“I remember feeling it all became palpably real to me—immediate, living, personal. The story took on a face, but mainly a heart. I was transformed—and daunted by the work ahead.” – Martin Scorsese
This epigraph opens the newly-released Making of ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ book, a limited-edition luxury book created at the request of the filmmaker in order to document the film. Following the quote from Scorsese on how the Osage changed him, a spread of photos follows, picturing principal cast members juxtaposed with “Wi’-gi-e,” Elise Paschen’s poem from Bestiary.
A luxury coffee table book made by Assouline, the cover features an artistic representation of Wahzhazhe ie orthography designed by Dr. Jessica Moore Harjo and the interior cover design pictures ribbon work by Janet Emde of Grayhorse, in a close-up of the blanket which Lily Gladstone wore in the film. In the table of contents appear the titles of five essays written by Rolling Stone writer and reporter David Fear, and an introduction by Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear.
Such a “making-of book” is customary for Scorsese movies, according to Chad Renfro, Osage film and consulting producer for KOTFM, and by virtue of precedent, the book will not be for sale. Yet the deeply collaborative nature of Scorsese’s work with the Grayhorse District and the greater Osage community make this movie different from the filmmaker’s other projects, just as the book is different.
Chief Standing Bear wrote the introduction, after which cultural context pieces by Shannon Shaw Duty intersperse with five full-length essays by Rolling Stone writer and reporter David Fear, and cinematographic photo spreads. The seasoned reporters expand on subjects such as “Elders,” “Awakening,” and “‘put[ting] away the old things,’” respectively, overall providing an illuminating narrative of the filming, which include morsels such as the behind-the-scenes telling of Lily Gladstone’s and Leonardo DiCaprio’s first scene filmed together on set, and ways in which Osages are now reckoning with the legacy of former wealth, lost traditions, and Boarding School experiences.
After Lily Gladstone’s historic Best Actress award at the Golden Globes, interest in the book is only expected to increase, but currently four copies are planned to be publicly available—at the Pawhuska Public Library, the Osage Nation Museum, the Wahzhazhe Cultural Center, and the White Hair Memorial.
For Gladstone’s role in KOTFM, they became the first Indigenous person to receive the award, but this making-of book reveals that she was not even initially considered in auditions, but had instead agreed to read interlocutor lines for auditioning actors as simply a favor to casting director Ellen Lewis. Scorsese questioned who the actress was, and why she wasn’t in the running, and ultimately, he and DiCaprio settled on her as “[their Mollie].”
The book is intended as an exclusive keepsake documenting the film, but Chief Standing Bear expressed a desire for it to be more public than it has initially been intended to be. He received a copy of Making of ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ just before leaving for the Golden Globes, and said he is looking forward to reading the whole of it on his return home after attending the 14th Governors Awards for KOTFM. “It would be nice if [the book] was more public, for sale or otherwise,” he said.
In his introduction, Standing Bear wrote that the Osage had been tense about how the film would portray them since first hearing about it. “…[K]nowing that past depictions of the Native American in movies have been less than flattering and sometimes insulting,” he wrote, he went on to describe his first meeting with Scorsese as initially awkward.
“It was a bit awkward when I told him that we liked his movies GoodFellas, Casino, The Departed and others, but frankly, we were concerned his focus on the Osage would be as bloodied murder victims.” Scorsese’s reply did not promise curtailed gore, but it did strike Standing Bear as memorable. The meeting, which Fear writes about in detail later in the book, lasted hours after the filmmaker’s reply: “‘This is a story about trust and betrayal. About the trust of the Osage people and the betrayal of that trust by everyone, and at the same time it is a story of the trust of an Osage woman in her non-Osage husband, and the betrayal of that trust,’” Standing Bear quotes.
Bloodied images of Osage death were rampant in the film, but not featured in the book, which displays portraits, movie stills and candid shots of filming captured by Melinda Sue Gordon, Brigitte Lacombe, and Stephen Berkman, the last of whom used historic photograph processes with long exposures, including tin type and dry plate.
Fear’s first essay follows the introduction, and he begins with the last scene filmed, a dance scene filmed on the Osage Nation campus in Pawhuska, Okla., which Fear describes in expansive character detail, along with delivering a characterization of the movie as a “sprawling period piece, a love story, a Freudian family drama, a much-needed corrective regarding crimes unfairly relegated to footnotes in our country’s checkered history … [a] true-story tragedy that can’t easily be summed up.”
Throughout the book, Fear analyses the film as a psychological pseudo-Western created to break the film industry’s cycle of historical Native erasure and maligning via an accurate portrait of enmeshed, dependent abuse born out of a white-and-Native power imbalance. He writes, “It isn’t far-fetched to think that a mythology built on racial bias, one endlessly playing at a theater near you, had primed the pump for a mindset in which Indigenous people were viewed not as fellow Americans but as an obstacle to the American dream,” and does a solid job of engaging the prejudices to which Osages are still subjected to present-day.
Aesthetically, the book matches the aesthetic of the film, which used a European tint for scenes with white actors and a natural color scheme for Osage-only scenes. Throughout the book, Duty’s and Fear’s interviews and exposition contain a treasure trove of insights about not only the making of the film, but also the Osage community.
For instance, the late John Williams is quoted on the meaningfulness of a younger member of the tribe being the one to write the song used in the final dance scene, and how that contribution proves there is a generation who can still carry on culture and traditions. Everett Waller is reported as noting that the filming of the delegation preparing to go to Washington occurred on a day when the moon was exactly how it had been a hundred years prior, a full Flower Moon.
In addition to being an item of document, as Scorsese intended, the book has great strengths, the standouts of which are cultural contributions from Osages, and Fear’s situation of the film industry—and the Western in particular—as deeply complicit actors in perpetuating racist ideologies into present day America. In highlighting an ongoing American cycle of historical gaslighting, Fear summarizes Osage history starting in 500 A.D. and continuing through removals into the 1920s and David Grann’s efforts to tell the story of the Osage murders.
Shaw Duty notes important and insightful cultural information, such as acknowledging the women elders of the Grayhorse District who met with actors to share information which is not written in history books. She names Billie Ponca, Dolores “DeeDee” Goodeagle and Cecelia Tallchief as the ones who counseled DiCaprio and other cast members. Through Fear, DiCaprio also recounts talking to a relative of Burkhart who had been able to hear confidences from Mollie in her time, regarding what had truly happened emotionally between them.
The second-hand narrative of Mollie Burkhart’s experience left DiCaprio enlightened and disturbed, Fear writes, a reaction which mirrors many viewers of the film itself. The book is less triggering, as it thankfully has an absence of bloody and violent images, which are spared from insight by other venerated behind-the-scenes contributors such as editor Thelma Schoonmaker and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto.
Assouline is known for its beautiful books, which often include those from the world of fashion, design and art, and in this respect the book follows the norm. A portrait of Talee Red Corn holding the sacred pipe is super-imposed with Wahzhazhe ie spoken in the opening scene of the film, which Fear notes that Scorsese had changed to closely mirror the opening pages of “A Pipe for February”after reading Charles H. Red Corn’s novel:
𐒼𐒰𐓆𐒻͘ 𐓈𐒰͘ 𐓍𐒷𐒼𐓇𐒷 𐒰͘𐒼𐒻𐓐𐒷 𐓈𐒰͘𐒼𐒰𐓈𐓐𐒰͘.
Tomorrow we will bury this one.
𐓁𐒰͘𐓁𐒻𐓂͘𐓄𐒰 𐓍𐒷𐒼𐓇𐒷 𐓁𐒻𐒼𐒰𐓇𐒻𐒼𐒷 𐒷𐒼𐓂͘.
This Pipe Person.
𐓁𐒰͘𐓁𐒻𐓂͘𐓄𐒰 𐓍𐒷𐒼𐓇𐒷 𐓏𐒰𐓓𐒻͘𐓈𐒰͘𐒼𐒰𐓏𐒰𐒼𐓇𐒻𐓍𐒷 𐓁𐒰͘𐓄𐒷—
This one gave us courage—
𐓍𐒷𐒼𐓇𐒷 𐓏𐒰𐒼𐒰͘𐓈𐒰 𐓏𐒰𐓄𐒰𐓓𐒻͘𐓍𐒷 𐓁𐒰͘𐓄𐒷.
This one has been our messenger to Wakondah.
Many gorgeous images of Gladstone and her sisters and mother in the film grace the pages, and her own insights on the filming are abundant. In the third chapter-length essay, Fear notes that the script reminded her of Graham Greene novels. He quotes Gladstone, “‘It had to do with letting the dynamics of the relationship serve as an allegory for the historical narrative,’” she says, specifically of The Quiet American.
Shaw Duty writes, “this film became an opportunity to show a transitional period within our history when our culture risked obliteration—but managed to survive to the present,” and the book gives a clear sense of not only that transition period, but also snippets of the present. The actors pictured all come across as very real, present-day people. A still of Margaret Sisk effusively smiling, her hands grasping one another as she stands on set of a traditional village with Moira Red Corn and Tammy Balduff, and of Native men seeing the opening oil-strike dance scene played back to them on a camera, both show true Native joy.
Such a coveted, high-end book that will not go up for sale, as of this time, means that the public library and the three Wahzhazhe-led organizations will have a job of protecting their copies. Pawhuska Public Library staff member Lenna Hayes said that from past experiences, a book such as Making of the ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ would not ever be made available for checkout. “It will go into the reference section, to be protected,” Hayes said.
While Renfro had not yet delivered the book to the ONM, WCC or White Hair Memorial at the time of this article, the Pawhuska City Library confirmed that they have their copy of Making of ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ and the book will be available at the reference desk within the next thirty days. The public will be allowed to review the book from an area where staff can see them, and will also be allowed to take photographs of the book as long as images are not used for distribution.
“I hope people will enjoy the publicly available copies,” said Renfro, who was very proud to donate the book to the library of his own Osage community, where he grew up. “I’m trying to find the best place in Fairfax to have one but don’t have that firmed up yet,” he said. “And also,” he said, “people can see it with their friends who have a copy.” Those lucky enough to know someone in possession of a copy of Making of ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ are likely soon to be making the rounds.
CORRECTION: This story was corrected on Jan. 24, 2024, to note the books are not Christmas gifts to some individuals. The Osage News regrets the error.
