Posted in: Apple, Movies, Paramount Pictures | Tagged: Killers of the Flower Moon, martin scorsese, paul schrader

Paul Schrader: Killers Of The Flower Moon Is 3.5 Hours With An Idiot

Paul Shrader says that Leonardo DiCaprio should have played the cop in Killers of the Flower Moon because "spending three-and-a-half hours in the company of an idiot is a long time.”

Heading into the fall, it looked like Apple was trying to hit the awards season from two sides, and now that the dust has settled, it's looking like neither of the films will end up getting them the Oscar gold they wanted. The first one out of the gate was Killers of the Flower Moon, which did plenty of good reviews but quickly fell off the radar. The one thing people are still talking about regarding that film is the performance from Lilly Gladstone and not much else. For a movie that was supposed to be about telling the story of the Osage people, it often seemed to sideline them and their story to focus on Leonardo DiCaprio's Earnest, who was just the worst. Or an idiot, as writer Paul Shrader said to Le Mode (via Variety), the film was "3.5 hours in the company of an idiot," with DiCaprio playing the wrong role.

"Marty compares me to a Flemish miniaturist. He would be more the type who paints Renaissance frescoes," Schrader said. "Give him $200 million, a good film will inevitably come out of it. That said, I would have preferred Leonardo DiCaprio to play the role of the cop in 'Killers of the Flower Moon' rather than the role of the idiot. Spending three-and-a-half hours in the company of an idiot is a long time."

There are reports that previous versions of the script of Killers of the Flower Moon focused more on the FBI agents sent to investigate the deaths, and specifically, DiCaprio was supposed to play the role that ended up going to Jesse Plemons. According to an interview with The Irish Times, there was a shift in focus from law enforcement to Earnest and Mollie. According to various interviews, the shift was made because there wasn't enough focus on the Osage people. However, even with all of these changes, the main character of this film is Earnest and Earnest alone, and he is, indeed, an idiot.

Watching the film becomes an exercise of frustration as it continues to pull the focus away from the people it seems to think it is telling the stories of. It's even worse when you have that lingering knowledge that none of these victims will truly see justice and pull away from them yet again to focus on the idiot white guy. This might be a better metaphor for how white people tell the stories of indigenous people while trying to get brownie points than anything that might end up on screen.

Killers of the Flower Moon: Summary, Cast List, Release Date

Based on David Grann's broadly lauded best-selling book, Killers of the Flower Moon is set in 1920s Oklahoma and depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror.

Directed by Martin Scorsese and Screenplay by Eric Roth and Scorsese, the film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, and Jillian Dion.

Hailing from Apple Studios, Killers of the Flower Moon was produced alongside Imperative Entertainment, Sikelia Productions, and Appian Way. Producers are Scorsese, Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas, and Daniel Lupi, with DiCaprio, Rick Yorn, Adam Somner, Marianne Bower, Lisa Frechette, John Atwood, Shea Kammer, and Niels Juul serving as executive producers. It was released in theaters on October 20th.

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