Antti Alanen: Film Diary: Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese: Killers of the Flower Moon (US 2023). The Osage-Catholic wedding with Lily Gladstone (Mollie Burkhart), Robert De Niro (William Hale) and Leonardo DiCaprio (Ernest Burkhart).

AA: A historical epic, a genocide tragedy, a detective story. In his last two films (The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon), Martin Scorsese has perfected his grasp of the historical genre, combining epic grandeur with psychological depth in a cast of complex characters. Formidable production values have been made possible by generous funding of the streaming giants Netflix and Apple TV.

Visually, Killers of the Flower Moon is stunning, and although made by Apple TV, it should be experienced on a cinema screen. The cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto and the production designer Jack Fish create an unending series of setpieces which immerse us in the foreign country known as the past. A good opportunity to revisit the visual highlights is the IMDb Media Viewer gallery of 854 photos from the movie.

In charge of editing is Scorsese's trusted partner Thelma Schoonmaker. In his recent epics, Scorsese creates something rare and original. His sometimes stately objectivity has an affinity with Visconti's historical films. The subject could not be more inflammatory, but the distanced approach elevates the film from being a merely partisan statement, importantly in our times of divisive identity politics.

It would be an understatement to call the leading male characters anti-heroes. They are forces of evil, perhaps even irredeemably so, yet with deep complexities. Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a WWI veteran. He is a naive, simple and stupid guy, an alcoholic, who becomes a stooge for his uncle William Hale. He falls genuinely in love with Mollie, but at the same time participates in the systematic destruction of her tribe and family - and herself. He perhaps never completely understands the extremity of his betrayal.

William Hale (Robert De Niro) is the "King" of the community. He is happy to play the great benefactor of the Osage Nation and the whole community, but in fact he has a systematic agenda of buying oil headrights from the Osage and hastening the process with methodical contract killings. Mollie, already almost lethally poisoned by Ernest, manages to meet President Calvin Coolidge in Washington and alert him about the genocide. The Bureau of Investigation (BOI), precursor of FBI, already under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, takes the plea seriously and exposes the conspiracy.

Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart plays the leading female role with strength and dignity. Hers is a situation of existential agony. She is not naive, and she and her friends openly discuss the white males in terms of animal predators. But white men are worse than their worst nightmares. To live in an atmosphere of such extreme lying and betrayal is devastating. The character of Mollie grows into an embodiment of the Indigenous American experience.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

PRODUCTION NOTES:

At the turn of the 20th century, oil brought a fortune to the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world overnight. The wealth of these Native Americans immediately attracted white interlopers, who manipulated, extorted, and stole as much Osage money as they could before resorting to murder. Based on a true story and told through the improbable romance of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), “KilMlers of the Flower Moon” is an epic western crime saga, where real love crosses paths with unspeakable betrayal. Also starring Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is directed by Academy Award winner Martin Scorsese from a screenplay by Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese, based on David Grann’s best-selling book.

PREMIERE DATE: Exclusively in theaters beginning Friday, October 6 before streaming globally on Apple TV+.

CREDITS

CAST: Leonardo DiCaprio

Lily Gladstone

Jesse Plemons

Robert De Niro

Tantoo Cardinal

Cara Jade Myers

JaNae Collins

Jillian Dion

William Belleau

Louis Cancelmi

Tatanka Means

Michael Abbott Jr.

Pat Healy

Scott Shepherd

Jason Isbell

Sturgill Simpson

DIRECTED BY: Martin Scorsese

SCREENPLAY BY: Eric Roth

Martin Scorsese

BASED ON THE NON-FICTION BOOK BY: David Gann

PRODUCERS: Martin Scorsese

Dan Friedkin

Bradley Thomas

Daniel Lupi

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Leonardo DiCaprio

Rick Yorn

Adam Somner

Marianne Bower

Lisa Frechette

John Atwood

Shea Kammer

Niels Juul

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Rodrigo Prieto

EDITOR: Thelma Schoonmaker

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Jack Fisk

COSTUME DESIGNER: Jacqueline West

MUSIC BY: Robbie Robertson

STUDIO: Apple Studios

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

An author and investigative journalist of wide acclaim, New Yorker staff writer David Grann illuminates forgotten histories with deep research and lucidity. His 2009 breakthrough book, “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon,” about missing British explorer Percy Fawcett, became a bestseller, then a 2016 film by director James Gray. In his shorter pieces, Grann has chronicled the Aryan Brotherhood, felonious politician James Traficant, charming career criminal Forrest Tucker, and a legendary giant squid (along with its dogged hunter).

Grann’s 2017 masterpiece, “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” is the rarest of things: a distinctly American story of crime and racism that speaks both to a nation’s past and to its future. Set mainly in the 1920s during the twilight of the Old West, it’s a chronicle of land-grabbing and the dawn of a justice force with its own inherent problems.

At the heart of Grann’s book is the Osage Nation, the Native American tribe driven westward from its original homeland in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys, through Missouri and Kansas, and eventually relocated by the American government into so-called “Indian Territory” in Oklahoma, where, by the late 1800s, they were concentrated.

After oil was discovered on Osage land in 1894, the tribe became fantastically wealthy, retaining the mineral rights and leasing its fields to developers. Hungry speculators swarmed into the territory. Exploitation ran high, not only in crime-riddled boomtowns but under the authorization of the U.S government, which implemented a crooked, baldly racist system of “guardianship” whereby Native American fortunes were managed by (white) custodians skimming millions in profits.

Worse, during the so-called Reign of Terror in the early 1920s, dozens of Osage were murdered under mysterious circumstances — including slow poisoning — so that their lucrative “headrights” (including shares of oil rights) could be inherited by interlopers marrying into families for ulterior motives. In 1923, the FBI initiated an investigation at the request of the Osage, resulting in one of the bureau’s earliest homicide cases. But the damage had already been done.

“It was definitely a revelation,” says actor Leonardo DiCaprio of Grann’s book, noting the proximity of events to the two-day 1921 Tulsa race massacre, another horrific incident of whiteon-minority violence that occurred less than 30 minutes away. (Sadly, it’s taken a century for both injustices to become widely known.) “Whereas the Tulsa massacre was an outright carpet bombing of an entire community of African Americans, this was much more Machiavellian and lasted many years. There are still repercussions of it to this day.”

Optioning the rights to Grann’s manuscript in 2016 before publication, DiCaprio’s team brought the project to director Martin Scorsese for a potential sixth collaboration after such triumphs as “Gangs of New York,” “The Departed” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” “When I read David Grann’s book, I immediately started seeing it — the people, the setting, the action — and knew I had to make it into a movie,” Scorsese says. “And I was excited to be reuniting with Leo to bring this story to the screen.”

But Scorsese was, at that time, deep in the editing phase of his long-gestating passion project, the spiritual epic “Silence,” plus he had the massive production of “The Irishman” already on deck. He wouldn’t be able to sit down with screenwriter Eric Roth until January 2017, when they would begin working in earnest.

The director remembers being intrigued by Grann’s title, and by the possibility, suggested by executive producer Rick Yorn (Scorsese and DiCaprio’s representative), that this could finally be his “western.” Scorsese is effusive in his love of the genre, cherished since boyhood.

"I always wanted to make a western, but I never did,” he offers. "I loved many of the westerns I saw when I was growing up and I still do love them—that includes the Roy Rogers films, which were basically made for children, and the more complex films that came in the late 40s and 50s. I responded to the pictures built around the traditional myths of the western, the myths of the culture, more than the psychological westerns. But the point of knowing film history is never to perpetuate or repeat, but to be inspired and evolve. Those films nourished me as a filmmaker, but they also inspired me to go deeper into the real history.”

INJUSTICE IN THE HEARTLAND

"Killers of the Flower Moon,” based on a shameful episode in American history, wouldn’t fit the traditional mold. Scorsese and Roth’s adaptation of “Killers of the Flower Moon” started out with a different hero: Thomas Bruce White Sr., the heroic Texas Ranger and FBI agent who solved the Osage murder case.

“I wanted to explore it,” Scorsese recalls, “to start working with Eric and see what kind of a movie we could make. But what that meant was that, from 2017 to 2020, while we were shooting “The Irishman,” we went through every aspect of that story from the point of view of the FBI and Tom White’s character, including some aspects of the history of the Texas Rangers. It all hinged on Tom White. We came at the story from every possible angle, with Tom White as the main character.”

Credit, then, is owed to Scorsese, Roth and DiCaprio for eventually realizing that a pivot was needed.

“Why are we making a film about Tom White that’s really about the Osage?” the director remembers wondering. “In effect, what you have is: He gets off a train, we see his boots, we tilt up, there he is in his Stetson hat. Walks into town and he doesn’t say a word. And we’ve seen that before.”

Scorsese worried that the role of White would be too limiting for DiCaprio. An early informal read of the screenplay draft — the characters voiced by Roth, DiCaprio, Scorsese’s daughter, a few other handy people — clarified their instinct to make a change.

“I don’t mean to denigrate the police procedural,” the director says, “but after this reading, a week later, Leo came to me and he said, ‘Where’s the heart of this thing?’”

DiCaprio remembers their roadblock in similar terms. “It took a long time to perfect,” he says, “for Eric, Marty and me to gain the Osage perspective and not make it just an FBI story of investigation. You would read the book and realize it works beautifully, but we ran the risk of telling yet another white-savior story about an FBI agent who comes in and saves the day. It could have fallen into that really easily. David Grann was always very forthright in saying, ‘Look, if you're going to do a movie about this, it's important to understand the Osage role in all of this.’”

The work took years, all the principles juggling other commitments in tandem: DiCaprio shifted to Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Roth plunged into the streamlining of Denis Villeneuve’s epic two-part “Dune,” and Scorsese wrangled the logistics of “The Irishman.”

But a solution eventually presented itself. It came directly from the court transcripts and Grann’s retelling of the Osage murder trial itself, dramatically shaped by Roth. On the stand was Ernest Burkhart, a shifty World War I veteran who found work in the oil fields of Fairfax, Oklahoma. Burkhart was testifying to his participation in a criminal conspiracy devised by his uncle: a plot that had him marrying into a wealthy Osage family, who’s complicit in murdering off his wife’s sisters, brother-in-law, cousin and even her mother, all with the goal of inheriting her headrights. Mollie, the wife, was next.

“That was the emotional moment for us,” DiCaprio recalls, “so complex, so dark, so fascinating from a character perspective — how these two people stayed together even after this trial. Eventually, they separated. But what Marty does so well is bring a humanity to conflicted, notso-savory characters. That’s what needed to be the focus of the movie, not an outsider's investigation into whodunnit.”

For Scorsese, situating the drama as a story of personal betrayal was a doorway he needed to walk through to make “Killers of the Flower Moon” his own. “Ernest and Mollie were the key,” he says. “It’s all based on trust and love, and we see that being compromised and betrayed. And what’s the motivating factor? Always wanting more: more land, more money. I’m drawn to this subject for whatever reason. It may go back to the roots of my culture, where I come from.”

Scorsese found clues in the court transcripts. “You have a transcript of Ernest being deposed,” says the director, “and he gives his name, says he has no job, says — I’m paraphrasing — ‘I stay in the pool room. ’Now I grew up with people who stayed in the pool room. Take a young guy who likes to dress up. Every now and then, he robs people, fools around with other women. I think we can build on that character - a weak character. He can’t confront or he won’t confront his uncle, those around him.”

Script-wise, the floodgates had opened. Scorsese realized they had the hard part licked. “I knew we’d get something,” he says. “We’re on track now, I feel it, because the heart is there: Ernest and Mollie. Who Ernest is, we’ll create. We’ll find out based on what people tell us, people who knew him.”

FINDING KILLERS: PRINCIPAL CASTING

Challenged and motivated by the role of Ernest Burkhart, DiCaprio committed himself to finding a footing for the character. “He assimilated himself into the Osage culture and became very much a chameleon,” the actor says of Burkhart. “We had a lot of meetings with members of the Osage community and they were incredibly helpful. We had some great advisers — that was a deep dive.”

Whenever possible, DiCaprio sought firsthand perspectives, sometimes from actual descendants and relatives of his character. Even so, he found himself approaching one of the most complex and conflicted acting jobs of his career. Burkhart arrives in Oklahoma wounded from the war, unable to perform heavy labor, and something of a dupe, naively dangled as bait by his uncle to the single Mollie. After he becomes complicit in the conspiracy, he still feels his love is genuine.

“Leo and I got very excited about creating Ernest as a character,” Scorsese says, “and at the same time, [casting director] Ellen Lewis came in and we checked out some possible actresses for Mollie.”

Quickly, both DiCaprio and Scorsese found themselves resonating with Native American actress Lily Gladstone, who was, at the time, coming off her quietly captivating breakout performance as Jamie, a lonely rancher in Kelly Reichardt’s Montana-set “Certain Women.”

“We had a Zoom meeting with her and immediately afterward, Marty was like, ‘She's it,’” DiCaprio remembers. “She has not only this incredible grace, but, being Native American herself, Blackfeet, there was a lot of her perspective in the movie. It's very rare for Marty not to have follow-up meetings or even an audition. He just saw it in her, in her eyes, her soul, and of course, her previous work.”

Gladstone remembers their initial meetings as the start of a respectful collaboration that evolved carefully over time (and many drafts).

“Years before we actually shot it, my initial worry was that Mollie was going to be a tertiary character,” the actress recalls. “And that kind of broke my heart because you can’t tell this story without going into who the Osage people were, how they were so exploited. But both Marty and Leo weren’t interested in telling that story. Bless Leo for wanting to play — as he’s so gifted at doing — the duality in one character. And Marty’s so interested in that. That’s what happens when you grow up Catholic, trust me. The entire notion of good and evil resting inside of you. It’s drilled in pretty early.”

The actress identifies Catholicism as a key to her understanding of Mollie, who was reportedly devout. It was also a much-discussed subject during her early conversations with Scorsese. Intriguingly, Gladstone says her first contact with the filmmaker’s work was 1997’s “Kundun.” “There are a lot of parallels you can draw between American Indians and disenfranchised, displaced Tibetans,” she says.

DiCaprio remembers Gladstone as being drawn to Mollie’s inner conflicts, particularly the character’s sense of self-destruction, even when she’s flirting with Ernest. “She brought so much depth and awareness to Mollie that wasn’t there before,” he says. “She’s skeptical of Ernest, and she brings up the idea of the coyote, the trickster. Her calling me out and saying ‘Coyote wants money’ — she was such an incredibly open and courageous partner. Even though she's not Osage, Lily immersed herself in that culture. We really looked to her as a beacon in the storytelling as well. She was definitely a muse to the both of us, Marty and myself, in making this movie.”

"It was so interesting to see the effect that her presence and her silent reactions had on Leo, and on the development of his character: it really helped define the relationship between Mollie and Ernest," says Scorsese. "For me, exploring that emotional territory with Lily and Leo was quite an eye-opening experience, and an enriching one. Her silences, as Mollie, were often more powerful than her words—what she didn’t say, what she withheld, spoke even more eloquently than her words."

Speaking of muses and longtime collaborators, “Killers of the Flower Moon” marks Scorsese’s tenth feature with Robert De Niro, here cast as Ernest’s cattle-farming uncle, William “King” Hale, the chief architect of the Reign of Terror. Though ultimately convicted of murder, Hale is a mass of contradictions: an extortionist and intimidator but also someone who truly believes himself to be a friend to the Osage, the “most beautiful people in the world,” he calls them.

“It’s very complicated,” Scorsese says. “He’s like a prophet. He believes their time has come: ‘I’ll help them. I’ll ease them into their graves. I’ll make it easier for them. Civilizations come and go. ’But the point is that he did like them. Also, from what I understand, at Bill Hale’s funeral back in the ’60s, there were some Osage who attended. So it’s not as simple as villain and hero.”

For DiCaprio, reuniting with De Niro thirty years after “This Boy’s Life,” the circumstances are humbling. “The first film I got to do, which started my career, was because of De Niro. He chose me for that role and, ironically, it was an abusive stepfather, not unlike Hale. Here I was, getting to work with Bob again, and “Killers” was almost an evolution of the same dynamic, weirdly. We must have had ten meetings about how that relationship ends. We kept stripping it away to the truth of who these people were.”

While the role of FBI agent Tom White had changed, the part still gave Oscar nominee Jesse Plemons a chance to shine. White is content to listen and take notes while his prey snares itself in a trap of its own devising.

Plemons explains, “The challenge was to accept: Okay, I have this ridiculously upstanding symbol of morality and justice that I'm playing, and I’m trying to also make him human.” He says his scenes with De Niro were their own form of nourishment. “It was so much fun working with someone like him. There were subtle changes each time, and that's how I like to work. There's a lot that's happening beneath the surface that's not being said.”

Even the script’s smaller roles went to powerhouse actors. John Lithgow and recently minted Oscar winner Brendan Fraser play dueling attorneys during the final stretch. “Directors who are completely consumed by the work — he's the epitome of that,” Lithgow says of Scorsese. “I've worked with a few of those directors. You'll do anything for them.” Adds Fraser, “When you work with Scorsese, he makes everyone feel important.”

As impressive as the assembled cast was, it was time, before a single frame was shot, to make a prominent place for the Osage themselves, onscreen and off.

LISTENING TO THE LAND: OSAGE PARTICIPATION AND BLESSING

Cultural collision has been a theme running through Scorsese’s remarkable body of work, and it lies at the core of “Killers of the Flower Moon.” With its screenplay still in development, preliminary plans for production took shape as several crucial decisions were made.

One was to shoot the film on location in Oklahoma on the Osage reservation, in the very towns and communities where the Reign of Terror played out a century earlier. Another decision Scorsese made was to enlist the full cooperation of the Osage Nation itself in the process of making the film. In reaching out to the Osage, Scorsese would learn their history, culture, tradition and concerns, listen to their stories, hear their dreams, and engage with the community at every stage of the production. Furthermore, he insisted the Osage people be treated throughout with regard and respect, ensuring that their story would be told in a manner that was authentic and truthful.

Scorsese and his team traveled to the Osage reservation in the spring of 2019 to scout locations and to meet directly with the Osage community as a first step in the making of the film. A conversation was arranged between Scorsese and Geoffrey Standing Bear, the Osage Nation’s Principal Chief. A deep connection was made.

“It was a great two-and-a-half hours,” says Chief Standing Bear. “I told him my concerns. I didn’t want the Osage shown as just a bunch of bodies lying around. We were hoping the history and culture would be accurately represented in his movie. Mr. Scorsese was so respectful in the way he and his people came to us. And he pointed out some of the movies he had made, in particular ‘Silence, ’in which the cultures of Christian missionaries and 17th-century Japan were presented in a serious and respectful manner, and that was so encouraging.”

After the meeting, the Gray Horse Osage community hosted a dinner for Scorsese and his filmmaking team, a significant occasion at which over a hundred tribal members attended, many speaking about family members murdered during the Reign of Terror. As Osage Nation Congress member Brandy Lemon (later, the liaison between the Osage community and the film) recalls, “Mr. Scorsese went around and shook the hand of every single Osage who had attended.”

Marianne Bower broadened her role as researcher, connecting with Osage consultants and the community at large and effectively becoming the point person between Scorsese, his creative and production teams, and the Osage community. This opened the way for an ongoing dialogue on research, cultural and historical matters that continued throughout production and then postproduction.

Locations were being scouted, sets were under construction and casting was moving forward when COVID-19 struck. Activity screeched to a halt and plans for filming were temporarily suspended. It was during this enforced hiatus that Scorsese fine-tuned the story of Ernest and Mollie and reworked sections of the script. A new start date was set for spring 2021.

Work came back to life with renewed vigor and continued apace on three parallel tracks: the production team returned to Oklahoma’s Osage County to finalize locations; construction resumed on sets; and the casting process took up where it left off. A central principle emerged. Whenever possible, Osage characters in “Killers” would be played by an Osage actor, and if that were not feasible (as in the case of Lily Gladstone), every Osage role would be filled by a Native American. All the Osage roles in the film are played by Native Americans.

William Belleau (“The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”) was cast as Henry Roan, an Osage with ties to Mollie; Tatanka Means (“Saints & Strangers”) was signed as the Native American federal agent John Wren; the distinguished Canadian actor Tantoo Cardinal (“Dances with Wolves,” “Legends of the Fall”) who is of Cree and Métis heritage joined the ensemble as matriarch Lizzie, Mollie’s mother; and Cara Jade Myers (“This is Us”), JaNae Collins (“Reservation Dogs”) and Jillian Dion (“Legion”) would play Mollie’s three sisters, Anna, Reta and Minnie, respectively.

Scorsese and his casting team held an open call throughout the state of Oklahoma with the result that several Osage actors were cast in key roles: Yancey Red Corn makes his motion picture debut as the Osage Chief Bonnicastle; Everett Waller plays Paul Red Eagle, the Chief’s associate; Talee Redcorn is the Osage leader; and Desiree Storm Brave Jones and Elisha Pratt portray the Osage couple Joseph and Bertha Bigheart.

In all, more than 44 roles were filled by Osage actors, not including the hundreds who worked as background players. Yancey Red Corn, a former Osage attorney-turned-actor, says he’s been a Scorsese fan since the age of 12, when he first saw “Raging Bull.” When he learned about the casting call, he couldn’t resist. “I thought, why not? It’s Scorsese. I went through the audition for the heck of it. What are the odds? But I got callbacks and then, finally, they offered me the role.”

As pre-production gained momentum for a mid-April start, Scorsese, DiCaprio, and key members of the crew met face-to-face with prominent members of the Osage community including Chief Standing Bear, consulting producer Chad Renfro (who had been named Ambassador from the Nation to the film) and several Elders. The meeting was convened for the filmmakers to explain their approach to the story directly to the representative Osage Elders, as well as to hear any concerns.

The meeting was held at Woolaroc, an Oklahoma cultural center and museum outside the town of Bartlesville. Scorsese spoke first. He talked about the film’s structure, which would feature a prologue based on the opening section of “A Pipe for February,” a novel by the Osage writer Charles H. Red Corn that depicts a sacred ritual performed at a time of great change for the traditional Osage community. Scorsese explained that this sequence would be intercut with newsreel footage showing how white culture viewed the Osage at the time when its oil wealth skyrocketed.

Scorsese stressed that his film would make it clear that there was a much wider system of killing Osage for their money and property than the one William Hale had orchestrated. “The Osage have a rich culture,” the director said. “The more we learn, the more we will add layers to the scenes.”

Elders from the Osage community also spoke at the meeting, sharing their concerns, stories and thoughts with the film team, many being descendants of people directly affected by the Reign of Terror. Osage elder Marvin Stepson explained his strong connection to the story; his grandfather, Bill Stepson, was an Osage murdered during the Reign of Terror and is depicted in the film. He offered the filmmakers his encouragement, which was significant.

“You have a difficult task in front of you,” Stepson said. “But I’m sure you will tell a great story, and that’s what we want to see — a great story, to tell the truth as best as it can be told.”

DiCaprio asked several questions that sparked conversation. When the meeting adjourned, Scorsese and DiCaprio expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to hear from the community.

The meeting, a coming together of two worlds and an example of the mutual respect between the filmmakers and the Osage Nation, had achieved its purpose. And the state of Oklahoma chimed in: “We’re thrilled that this unique story will be filmed where it took place, in Osage County, and welcome the production to experience our innovative communities and imaginative people to bring this story to audiences around the world,” said Oklahoma Lt. Governor Matt Pinnell, Secretary of Tourism and Branding. “I couldn’t be more proud to have our state showcased.”

Efforts to include the Osage people in the filmmaking process didn’t end with casting. Working closely with the state’s Film and Television Commission, the production began hiring Osage artisans and craftspeople to work in the various departments of the film. The artist Addie Roanhorse was brought on to assist with production design, and the Osage cultural consultant Julie O’Keefe became an indispensable addition to the wardrobe department.

Osage elder John Williams became the Osage cultural consultant. Vann Bighorse, director of the Osage Nation Language program, was also tapped to work, overseeing the translation and use of the Osage language in the film, assigning Janis Carpenter, Christopher Coté and Braxton Redeagle, teachers of the Osage language, to coach the cast in the native tongue spoken throughout the drama. Brandy Lemon, Osage Nation congresswoman, became the community consultant.

Without exaggeration it can be said that no film company had ever taken steps to engage so completely with the descendants of the very people whose tragic story it was about to tell, manifesting a profound regard for the Osage community across all ages.

As a further instance of the comity and understanding between the Osage and production, on April 15, 2021, four days before the formal start of shooting, members of the Osage Nation and more than 100 cast and crew gathered on a hilltop outside Bartlesville for a land blessing to mark the start of filming. Osage member O. J. Littlecook sang a prayer, Gray Horse Head Committeeman Archie Mason recited a blessing, and Osage Princess Gianna Sieke signed the Lord’s Prayer.

Mason says, “I prayed for a successful production, safety for all in their activities, good health, and continued working relationships between the production and the Osage Nation and our people.”

Scorsese spoke, acknowledging that the film was shooting on the traditional lands of the Osage, and expressed gratitude to the ancestors who lived on the land in the past. DiCaprio thanked the Osage people for their generosity in hosting the film crew, saying, “It is with great reverence and humility that we tell this incredibly important story.”

Said Chief Standing Bear at the land blessing, “The respect that Mr. Scorsese and his team have displayed toward us is more than we hoped for. Such sensitivity is welcome and is a continuation of the respect David Grann showed us.”

The ceremony was a moving and beautiful occasion, a fitting way to mark the start of production, which would eventually wrap September 15, 2021, after 99 days of filming.

REBUILDING A BOOMTOWN: PRODUCTION AND DESIGN

Many of Martin Scorsese’s most trusted collaborators came together behind the camera to make “Killers of the Flower Moon,” including cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (“The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Silence,” “The Irishman”), composer Robbie Robertson (“The King of Comedy,” “The Color of Money,” also the guitarist and singer of The Band, showcased in “The Last Waltz”) whose Mother was Cayuga and Mohawk, and editor Thelma Schoonmaker (who has collaborated on the majority of Scorsese’s films since 1980’s “Raging Bull,” for which she won her first of three Oscars).

Working with the director for the first time, though, were costume designer Jacqueline West (“The Revenant,” “Dune,” “Argo”) and legendary production designer Jack Fisk, whose career extends back as far as Scorsese’s. Fisk’s breakout came with Terrence Malick’s 1973 masterpiece “Badlands”; he’s since worked with the Texas filmmaker on seven more features, including “Days of Heaven,” “The Thin Red Line” and “The Tree of Life.” A specialist at constructing outdoor sets, Fisk designed David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “The Revenant,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio in his Oscar-winning role.

“I got to talk to Marty and he said, ‘I hear people say you can open a film up, make it look big, ” ’ Fisk says, laughing. “I love working outside. My reputation is that I built sets outside, not on sound stages.”

The challenge for Fisk would be difficult: telling the story on Osage land, either by repurposing existing structures or building them from scratch. So much of Fairfax, the original town, had been modernized or run down. A 1920s period piece would require vast open expanses, capturing the lushness of Osage territory. There were also several homes and offices that needed to be dressed.

“The Osage Nation had recently bought a square mile of land just off Main Street in Pawhuska, where the old freight station stood,” Fisk recalls. “They were going to clear it out and turn the space into a parks and recreation area. We asked them to delay their plans. We saw that the expanse worked perfectly for our purposes, so we obtained permission to build our train station there, bringing in twelve hundred feet of track and a real locomotive. It was the perfect spot.” Fisk went about finding locations for Osage homes and marketplaces. Nearby Pawhuska served as a persuasive Fairfax. “The final touch to the Kihekah Avenue reconstruction was to cover the street with dirt,” Fisk says. “That unified the set, made it more western and somehow brought it to life.”

With all the effort involved, it was reasonable to ask, why not film in Fairfax itself, a half hour away? Fisk explains, “Fairfax has been decimated over the years, a case of natural destruction, tornadoes, a faltering economy, the passage of time. Lots of the buildings were condemned. The roofs were rotten. There were very few storefronts that we could work in safely, as opposed to those in Pawhuska.”

As much as he relied on historical research, Fisk credits the screenplay for guidance with his designs. “This is a film about character,” he says. “I’m married to an actress.” (Fisk’s wife is Oscar winner Sissy Spacek, who he met on “Badlands”). “I probably think about character more than most designers. Equally as important as topography are the structures the characters inhabit. When Marty came out and saw Lizzie and Mollie’s house, it was comforting to him. I think it was exactly what he envisioned.”

Strikingly, for a film veteran of such accomplishments, Fisk is exhilarated anew by their collaboration. He describes the work with Scorsese with a frankness and authority few others can articulate. “I think we compliment each other because he brings all the film references and I just bring reality,” Fisk says, recalling the nearly thirty films mentioned by the director during their first conversation. “I don’t even like to read novels because I can see people making stuff up. So I read journals. I look at documentaries. I look at period photographs. Anything that will give me a glimpse into what it was really like. I approach these sets like sculptures — an alive thing, growing.”

In Scorsese, Fisk identifies a kindred spirit. “What excites me about Marty is that he’s got a youthfulness and excitement about film,” the designer says. “That is contagious. He’s excited like somebody who’s thirty years old. He’s got a mind that I would love to have. But he remembers so much. He watches these reference films to get moved by them again, the way they moved him.”

“This film is Marty’s western,” Fisk adds. “It’s a true story about our early existence. We were still forming as a nation. It’s a film about greed and love. And it’s like ‘Giant. ’You’re going over a period of time, and you’re seeing characters change and develop. I’m seeing a world that I couldn’t see on my own. And I think it will transport people into another world that is really a part of all of us.”

OSAGE NATION HISTORICAL FACTS

OSAGE LAND

- The Osage people bought their own reservation in Oklahoma when they were forced to move from their Kansas reservation in the 1870s.

- They are the only Native Americans to purchase their reservation with their own funds.

- Oil was discovered in the 1890s on the Osage reservation.

- Mineral rights were intended to be shared by the Osage Nation as a whole.

US GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT WITH THE OSAGE

- In the early twentieth century, the US Government wanted to privatize the Osage reservation (part of what was then called “Indian Territory”) so that Oklahoma could become a state.

- The Tribal Government of the Osage agreed to “allot” their surface property but they negotiated over several years with the US Government to keep collective ownership of the mineral rights (rights to whatever was below the surface) to benefit the Osage People as a whole.

- The Osage People were paid royalties for any oil drilled on what is now Osage County.

- Oil royalties helped make the Osage one of the wealthiest groups of people in the world.

- Original “allottees” were given headrights – a share of the royalties for the mineral rights. Headrights could only be transferred through inheritance – that is, to family or spouses. From the start, the system was faulty. Some original allottees were not Osage, having managed to work their way into the system gaining land and shares of headrights.

- After the worst period of the Reign of Terror, Osage People persuaded Congress to pass a law in 1925 that prohibited anyone who was not at least half Osage from inheriting headrights from a member of the tribe.

- Osage People were considered “incompetent,” so with the increase in wealth that came with the oil royalties, the US Government instituted a Guardian System designed to help the Osage People manage their money. The guardians were white men who were given power to manage Osage bank accounts, and oil royalties were deposited on behalf of the Osage People in trust with the US government. A system of graft, corruption and deception developed, and millions of dollars were stolen from Osage citizens through this Guardian System.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

For more information about the Osage Nation, please visit:

Oklahoma Historical Society

Kansas Historical Society

Osage Culture

Social media accounts:

@OsageNews

@Indiancountrytoday

@IllumiNative

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Saturday, December 23, 2023

Killers of the Flower Moon

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