Martin Scorsese says Native American leaders were 'naturally cautious' during early meetings for 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

Martin Scorsese admits that it wasn’t until he was in his late 20s, in the early 1970s, that he became aware of the nature of the Native American experience in the United States.

Nearly 50 years later, the New York City native and famed Oscar-winning director behind such films as Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and The Departed, was handed a copy of David Grann’s 2017 book Killers of the Flower Moon. The nonfiction book examines a series of murders targeting Osage people who had become wealthy from oil deposits on their land in 1920s Oklahoma. The true-crime story, which also chronicles the rise of the FBI, was ripe for a narrative adaptation, but Scorsese had reservations.

“How do you deal with that culture in a way that’s respectful?” Scorsese, 80, recalled asking himself during a press event on Monday for the release of his new film adaptation, which he co-wrote with veteran scribe Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, A Star Is Born). “How truthful can we be and still have authenticity and respect and dignity, and deal with the truth, honestly, as best we can?”

‘These are things that really weren’t talked about’

After initially focusing their story on the latter half of the book’s subtitle, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, Scorsese and Roth opted to delve further and further into the contrast between Osage culture and white America. The filmmakers folded in deeper cultural and spiritual aspects. And then they went and met with the Osage people, led by Chief Standing Bear.

“It was very different than what I was expecting,” Scorsese says. “They were naturally cautious. I had to explain to them that I’m going to try and deal with them as honestly and truthfully as possible. We weren’t going to fall into the traps … the cliché of [them as] victims, or the drunken Indian ... and yet tell the story as straight as possible.

“What I didn’t really understand the first couple of meetings was that this was an ongoing situation in Oklahoma. In other words, these are things that really weren’t talked about. ... It was the generation before them that this happened to. And so they didn’t talk about it much. And the people involved are still there, meaning the families are still there, the descendants are still there.”

A century later, the Osage people were still reeling from the betrayal of William Hale, a white cattleman beloved within the community, yet was ultimately revealed as the mastermind behind the plot. “They were good friends,” the director says. “One guy said [Osage member] Henry Roan was Bill’s best friend, yet he killed him. And people just didn’t believe at the time that Bill would be capable of such things. And so, what is that about us as human beings that allows for us to be so compartmentalized in a way?”

‘He’s the only one who really knows where I come from’

Scorsese and Roth’s script ultimately took shape around that theme, a complex romance, and, as the director puts it, the story’s “easygoing genocide.” The director’s longtime collaborator Robert De Niro came aboard to play Hale. Another Scorsese muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, who was originally going to play FBI Agent Tom White when White was the lead character, shifted into the new central role of Ernest Burkhart, a World War I veteran who turns up in Oklahoma looking for work, and is encouraged by his Uncle Bill to marry an Osage woman (Lily Gladstone’s Molllie) in line for a healthy inheritance. (Jesse Plemons took over the role of Tom White).

“We were teenagers together, and he’s the only one who really knows where I come from and the people I knew and that sort of thing,” Scorsese says of De Niro. “We had a real testing ground in the ’70s, where we tried everything and we found that we trusted each other. It’s all about trust and love. It’s what it is. And that's a big deal because very often if an actor has a lot of power, and he had a lot of power at that time, an actor could take over your picture. A studio gets angry with you, the actor comes in and takes it over. I never felt that. There was a freedom. There was experimenting and he wasn’t afraid of anything. He just did it.”

Killers marks Scorsese’s 10th feature with De Niro, following film classics like Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991) and The Irishman (2019). And, like those films, Killers is already drawing high praise from critics and fellow icons.

‘You should work with this kid sometime’

It was De Niro who first recommended DiCaprio, his co-star from the 1993 drama This Boy’s Life, to Scorsese.

“He said, ‘You should work with this kid sometime,’” the director recalls. “It was just casual. But with him, something like that, a recommendation at that time, in the early 1990s, is not casual. He says it casually, but he rarely gave recommendations.”

A decade later, Scorsese enlisted DiCaprio for Gangs of New York (2002). And then The Aviator (2004). The Departed (2006). Shutter Island (2010). The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). And now Killers.

“He made Gangs possible, actually,” Scorsese says. “He loved the pictures I made, and he wanted to explore the same territory. And so we developed more of a relationship when we did The Aviator. And towards the end of it, there was a kind of something happening, a maturity [in] him, I’m not quite sure, but we really clicked in certain scenes, and that led to The Departed.

“Then [we] became much closer. … It’s really [about] trust, particularly doing Wolf of Wall Street. He came up with wonderful stuff that was outrageous. And so I pushed him, he pushed me, then I pushed him more than he pushed me, [laughs] and suddenly everything was wild. It’s really quite something. And he had a good energy, too, on the set. That was also important. Very important, because in the mornings, I’m not really good. But I’d get on set and then I’d see him or Jonah Hill, or him and Margot Robbie, or him and Lily [on Killers]. And suddenly they’re all like, ‘Hey.’ I say, ‘OK, let’s work.’”

Killers of the Flower Moon opens in theaters Oct. 20.