“Excuse me, this is bullshit”: the movie Frances McDormand wouldn’t shoot until it was rewritten
When Frances McDormand talks, you listen. On film, she’s made us laugh in Fargo, cry in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and want to move into a mobile home in Nomadland. Behind the scenes, she has produced the likes of Women Talking and the aforementioned Nomadland, which scooped the ‘Best Picture’ prize at the 2021 Oscars. In short, she’s the best.
One of McDormand’s films that isn’t talked about much is 2002’s City by the Sea. A crime drama, the movie is about a cop who must confront his troubled family history once his son becomes involved in a murder case. Robert De Niro plays the embattled officer, with McDormand as his girlfriend, who gets caught in the middle of his strife. It didn’t get great reviews, but if McDormand is to be believed, it could have been even worse.
Speaking to the BBC while promoting the film, McDormand discussed how the script for City by the Sea, which Michael Caton-Jones directed, was nowhere near ready when they started making it. “It was like this rambling blueprint full of sub-text and long monologues that were all exposition,” she said. “In rehearsal and pre-production, I kept saying, “Excuse me, this is really bullshit,” and everybody kept going, ‘We know what you mean.'”
The screenplay was written by Ken Nixon, who had previously penned the Liv Tyler coming-of-age drama Inventing the Abbotts. When asked if she liked interfering with Nixon’s work, McDormand replied “No I don’t, I like it to be done. I’m not a writer, and I don’t think most actors are.” She added that, while De Niro is more of an improviser in his films, “This one erred a little too much to that side, from my point of view.”
City by the Sea did not go down well with film fans. While its two leads were praised for their reliably solid performances, the story was criticised for being full of cop movie cliches and overly dramatic dialogue. It turns out McDormand was right on the money, which is why you should always pay attention to what she has to say.
When asked if her marriage to one-half of the Coen brothers was a help or a hindrance to her career, the Almost Famous star said, “I think I’m really fortunate in that I have done some of my best work with the Coens and other directors have seen it.” In reality, it was she who gave directing tips to her husband and not the other way around. “Because Joel only sees other filmmakers in social situations and not at work, like I do, he’s always asking me how they direct.”
The most recent collaboration between the couple, who have been married since 1984, was 2021’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. McDormand played the scheming wife of Denzel Washington’s title character, and the movie was much better received than City by the Sea. It’s unclear whether or not she called her husband’s script “bullshit”.
