When a white supremacist cop is confronted by billboards calling out his chief’s neglect of a rape and murder case, he must silence the victim’s bitter mother and return peace to the town.

I tilt toward savnih0’s version for this film because the grieving mother is the protagonist.  Is she ever.  Frances McDormand as the grieving actress won the Oscar for best performance by an actress in a leading role; Sam Rockwell as the deeply flawed cop won the Oscar for the best performance in a supporting role.

>>>because he has the greatest journey, and the story is structured more clearly around him.

I suggest that the mother being less or more a steadfast character is secondary to determining who gets getting top billing in a logline.  The more fundamental question to ask to determine who deserves the top billing is :  who is in the driver’s seat of the plot?

Answer: the grieving mother.

Further, the cop being a White supremacist is a character flaw extraneous to the central dramatic problem of the plot.  If the grieving mother were a Native American or Black or Latina, then it would be germane; it would be a flaw he must overcome to help her.  But she’s a White woman.  He doesn’t have to overcome his White supremacy to help her.

Finally, I’m not so sure that the screenwriter organized the entire story line around the very defective cop.  His role only becomes central to the denouement when he flips in the 2nd half of the film to become an ally of the grieving mother, not an adversary.

Even if that is the case, it’s not what got the script sold, the movie made.  What got the movie made, the A-list talent attached, the financing, the green light was the story hook.  And the story hook is that a grieving mother rents 3 billboards to provoke the local police to find her daughter’s murder.  As featured in savinh0’s version.

My thinking on  loglining has evolved such that I think writers ought to write two loglines for every script.  One to organize the script;. a second one to market the script.  The first logline focuses on the primary plot elements (inciting incident, main character, objective goal, yada-yada); the second focuses on the story hook.  The first logline describes the steak; the second logline sells the sizzle.

The loglining strategy that Karel presents, aka: the formula, is a necessary first step to writing a script. I do not disparage or discount it’s utility and importance.  To repeat: it’s a necessary first step.  I wish more people would study the formula page, really study it, not just give it a cursory read, before posting loglines.

But I also believe that when it comes time to pitch the finished script, to promote it in the marketplace, a writer ought to cover it with a second logline that features the hook.   A first logline to prepare the script, a second logline to promote it.

Not either/or, but both.

My 2.5 cents worth.