Tossup
American characters in a trilogy by a director with this surname include “The Writer,” played by M. Emmet Walsh, and an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle. A director with this surname has included rabbits in all his films since his debut short, in which one is decapitated on a train. In a shot by a director with this surname, a dark figure looms out of focus behind a man waving goodbye to a boat from atop a cliff. In a 2014 film by a director with this surname, a priest hears a confession from a man who vows to kill him in one week. “Babbybobby” and “Johnnypateenmike” link an orphan to a Robert (*) Flaherty documentary in a play by an author with this surname. An author with this surname scrapped the final play in a trilogy about the Cripple and Lieutenant of a set of islands, but riffed on its title for a film in which a fiddler ends his friendship with the owner of a pet donkey. For 10 points, give this surname of the Irish-English director of The Banshees of Inisherin. ■END■
ANSWER: McDonagh (“muck-DOH-nuh”) [or Martin McDonagh; or John Michael McDonagh] (The films mentioned in the lead-in are John Michael McDonagh’s films Calvary and The Guard. While filming The Banshees of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh lived in the same house Flaherty lived in while filming The Man of Aran.)
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= Average correct buzz position
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