of

assassins and murderers after he solicits their stories for a piece he's writing and after his

friends kidnapped the wrong dog. So three billboards feels like a pretty remarkable departure.

It's about a bitterly independent woman who decides the best way to get the police to investigate

her daughter's murder is to rent three billboards outside of town and post an accusation against the local police chief, Bill Willoughby,

played by Woody Harrelson. Initially, the story seems like an Aaron Brockovich kind of tale about

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