Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Scene by Scene Breakdown

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Scene by Scene Breakdown

Page 1-2: Our protagonist, MILDRED HAYES sees the billboards. (We are right down in the business, like our protagonist MILDRED.)

RED WELBY, advertising man. His office window looking onto the main street and town’s POLICE STATION. (set up)

MILDRED wants to rent the billboards from him.

“You wanna pay for three billboards on a road no-one goes down unless they got lost or they’re retards, for a year?”

She gives him the five thousand for the first month.

WELBY reads the index cards. She is ANGELA HAYES’s mother.

Page 3-5: Officer DIXON reads the billboard that says: “HOW COME CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?”

DIXON- Hey! What the Hell’s this?!

LATINO - Que?

DIXON – “How come Chief Willoughby?” what?

LATINO - What?

DIXON - Yeah!

LATINO - Huh?

DIXON - How come what?

LATINO - What?!

DIXON - Listen, I better start getting some straight answers outta you Mexican sons of bitches...

2nd Latino points at the SECOND billboard.

It says: “AND STILL NO ARRESTS?”

DIXON messes with the black guy there, JEROME. He threatens JEROME to arrest him. (Insight about DIXON for which kind of cop he is.)

He finally reads the last billboard and calls “WILLOUGHBY (HOME)”. (WILLOUGHBY is the town’s chief of police.)

Page 5: WILLOUGHBY, his wife ANNE, and their two daughters POLLY and JANE.

WILLOUGHBY opens the goddam phone to answer DIXON the goddam asshole in the middle of his goddam Easter dinner... (insight about the relationship between DIXON and WILLOUGHBY, and set up.)

DIXON tells him about the billboards.

And we finally see the last billboard.

It reads “RAPED WHILE DYING.”

Reveal. ANGELA HAYES, MILDRED’s daughter, raped and killed. And MILDRED wants justice.

(Insight. It has been a while since the murder.)

Page 6-7: Mildred drives her son, ROBBIE to his school. He sees the billboards. WILLOUGHBY with his DESK SERGEANT, forcibly telling DIXON to stay behind, then

crossing the street to RED’s place.

MILDRED continues driving to the GIFT SHOP she works at. Coworker, DENISE.

WILLOUGHBY and his DESK SERGEANT are at WELBY’s office. RED doesn’t step back. DESK SERGEANT tries to mess with him, RED holds his ground. But WILLOUGHBY plays smart. He knows that MILDRED rented those billboards.

Page 8-9: WILLOUGHBY, DESK SERGEANT and DIXON are at the police station. They know they can’t do anything about the billboard situation but DIXON storms out.

DESK SERGEANT questions his intention about keeping DIXON. WILLOUGHBY protects him. Thinks he is a good guy. (insight about his character)

“He tortured a guy in custody.” DESK SERGEANT says. Reveal about DIXON. WILLOUGHBY still protects him.

DIXON finds RED. Crosses the road towards him. DIXON is about to punch him, but WILLOUGHBY suddenly appears, grabs his punching arm and shoves him towards the station.

RED - Thought you only take out black dudes, Dixon...

DIXON - Ain’t nobody never goes down that road, anyways. Unless they got lost, or they’re retards anyways.

Page 10: MILDRED interviewing on TV. Our protagonist, explains herself. Explains her motives.

MILDRED - Well, my daughter, Angela, she got abducted, and she got raped and murdered seven months ago, (THE CASE) on this self-same stretch o’ road here, unfortunately, and, to me... I mean, to me, it seems like the local police department is too busy goin’ round torturing black folks (DIXON again.) to be bothered doing anything about solving actual crime, so I kinda thought these here billboards might, y’know, concentrate their minds some.

DIXON sits with his MOMMA, sees MILDRED on TV. (He lives with his mother.)

Page 11-12: WILLOUGHBY and ANNE watching the end of the interview.

“Why Willoughby?” GABRIELLA asks.

“Well the buck’s gotta stop at somebody.” MILDRED says.

Later, WILLOUGHBY moodily tending the horses in the stable just outside the house.(set up)

WILLOUGHBY pulls up outside MILDRED’s poor, clapboard house. From here we can see that the BILLBOARDS puncturing the dusty horizon are only A MILE AWAY.

WILLOUGHBY explains himself. He did everything he could to catch the guy but when the DNA didn’t match and when there wasn’t a single eyewitness from the time she left the house there wasn’t much he could do.

MILDRED doesn’t accept his explanation.

Then WILLOUGHBY opens up, major reveal. He is cancer. (I even thought this was a joke or trick of some kind and laughed out loud at the theater but then Mildred said she knew. I felt guilty. Sorry Willoughby.)

MILDRED - Everybody in town knows it.

Page 13-15: RED playing pool against the town midget. (set up)

DIXON comes up to mess with him.

RED didn’t know WILLOUGHBY was cancer. RED is shaken. MILDRED comes up, wants to play.

JAMES, the town midget, is into her.

Page 16-17: FATHER MONTGOMERY is at MILDRED’s house. ROBBIE is next to him. FATHER speaks as if he is the town’s voice. Says no one is with her about the billboard thing.

MILDRED doesn’t step back. He blames him for her daughter’s murder too. Because he is culpable of what the church guys did. Because they’re like street gangs.

(insight: MILDRED is stubborn as hell)

Page 18: WILLOUGHBY at the hospital. Doctor drawing WILLOUGHBY’s blood. Says they’re with him about the billboard thing. But WILLOUGHBY is done with that shit. Wrenches the needle from his arm and tosses the vial at the wall. He is done waiting to die.

WILLOUGHBY breezes in to the police station, asks for HAYES’s case.

DIXON asks him which HAYES; ANGELA HAYES or MILDRED HAYES?

WILLOUGHBY says there is no MILDRED HAYES case. But DIXON tells him about the complaints.

From who? A lady with the funny eye... and a fat dentist.

WILLOUGHBY asks for ANGELA HAYES’s case.

WILLOUGHBY - A lady with the funny fucking eye. Jesus Christ.

Page 19: WILLOUGHBY looking at ANGELA HAYES’s case on the billboard road. DIXON is with him.

WILLOUGHBY asks him to lay off that WELBY guy.

WILLOUGHBY crouches, runs his fingers through the burnt soil there, looking like he might cry.

DIXON - What are you looking for, anyway? There’s nothing to look for.

Page 19-20: MILDRED’s on a dentist’s chair. GEOFFREY, a fat dentist, appears, with his instruments. MILDRED says her tooth was kinda waggling and the fat dentist says if it’s waggling it’s gonna have to come out. MILDRED asks for at least a Novocaine. He injects it, waits for a sec and takes his drill out. The dentist wants her to suffer somehow but MILDRED already grabbed his drill hand and aims the drill at his big fat thumbnail. It whirs into the nail.

Page 21: WILLOUGHBY and DIXON enter to the Gift Shop. WILLOUGHBY asks her if she went to dentist that day or not. MILDRED’s voice is unintelligible because of her Novocained mouth. She says no. Fat dentist wants to press charges, so they are going to have to bring MILDRED in.

Page 22: MILDRED is at Police Station in an interview room. DIXON guarding the door.

MILDRED asks DIXON, how’s it all going in the nigger-torturing business. DIXON corrects him. It’s ‘persons of color-torturing business’. And says he didn’t torture nobody. Blames her about saying that on TV. Because his MOMMA watches that station.

“She didn’t know anything about the torturing?” MILDRED says.

“No, she didn’t know anything about it. She’s against that kinda thing.”

WILLOUGHBY breezes in. “Who’s against what kinda thing?”

DIXON - My momma. Is against ‘Persons-of-color torturing’. She said ‘nigger-torturing’. I said you can’t say ‘nigger-torturing’ no more. You gotta say ‘Persons-of-color’ torturing. Right?”

WILLOUGHBY sends DIXON out and says: “Don’t gimme that look. If you got rid of every cop with vaguely racist leanings then you’d have three cops left and all o’ them are gonna hate the fags so what are ya gonna do, y’know?” (protects Dixon again)

Page 23: MILDRED denies that she drilled a hole through dentist’s big fat thumbnail.

But WILLOUGHBY doesn’t care about the dentist. Nobody cares about dentists. What he cares about or he is interested in is that tying her up in court so long that her hours at the gift shop are so shot to shit that she ain’t got a penny to pay for another month’s billboards. WILLOUGHBY’s interested in that. (insight: Willoughby’s plan.)

MILDRED says she has some dough put away. But WILLOUGHBY doesn’t buy it.

Page 24: She sold her ex-husband’s tractor trailer to pay for that month’s billboards.

Her ex-husband, CHARLIE, is still with the pretty little intern who works down at the zoo.

He doesn’t know about the billboards. He is an ex-cop and an ex-wife-beater.

WILLOUGHBY suddenly lets out a short sharp cough which spurts a spray of blood that hits MILDRED in the face. He didn’t mean to... And she knows it. (This is the strongest part of the story. We watch them as rivals, enemies. But for a moment like this, Mildred helps him. She doesn’t judge him or blame him. Neither enjoys this situation. She suffers as Willoughby does.)

Page 25: WILLOUGHBY is gurneyed into an ambulance past TOWNS-PEOPLE, DIXON beside him. WILLOUGHBY tells him to let her go. Shows him the right way.

(We keep drifting between Mildred’s rage and Willoughby’s goodness. We emotionally connect with Mildred but at the same time feel sorry for Willoughby. As Mildred does.)

After they take WILLOUGHBY away GEOFFREY the fat dentist and the lady with the funny eye come to MILDRED and tell her to take the billboards down.

Page 26: ROBBIE reveals his rage about the billboards to MILDRED. He didn’t read the police reports because he was depressed enough as it fucking was!

Page 27-30: FLASHBACK: MILDRED argues with her daughter, ANGELA. She doesn’t give her the car. ANGELA gets angry and says she hopes that she gets raped on the way.

MILDRED says she hopes that too with anger.

(I don’t know how the fuck I felt at that moment.)

Page 30: Doctors say WILLOUGHBY needs to stay at the hospital but he ain’t staying and ANNE ain’t arguing. (insight. Willoughby has no planning on his treatment.)

MILDRED tries to make her son laugh, takes a spoonful of milk and cereal, and she slings it straight to ROBBIE’s face.

ROBBIE says: “You... old... cunt.” (insight about their relationship)

MILDRED answers: I ain’t old, Robbie...

Film is all about the moments like these. It doesn’t miss a single beat.

Page 31-35: MILDRED’s ex-husband, CHARLIE, comes to her place with his nineteen year old girlfriend. He doesn’t approve of this billboard thing, we can tell.

Guess she wanted certain people’s minds kept on certain people’s jobs. She hadn’t heard a word from them in seven goddam months, but she heard an awful lot from them since she put those billboards up.

MILDRED - The more you keep a case in the public eye, the better your chances of getting it solved, it’s in all the guidebooks, Charlie.

5

MILDRED provokes him using his young girlfriend’s name. CHARLIE overturns the table violently and pins her to the wall about to beat her up. (ex-wife-beater)

All of a sudden ROBBIE places a knife against CHARLIE’s throat.

PENELOPE interrupts the moment by saying she needs to pee.

CHARLIE lets go of MILDRED and ROBBIE lowers the knife. ROBBIE rights the upturned table with help of CHARLIE. (insight. They’ve been there before. )

Billboards costs about the same as a tractor trailer.

ANGELA asked her father to move in with him before she died.

Page 35-36: DIXON’s Momma has been couching him. His Momma says he needs to fuck MILDRED over her friends.

MILDRED finds the shop shut. A handwritten note on it reads “I GOT ARRESTED! DENISE!” With a sad face.

Page 36-37: MILDRED comes to the Police Station. DIXON arrested her friend DENISE for possession of two marijuana cigarettes. Big ones. And wants her to take the billboards down.

Page 38: WILLOUGHBY and ANNE are having a day for themselves.

Page 39: MILDRED is fixing the flowers in pots at the billboards and out of nowhere a fawn

appears. She opens up to the fawn.

MILDRED - How comes you came up here outta nowhere, looking so pretty? You ain’t trying to make me believe in reincarnation or something, are ya? Well, you’re pretty, but you ain’t her. She got killed, and now she’ll be dead forever. I do thank you for coming up, though. If I had some food I’d give it ya, but I’ve only got some Doritos and I’d be scared they’d kill ya, they’re kinda pointy. Then where would we be?

Page 39-42: MILDRED is at WELBY’s office. RED is saying that the money she gave was the deposit so she is actually behind the payment. (Subtext: Red is changing his mind.) PAMELA interrupts with a mysterious envelope, full of banknotes. The note says money is to go towards the fund for MILDRED HAYES’s billboards. Signed, a friend.

Page 42-44: WILLOUGHBY tucks the kids in the bed. End of a fun day. ANNE is drunk. WILLOUGHBY and ANNE flirts. ANNE makes dick jokes. WILLOUGHBY needs to clean the horseshit.

WILLOUGHBY shovels the shit. Thinks of the day. “Oscar Wilde.”(the dick joke.) Then picks up a black hood on the outside of which he has pinned a note that reads “don’t open the bag.”

And shoots himself.

Page 44-45: ANNE sees the envelope. Montage over WILLOUGHBY’s note.

WILLOUGHBY didn’t kill himself because of the billboards. He killed himself to prevent his

family to see his sick days. He has a kind and gentle heart.

Page 46-48: All the cops mourning over the news. But DIXON is listening the Abba’s ‘Chiquitta’. Then one of the cops smashes the chair to pieces, DIXON takes the earphones out.

Shaken by the news, DIXON turns his focus to WELBY. He walks across street, smashes the glass door with his night-stick. Walks over to RED and clubs him in the face. WELBY goes down. Smashes the window with his night-stick, picks WELBY up and shoves him out of it. DIXON clubs PAMELA on the way and continues to walk back to the police station, passing a well-dressed black man, ABERCROMBIE, on his way.

“The fuck are you looking at?” DIXON says.

ABERCROMBIE lowers his coffee and we see his cop’s badge as he takes in the carnage on the street.

Page 48: MILDRED hears the news on the TV, as GABRIELLA (Who interviewed Mildred weeks back) speculates that maybe WILLOUGHBY took his own life because of the billboards.

Page 49: MILDRED drives ROBBIE to school, suddenly a can of coke hits the windscreen. MILDRED gets out of the car and kicks them in their crotches. ROBBIE thanks to her on his way to school for making his life worse.

Page 50-52: ABERCROMBIE enters and says he’s been sent down to take over from Chief Willoughby.

He walks to DIXON and asks what happened to his hands.

DIXON says he banged them up while he was throwing some guy out of a fucking window. Y’know, the usual.

ABERCROMBIE asks his badge and his gun. DIXON gives him his gun but can’t find his badge.

DIXON leaves.

Page 52-54: CROP-HAIRED GUY comes to the gift shop. MILDRED thinks he is a customer but he throws the glass rabbit to her. MILDRED asks him what does he want. He answers vaguely.

Maybe he is a friend of WILLOUGHBY’s or maybe... he was a friend of her daughter’s... Doorbell tinkles. CROP-HAIRED GUY turns to leave. GUY exits ANNE walks in, MILDRED thanks to her, she doesn’t know she is WILLOUGHBY’s wife.

ANNE gives her a letter from WILLOUGHBY and leaves.

Page 54-55: WILLOUGHBY’s letter for MILDRED.

First, he apologizes for dying without catching her daughter’s killer. He says he did care. But there are some cases where you never catch a break, then five years down the line some guy hears some other guy bragging about it in a bar-room or a jail-cell and the whole thing is wrapped up thru sheer stupidity. (set up)

Then he writes about the billboards saying it was a great fucking idea. They were like a chess move. Although, they had nothing to do with his dying. But he is sure everyone in town will assume that they did. So as a counter-move he decided to pay the next month’s rent.

Page 55-56: DIXON’s MOMMA asks him if he wants her to go down and talk to them.

“Jesus! Dixon doesn’t want that! Somebody sending their goddam mother down to talk to the goddam police, for Christ’s sakes. And say what?”

His MOMMA says she’ll want them to give his job back and get rid of that black guy. DIXON says: “Things have moved on in The South!” (maybe for the first time he admits himself that.)

DIXON starts arguing with his MOMMA. Doesn’t listen to her. DIXON is changing. Growing. Page 57-58: MILDRED SEES ALL THREE OF THE BILLBOARDS ON FIRE.

MILDRED grabs the car’s extinguisher.

ROBBIE goes to take the other one from their house.

MILDRED races towards the first billboard, spraying it all over. She puts out the first billboard, then sprints all the way to the second. It’s harder this time.

She starts climbing up it, putting out the fire bit by bit as she goes. and starts walking along it, spraying down along its length. It works, flames edge back, until tsss tsss, the extinguisher runs out of stuff.

Suddenly Robbie pulls up, jumps out of the car and starts in on the flames below her. MILDRED climbs back down. By the time she’s down, ROBBIE has the second billboard out but the distant third is still raging. MILDRED starts marching off towards it...

MILDRED storms back and tries to grab the extinguisher off him, but he won’t let it go. It’s paining her burnt hands terribly, but she keeps trying.

PAUSE. MILDRED makes one final effort. This time ROBBIE lets her take it. She strides off to the third billboard, totally engulfed in massive flames. He watches her start in on it, sighs, then heads off towards her, to try and help.

Page 58-59: LATER. The fire’s out, the billboards are smoldering. ABERCROMBIE comes over. MILDRED answers: “You can ask me all the questions you want if you take me down and arrest me.” (revealing the corruption level of Ebbing’s police station. Mildred expects anything from them.)

Page 59-60: MILDRED and ROBBIE see GABRIELLA and her news crew.

GABRIELLA talking to the camera about the burned out billboards and speculates whether this finally puts an end to the strange saga of THE THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EB...

MILDRED calling from the car... “This don’t put an end to shit, you fucking retard, this is just the fucking start, so why don’t you put that on your “Good Morning Missouri fucking Wake-Up Broadcast”, bitch!”

Page 60-62: His MOMMA asks DIXON if he knows anything about the fires. He doesn’t give a damn because he is not a cop now does he?

Telephone rings. DIXON answers. DESK SERGEANT says WILLOUGHBY left a letter for him. DIXON wants to go there right away but DESK SERGEANT asks him if he can come when everyone goes home. He can leave the keys to the police station this way. DIXON nods, so he won’t have to cry.

Page 62-66: At the police station, DIXON reads the letter with his headphones on.

WILLOUGHBY says he believes in him, deep down he is a decent man and he has got the makings of being a really good cop.

MILDRED, with backpack, checks to see no one’s watching then slips inside thru the taped up door of WELBY’s offices.

Telephone to her ear, backpack on table, broken window looking out on the dark police station across the street. It starts ringing but DIXON still has his headphones on so he can’t hear it.

WILLOUGHBY thinks DIXON is angry and he says as long as DIXON hold onto so much hate then he’s never going to become what WILLOUGHBY knows DIXON wanna become... a detective.

MILDRED lights the lighter, and we pan with her and finally see the FOUR MOLOTOV COCKTAILS she’s placed on the table. She quickly picks up and lights the first, moves to the window and launches it high out across the street. It explodes BELOW DIXON’S WINDOW, setting it and the whole wall alight.

WILLOUGHBY continues: what you need to become a detective... is Love. Because thru Love comes Calm, and thru calm comes Thought. And you need Thought to detect stuff sometimes, Jason. It’s kinda all you need.

MILDRED tosses the second Molotov out...

“You don’t even need a gun. And you definitely don’t need Hate. Hate never solved nothing... But Calm did. And Thought did. Try it. Try it just for a change. No-one’ll think you’re gay.”

MILDRED tosses the third Molotov out...

“And if they do, arrest ‘em for homophobia! Won’t they be surprised!”

Flames still leap outside DIXON’s window as DIXON, his back to it, keeps reading.

MILDRED tosses out the final Molotov...

“...But things are gonna change for you...”

the Molotov arcs up across the street... SMASHES IN THRU DIXON’S WINDOW...

DIXON finally notices this one, as it explodes behind him. He sees that the station door is on fire also, blocking his exit, and the ANGELA HAYES file on his desk on fire too. He grabs and pats it against himself, getting the flames out but getting petrol all over himself in the process.

DIXON looks around, checks a locked back door, and realizes there is no way out of the building other than thru his own the fiery broken window.

“Calm. Calm.” Dixon says.

Standing in front of the window, he looks down at the file, places it safely up inside his shirt, hugs it tightly to his chest, takes a few steps back, then makes a running leap, headfirst thru the flames and out the window.

DIXON lands on the sidewalk in a heap, his clothes all alight. He quickly pulls the case file out from under his shirt and tosses it as far away from the flames as he can. It lands on a clean spot, no flames touching it, which can’t be said for DIXON. He rolls around, trying to put himself out, but it’s just making it worse, he’s like a fireball...Across the street, MILDRED comes out of the WELBY building and sees him, horrified, just as JAMES turns a far corner and sees DIXON on fire and MILDRED in the doorway. He sprints over and beats out the flames with his hands and clothes but DIXON’s head, hands and body are badly charred. MILDRED turns away from him, horrified, and sees the case file lying there, and realizes what DIXON has done, as the sirens and blue lights of the AMBULANCE and FIREMEN arrive.

Page 66-67: Later. Fire almost out. ABERCROMBIE questions MILDRED and JAMES.

JAMES protects MILDRED by saying they were at his place and they are a couple. ABERCROMBIE moves off.

JAMES uses the opportunity for ask MILDRED out.

MILDRED - I’ll go out to dinner with ya. But I ain’t gonna fuck ya.

JAMES - Well, I ain’t gonna fuck you neither. (quietly) I guess.

Page 67-68: DIXON wheeled in by a NURSE to hospital room in which WELBY stays. His face is bandaged so WELBY doesn’t know he is DIXON.

RED asks him if he wants a glass of orange juice.

DIXON starts to cry saying sorry for throwing him out the window.

RED - I don’t care. And stop crying. The salt’ll just fuck up your wounds. DIXON - I thought salt was supposed to be good for wounds.

RED pours him a glass of orange juice and places it besides DIXON’s bed.

Page 68: JEROME comes at MILDRED’s place to offer her the set of the duplicate posters. She sees two big card rolls full of posters.

Page 69-70: MILDRED and ROBBIE sloshing up the posters.

JAMES is holding MILDRED’s ladder steady.

A car pulls up. DENISE gets out. She is out because Judge said the arrest report weren’t filled out right.

JEROME comes to MILDRED to ask about the last poster with WILLOUGHBY’s name on it, cuz him dead an’ all.

“Why not? He paid for it.” MILDRED says.

(Scene of putting back on the posters. Could’ve been a quick shot but no, not in Ebbing, Missouri.)

Page 70: Some weeks later. DIXON is better and sitting at the bar.

A truck pulls up outside. The CROP-HAIRED GUY and a male PAL enter and sit in the booth behind DIXON.

Page 71: MILDRED and JAMES at dinner at a nice restaurant. CHARLIE and PENELOPE enter and pass. CHARLIE smiling at the sight of MILDRED with a dwarf. MILDRED has a fleeting look of embarrassment which JAMES notices.

MILDRED - My ex-husband. And his nineteen year old girlfriend. JAMES - You wanna leave?

MILDRED - No, no. A deal’s a deal.

Page 71-74: Murmured conversation behind DIXON continues. CROP-HAIRED GUY tells his PAL a story about nine ten months ago. DIXON listens. CROP-HAIRED GUY continues about the raping story with his buddies. PAL asks “Was she hot?”

CROP-HAIRED GUY says, “After the gasoline kicked in she was hot.”

DIXON listening. He gets up and ambles past their booth, to get an idea of who’s talking. Continues on out of the bar, makes a note of the TRUCK’S LICENCE PLATE.

DIXON ambles past their booth and sits back in his booth.

GUY goes to the bar and turns to get a good look at DIXON, who’s just staring at his beer. GUY gets two more beers and returns to his own booth, staring at him the whole way. DIXON gets up, ambles to the bar, glancing at the GUY as he goes.

CROP-HAIRED GUY - Can I help you with something, man?

Pause. DIXON goes over and sits in beside PAL, nudging him over, facing the GUY. DIXON holds his hands up, back and front, so the GUY can see there’s nothing in them, and that he means no harm. DIXON reaches out with his empty right hand, slowly puts it behind GUY’s right ear, GUY flinching slightly, exchanging a glance with PAL. DIXON smiles, then quickly and deeply rakes his long fingernails down the GUY’s cheek, leaving a couple of deep bloody lines there.

GUY and PAL spring at DIXON, pummelling him horrifically, reopening all his wounds. DIXON doesn’t fight back at all, in fact he just clutches his fists to his chest to protect them. The two keep going and going, stamping on him sickeningly.

JEROME stands up, saying that he is a cop.

CROP-HAIRED GUY asks his badge DIXON says he lost it.

GUY kicks DIXON viciously in the head and exits with PAL, leaving DIXON lying there. Unmoving.

Page 74-77: After JAMES goes to the toilet, CHARLIE comes over to say they coulda double- dated.

MILDRED starts to explain herself why she is having a dinner with a midget. CHARLIE says she doesn’t have to.

JAMES comes back to see CHARLIE has taken his seat.

CHARLIE says sorry for putting billboards on fire. MILDRED just stares at him. CHARLIE continues about anger, PENELOPE said to him anger begets greater anger.

JAMES asks if PENELOPE said ‘begets’ or not. CHARLIE says yes and then returns to his table.

MILDRED wants to go home saying they can do the dinner another time.

JAMES doesn’t want it because she was embarrassed the whole time being with a midget. He knows he is not a catch but who the hell is she? She’s that Billboard Lady who never ever smiles, who never has a good word to say about anybody, and who, in the evening times, SETS FUCKING FIRE TO POLICE STATIONS! And HE’S the one who’s not a catch?! JAMES leaves her saying, “I didn’t have to come and hold your ladder!”

MILDRED takes her wine bottle and slowly walks over to CHARLIE’s table, looking like about to make a scene. Asks PENELOPE if she really told him “anger begets greater anger” or not.

She says she did. She read it from a book about polio... No, polo.

MILDRED looks at them for a moment and places the bottle on the table for them to finish. (this scene is morally saying something maybe for the first time in the script which is this obvious. MILDRED changed her behavior towards things. Learned that the “anger begets greater anger”.)

Page 77: DIXON staggers in, blood-soaked, past his horrified MOMMA.

DIXON gets to the bathroom, slams door behind him, still clutching his right hand to his chest. He opens the cabinet mirror left-handed, rifles thru shelves, finds an unopened tweezer set, then finds a small clean glass vial, a blank label on it. He sits on the bath and very slowly uses the tweezers to scrape out all the CROP-HAIRED GUY’S BLOOD AND SKIN trapped underneath the fingernails of his right hand, and carefully places each amount inside the vial. Once all five fingernails are done he caps the vial and, pen in shaky hand, writes on its label ‘H5T371, IDAHO’.

Page 77-78: Knock at the door. MILDRED goes to get it. Looks thru the spyhole. SPYHOLE POV: Convex DIXON, new scars, bandages and a beanie.

MILDRED sitting on swing-set, DIXON with beanie in hand, a repeat of Willoughby and his hat from long ago.

DIXON tells her about the guy but doesn’t wanna get her hopes up. He got his DNA and the cops checking it as they speak. He heard them talking about something that he did to a girl in the middle of last year. And it sounded like what happened to Angela. But he doesn’t wanna get her hopes up. All they can do is hope, as DIXON’s MOMMA says.

Page 79-80: In the burnt-out office, DIXON is sitting down. ABERCROMBIE closes the office door and sits across from him. And says he wasn’t the guy. No match to the DNA, no matches to any other crimes of this nature, to any crimes at all, in fact. And his record is clean. Maybe he was just bragging. At the time of Angela’s death, he wasn’t even in the country.

DIXON says, “he might not be their guy, but he still done something shitty.” DIXON takes out his badge, shows it to ABERCROMBIE.

Page 80-81: DIXON dials a number on the phone, which he then carries into his MOM’s bedroom, sitting on her bed. He has a shotgun in his hand.

MILDRED trudging the dirt at the billboards, replacing the dead pot plants. At the third billboard, her cellphone rings. DIXON on the phone, says, he wasn’t the guy.

MILDRED crumples down beside the burnt patch of ground. She cries a quiet while, lets out a long, cold breath, then picks the phone back up.

DIXON - I’m sorry I got your hopes up.

MILDRED - It’s alright. At least I had a day of hoping. Which is more than I’ve had for a while. I’d better go.

DIXON idly taps the shotgun against his lips saying he is not their rapist, but he is a rapist, though. He is sure of that. He got his license plate. He knows where he lives.

MILDRED - Where’s he live?

DIXON (O.S.) - Lives in Idaho.

MILDRED - That’s funny. I’m driving to Idaho in the morning.”

DIXON (O.S.) - Want some company?”

MILDRED - (pause) “Sure.”

Page 82-83: Next day, MILDRED puts a thermos, sandwiches and a pack of Doritos in the car. DIXON places a shotgun wrapped in a blanket inside too. MILDRED looks at it lying there. They exchange a look, get in the car and drive.

The burned backs of the billboards framed along the roadside, as the car heads away towards the horizon.

As the car rolls along the road, they’re both quiet, nervous. They drive in silence a while. MILDRED - Hey Dixon?

DIXON - Yeah?

MILDRED - I need to tell you something. (pause) It was me who burned down the police station.

DIXON - Well, who the Hell else would it have been?

She smiles. They drive on in silence.

MILDRED - Dixon?

DIXON - Yep?

MILDRED - You sure about this?

DIXON - About killing this guy? (pause) Not really. You? MILDRED - (pause) “Not really.

They continue on.

MILDRED (CONT’D) - I guess we can decide along the way.” DIXON nods. She smiles. They drive on.

END