Jade Bahr

She would murder (including Leo) for mother Gladstone Wish you a great night with KOTFM #team leo

For what it's worth another "pee break" advice via lainey. Also, the film runs just under three and a half hours. There’s not really a good bathroom break point, because there isn’t a mindless action sequence you can miss without dropping anything important, but I would time a break, if you need one, between the two hour and two hour and twenty-minute mark. You don’t want to miss the last hour, for sure. Source

^

via Marty: I put everything I had into Killers of the Flower Moon, and I was blessed to work with so many remarkable people at every stage. It took a long time to bring it to the screen. Now I just want people to see it, to absorb it, to be with it. This isn't Rick fuckin' Dalton this is just fuckin Ernest

Since it's a british story he should may find a british actor to co-direct with him? I also volunteer for Paul Mescal (even though he's irish whatever) acting next to Leo!!!!!!!!!!!!! Martin Scorsese Might “Co-Direct” His Next Film, ‘The Wager’ Martin Scorsese is turning 81 next month, he has said that he wants to make “one or two more films”. We’re all pushing for that to happen. Obviously, given his age, if Scorsese wants to continue mounting the epic productions that he’s been obsessed in undertaking these last 20+ years then he needs all the stamina that he can get. In an interview with IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, Scorsese clarifies his plans for “The Wager,” his next collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio. The film is based on a nonfiction book by David Grann, which follows the 1741 mutiny after the shipwreck of the HMS Wager. Supposedly, there is some doubt as to whether he can handle the big watery production of “The Wager.” Scorsese admits that he needs to take a break after promoting “Killers of the Flower Moon” and that the 2023 writers strike has delayed his next film. Scorsese is worried about the complexities of shooting on the water, which, according to him, might necessitate a co-director. First of all, the issue is now that the writer’s strike is over, and because so much is on me to go out there and spread the word about Killers of the Flower Moon, let me take a break. And we’ll get working with writers and see if we get it on the page. And maybe it’s something I could co-direct, so to speak. It’ll be difficult [to shoot a movie out on the water.] But there are ways now, with certain technical things we could do, to make it bearable. Depending on how we get the script together. I’m not sure [if Leo will play Lieutenant Byron or the crazy Captain]. There’s a lot of good parts. [This is less than 100% until I have the script]. That’s the case. That’s normal. Like for example, I don’t think we would have done Killers if we hadn’t made that change. (...) It does look as though DiCaprio will have a role in “The Wager,” but which character he plays remains a major question mark.

One of my favorite Leo movies. Love everything about it. Golshifteh Farahani is gorgeous and her dynamic with Leo is flawless

Like more or less expected there wasn't a chance against Taylor Swift. Now we can only hope KOTFM will show some legs like TWOWS did. Audience seems to like it though. A- cinema score, 85% at RT so far. Killers Of The Flower Moon Tops The Wolf Of Wall Street With $23 Million Opening Weekend Hollywood's trifecta of old guard directors — Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese — occupy a unique position in the modern Hollywood landscape. They have more misses than hits at the box office these days, but their names carry so much prestige that studios are still handing over big budgets anyway. After all, you never know when Spielberg is going to make another "Ready Player One," or Scott another "The Martian," or Scorsese another "Wolf of Wall Street." Enter Scorsese's historical crime drama "Killers of the Flower Moon," which was co-financed by Paramount Pictures and Apple Original Films to the tune of a $200 million production budget. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, and Lily Gladstone, the film rode into theaters this weekend on a wave of rave reviews (92% on Rotty T's, as of this writing). Variety reports that "Killers of the Flower Moon" is currently projected to finish its opening weekend with a total of $23 million from 3,628 theaters. It grossed $9.6 million on Friday, including $2.6 million from Thursday previews. As Variety notes, that's a bigger start than the last Scorsese movie that kicked off with a wide theatrical release: "The Wolf of Wall Street," which scored an $18.3 million debut back in 2013. However, it looks like Martin Scorsese will lose the wrestling match with Taylor Swift (now there's a mental image) as "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" is expected to remain #1 in the box office rankings over its second weekend. The record-smashing concert film grossed $5.9 million on Thursday and $10.4 million on Friday, returning to theaters after a strategic absence of showings Monday-to-Wednesday, to emphasize the "event" vibes. Marty takes a bite of the Apple Though the Hollywood frenzy of splurging on streaming seems to be drying up, with studios like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery now scrambling to cut costs, Scorsese is still reaping the benefits of tech titans breaking into the film industry. For Apple, a company that had a total revenue of $394.3 billion in 2022, the cost of financing "Killers of the Flower Moon" is scarcely more than a rounding error. The true value of the film lies more in establishing Apple Original Films as a respected brand, with room for future growth, than in breaking even at the box office. There's also the hope that the presence of prestige films will attract more subscribers to Apple TV+, which has struggled to compete in a heated streaming market. We can expect a big awards push for "Killers of the Flower Moon," which could bode well for its long-term prospects at the box office. From its initial $18.3 million opening weekend, "The Wolf of Wall Street" went on to gross $392 million worldwide thanks to Oscars buzz (it was nominated five times, though scored no wins) and strong overseas performance. That movie had around half the budget of "Killers of the Flower Moon," but if Scorsese's new film follows a similar trajectory it could potentially come close to breaking even at the box office. Audiences seem happy so far, giving it an A- CinemaScore based on exit polling. ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Debuts in Second Place at Domestic Box Office Swifties are shaking off competition from Martin Scorsese. It seems like Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour will top the domestic box office for the second weekend in a row after beating newcomer Killers of the Flower Moon. The hit concert film grossed over $10 million on its second Friday, after making nearly $6 million on Thursday. The Eras Tour is receiving a highly unconventional release; not only is it being distributed directly by theater chains without the involvement of a studio, it is only playing Thursday-Sunday for three weeks. It didn’t have a difficult time defending its title on its second Friday, despite the challenge posed by Killers of the Flower Moon. Directed by Martin Scorsese, the epic Western grossed over $9 million on opening day, which includes the $2.6 million that it made in Thursday previews. The film is expected to gross over $23 million across the weekend, which is a solid result for a three and a half hour epic about the violence that shaped America, but not so great when you consider its reported $200 million budget. But the film has the potential to alter the industry; it is, after all, a streaming title that is getting a proper theatrical release before being launched on Apple TV+ at an unspecified later date. And despite their unavailability to promote the movie because of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro — especially together, in a Scorsese picture — are a considerable draw. The movie would hope to leg it through fall, on the back of excellent reviews and a solid A- CinemaScore from opening day audiences. For context, Scorsese and DiCaprio's The Wolf of Wall Street ended up adding nearly $100 million to its $19 million opening a decade ago. ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ Brings Adults Back To Cinemas With $23M Opening & A- CinemaScore UPDATED SATURDAY AM: The overall box office at around $87.3M is off 23% from a year ago. But AMC‘s Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and Apple and Paramount‘s Martin Scorsese movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, are keeping business afloat and popcorn popping with respective weekend takes of $32M and $23M. The latter is an exceptional start for what is a very long movie — longer than Oppenheimer– and a great beginning for Apple’s foray into the wide theatrical business, especially at a time when actors can’t promote because of the actors strike. Imagine if there wasn’t an actors strike, how much higher this could go? Also, it’s an applaudable start for a period movie, this being set in the 1920s. Quite often, tracking sources pin ‘period’ as a factor that dogs grosses. And the exits are great for Killers of the Flower Moon: With an A- CinemaScore, Killers of the Flower Moon is one of three As for Oscar-winner Scorsese with CinemaScore, the other two being The Departed (A-) and Goodfellas (A-). Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak remains high at 88% and 4 1/2 stars, and a 72% recommend. CinemaScore audiences have been hard on several Scorsese classics, and haven’t handed him many A grades during his career in the pollster’s era, i.e. Casino (B-), The Aviator (B+), Gangs of New York (B), Wolf of Wall Street (C), and Shutter Island (C+). At $23M+, Killers of the Flower Moon is just north of DiCaprio’s opening box office average with Scorsese of $19M, and it’s the best start for a De Niro and Scorsese combo, beating Cape Fear‘s $10.2M opening, back when Ska music was in style. Taylor won Friday at $10.4M to Killers of the Flower Moon‘s $9.4M, which includes Thursday previews of $2.6M. Many are expecting Swift to climb around 22% to 36% today and not fall apart. What’s working here for Killers of the Flower Moon? First, let’s start with the fact that the movie was promoted to the entire Apple sub base on Apple TV+, and they were told not to stay home. It’s DiCaprio, Scorsese, and De Niro, and to any clear thinking adult moviegoer, that’s a call to get off your couch (81% were over 25). Throw in the fact that the movie is based on a best-selling book. Apple, since blasting the movie off with the support of its cast out of Cannes, has kept the loudspeakers on in the pic’s promotion with a robust outdoor campaign (go to the Century City Mall and digital billboards for Killers of the Flower Moon are all around you). (...) It’s also a western, and while some thought this movie would simply play well in New York and L.A., its strongest regions are the South and the West. For Paramount, in some ways, this is reminiscent of the Coen Bros’ True Grit, which was a wide-appealing western for them, and had a $24.8M start. However, that pic had some legs. We’ll see where Killers of the Flower Moon roams. Top theater in the nation belongs to AMC Lincoln Square, which has minted more than $71K so far. PLFs and Imax are driving 37% of ticket sales. Demo diagnostics for Killers of the Flower Moon on PostTrak are 61% Male/39% Female, with 46% of the audience between 18-34 years old and the largest quad being 25-34 years old at 27%, with an amazing 38% of the audience over 45. Diversity demos were 54% Caucasian, 21% Latino and Hispanic, 10% Black, 8% Asian, and 8% Native American/other, the latter who gave the movie about the Osage Nation tragedy an 84% grade. Best grades for the movie were from the under-25 guys demos, who didn’t show up in bulk at 13%, but who gave the DiCaprio-De Niro movie a 90% grade. Box Office: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Blossoms With $9.4 Million Opening Day The flower moon is getting eclipsed by Taylor Swift. Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” earned $9.4 million from 3,628 theaters on its opening day, a figure that includes $2.6 million in Thursday previews. The epic-length historical drama is now projecting a finish of $23 million over the three-day opening frame, tracking behind the second weekend of Swift’s “Eras Tour” concert film. “Killers of the Flower Moon” sports a colossal $200 million production budget, but it’s not like those behind the feature are banking on a hefty profit from tickets. Apple, which backed the project, is planning to invest in theatrical runs for its original slate as a means to promote their eventual streaming releases. “Flower Moon” is the first high-profile rodeo in movie theaters for the company, which has partnered with Paramount Pictures to handle domestic distribution. Apple will take another stab at theatrical later this fall with “Napoleon,” partnering with Sony for Ridley Scott’s similarly mega-budgeted war feature. For what it’s worth, “Flower Moon” is tracking ahead of the opening for Scorsese’s last Leonardo DiCaprio collaboration “The Wolf of Wall Street.” That sprawling comedy debuted with $18 million in late December, but rode the holiday season and awards buzz to a $116 million finish in North America. “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which has drawn some of the strongest reviews of the year, is hoping for its own sustained run in the weeks ahead. A positive A- grade through research firm Cinema Score shows that initial audiences are happy to go along for the ride. Even more striking is the film’s initial draw with younger audiences — 46% of opening night moviegoers were under the age of 35. Starring DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone, “Killers of the Flower Moon” shifts the procedural structure of David Grann’s novel of the same name, following the racist conspirators that murdered members of the Osage nation after oil was discovered on their land.

Same!!! Can't wait to watch it again.

on set with the David Grann

https://www.instagram.com/p/CyoNUJ8Msuo/ Haha same There is apparently a book about the making of the movie Love this

I ate and drank right before the movie and I drank during the movie. Same for the group with me. We all got to pee right before the movie started and all of us made it through the movie without a break. It's also not necessarily true when you drink less you have to pee less (maybe your head is telling you this lol) It's actually the other way around if you drink lesser you have to pee more often believe it or not. When there is a lack of fluid, the kidneys produce highly concentrated urine, which irritates the bladder and increases the urge to urinate. Overall it more depends on how trained your bladder is and how much you drink on a daily basis. If your bladder is well trained you have to go to the bathroom every 4 hours. Another factor is what you drink of course (alcohol let you pee a lot more for example). Sry I work in a medical area I tell dehydrated people this shit every day

So after years of waiting I finally watched it in cinema yesterday 😄 It was worth the wait to say the least.

Also want to add Tatanka Means is the one to drool about in this movie. He's really gorgeous His role is rather small but he drawd my attention because of his beauty and charisma. He's one of the investigator of the FBI. Would have loved to know more about this character. Not from KOTFM but who cares Love his hair and stuff

I'm really curious what you will say It's a quite complex experience. At least it was for me.

^A bit more detailed. No spoiler (expect the ones hidden). Coming just out of the movie. My brain is still working because damn that was a lot to take in. So here just some quick thoughts. It's very different to all pre Marty/Leo projects. Leo is just... wow. I have no words. He blew me away I now understand why he choosed the role of Ernest over Tom White (who was minimized into less than 30 minutes and hadn't much to do). Is it Leos career best? It's definitely less showy than for example Jordan Belfort or Howard Hughes. He's much more subtle here. More quiet. Even if he talks (or mumbles) a lot. Maybe it's just my imagination after the article but I could see how Marty said to him "take a step back, you don't need all the extra drama." He also looks dead ass weird in this movie. Ears, nose, hair, teeths, mouth constantly pulled down. I almost bursted into laughter when Mollie called him "good looking". Uhm no girl that's not good looking Leo this is Leo giving his best Marlon Brando imitation lol The only dreamy thing Marty left us are his eyes. I had a hard time to understand why she felt in love with him actually. She even admitted right in the beginning he's "not the brightest" and was "after her money". Lily is intense and heartbreaking (and in my humble opinion very much a leading role). She and Leo have some "cute" moments. Also many not so much cute moments like expected. I really was about to pray for that poor soul. If she's winning the oscar I'm here for it. Robert DeNiro is subtle but amazing and the evil in person His character is so dark it's comical sometimes. He isn't a supporting character at all. Overall I think the movie is more "lighter" than I thought. Not exactly funny but with moments where I had to laugh. Sometimes because of pure disbelieve. Sometimes I wanted to scream. Sometimes I really wanted to shake dumb Ernest (and all the other white old douchebags good lord). Great dialogs. Many many dialogs. Slow pace. Sometimes I was thinking too slow honestly. This movie isn't a crime triller or something like that. It's a character study where we know from the beginning who are the perpetrators and who are the victims. Because of that the movie isn't really... thrilling. I mean you're not sitting there waiting in pure excitement what happens next because you already know what happens next. Gripping and accumulating are maybe the better words to describe the whole thing, yes. But did I LIKE the movie? Woah hard to tell. I admired many parts of it. It's a movie that made you think for sure but nothing you just watch for entertainment (what isn't the intention of the movie anyway). So watching and enjoying it on a big screen is probably just the right way. It's a beautiful craftful movie to look at. Quite the opposite to the ugly rotten shameful story it tells. It's a strenuous movie and so it's def not a movie for the crowd. My cinema was half packed at best. When the credits started the group behind me was gasping over the lengths of the movie and the lack of events. Indeed two people left the cinema WHILE the movie. I don't think I ever witnessed that during a Leo movie. The soundtrack is quite... memorable. The steady hammering (or drumming) drove me nuts, almost gave me a headache. LOVED the creative ending. Special indeed.

I'm half through the book and watched the movie today (which was also great). I wanted to finish the book first but I'm a slow reader lol

@BarbieErin Even if I'm still not convinced about the PTA project (plainly because I don't like his movies at all LOL) I guess the more working Leo the better? Haha Leo. Love him and his little perfectionist ass when it comes to work Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese “rolled eyes” at Leonardo DiCaprio on set Martin Scorsese’s new movie Killers of the Flower Moon is clearly a picture that’s taken some time to get right – and thanks to Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio found this out the hard way. Scorsese has dropped yet another historical epic that’s set to make cinematic history – including its colossal 3 hour and 26 minute runtime. The story follows the atrocities committed against the Osage Nation in the 1920s, when it was first discovered that their supposedly “bad” land harbored a wealth of oil underneath it. Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro play the main antagonists in Killers of the Flower Moon, but the journey to perfection wasn’t always straightforward for De Niro and Martin Scorsese. Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese “rolled eyes” at Leonardo DiCaprio’s improvisation According to a new interview with the Wall Street Journal, Leonardo DiCaprio’s initial improvisation in scenes caused more than a few eye rolls from Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Scorsese reflected on how Killers of the Flower Moon is the first film to bring his two muses, De Niro and DiCaprio, together. In the Wall Street profile, Scorsese explains how the two actors are the complete opposites of each other, citing that DiCaprio’s improvisations and discussions on set were “endless, endless, endless.” “Then Bob didn’t want to talk,” Scorsese explained. “Every now and then, Bob and I would look at each other and roll our eyes a little bit. And we’d tell [Leo], ‘You don’t need that dialogue.’” For Scorsese and De Niro fans, the instance has painted a vivid picture in their heads.

Source @Sliva I have access to the clip but it's not loading for some reason

THIS ARTICLE CONTAIN MAJOR SPOILER OF THE STORY + MOVIE The horrifying, nearly forgotten history behind Killers of the Flower Moon A century later, we still don’t know the full, stomach-churning extent of the Osage murders. The neighborhood dogs had all begun to die, and that was why Rita Smith’s husband was sure they’d be next. Rita was one of the few remaining members of the Osage Nation following nearly a century of brutal displacement. Throughout the 19th century, the government repeatedly forced the Osage to relocate from their current lands in Kansas to, finally, a much smaller, desolate reservation in northern Oklahoma. With the discovery of oil on Osage land in the late 1890s, however, the 2,229 tribe members who were left suddenly came into tremendous amounts of personal wealth, and prosperity finally seemed to be once more within the community’s grasp. But now, a ring of unknown murderers had begun to target members of the tribe — including Rita’s family. Between 1921 and 1923, Rita’s sister Anna Brown, her cousin, and possibly even her mother, Lizzie Kyle, had all died suspiciously alongside a string of other deaths — at least 24 Osage Nation members and several of their allies. Some, like Anna, had been killed with a bullet to the back of the head; others, like Lizzie, had apparently died from strychnine or other more obscure poisons. There were even rumors that Rita’s white husband, Bill, had killed his first wife, Rita’s sister Minnie, a few years earlier. He had married Rita shortly after. Rita’s other sister, Mollie, had also married a white man, Ernest Burkhart, the nephew of a rich and influential rancher, William Hale. Under Hale’s patronage, the family had prospered — but now they were dying, one by one. Four women of the Kyle family all died suspicious deaths, from left to right: Minnie Smith (d. 1921); Anna Kyle Brown (d. 1921); Rita Smith (d. 1923); their mother, Lizzie Q. Kyle (d. 1921). The surviving sister, Mollie, narrowly escaped a similar fate. Bettmann Archive Rita and Bill had become so spooked by the possibility that they were next on the list of vigilante killings that after hearing intruders on their property, they’d moved to a safer part of town. Not long after they settled in, however, the neighborhood’s ever-vigilant dogs began to die, and Bill grew increasingly paranoid. He saw their silencing as akin to disabling an alarm system — and a sign that despite their best efforts, the anonymous death-dealers were inching closer to them. He was right. In the early morning hours of March 10, 1923, Bill, Rita, and their housekeeper Nettie Brookshire all died when a bomb that had been planted beneath their house exploded — yet another tragedy of what became known as the Osage Reign of Terror. All of these events, and the harrowing FBI investigation that followed, form the subject of Killers of the Flower Moon, journalist David Grann’s meticulously researched 2017 book about the murders, as well as its highly anticipated upcoming film adaptation by Martin Scorsese. The film boasts many Indigenous actors, including breakout star Lily Gladstone, alongside an A-list ensemble including familiar Scorsese collaborators like Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro — and a somewhat quizzical range of famous singer-songwriters. The formidable cast size reflects just how far-reaching and convoluted the real murders and the efforts to solve them were. As with all true crime, the ethics of discussing Killers of the Flower Moon as a narrative are tricky. Grann constructs his nonfiction account like a classic murder mystery, with a series of grim “twists” that may or may not be genuinely shocking, depending on how cynical you are. As the trailers make clear, Scorsese upends this narrative, with the “who” behind the Osage murders being not nearly as compelling as the why and the how. Still, if you’d like to avoid spoilers, proceed with caution (and maybe tap out before the last section). While Scorsese takes the “who” as a given, the deep irony remains that the only reason the “why” might still shock viewers is that the Osage Reign of Terror simply isn’t well enough known. The systematic murders of an Indigenous community — the rare case to warrant a federal investigation from the then-nascent bureau that would become the FBI — may have been an undeniable media sensation in their day. Yet nearly 100 years later, the Osage murders wound up being little more than a 20th-century history footnote. (A date-stamped search for the murders returns less than 100 results on Google prior to 2016, the year before Flower Moon was published.) The Smiths’ house in 1923, before and after the bombing. Bettmann Archive Erased alongside the murders, arguably a 20th-century genocide on American soil, were the appalling circumstances that enabled them. Not only were the investigations into the murders hampered by systemic indifference, but the murders could arguably only have happened because of decades of blatant system-wide racism that forced the Osage people to fight for their autonomy. At the time the murders began, they were even fighting for control of their own finances and assets, thanks to a Britney-style conservatorship that robbed them of access to their newfound oil wealth amid an environment of galling corruption. This story, the true American horror story of a community enduring a death wave for over a decade, makes for harrowing drama. But the full truth of the Osage murders, and the dehumanization at their root, makes it almost more unbelievable that they were ever solved at all — if, indeed, they actually were. How the Osage got unfathomably rich — and the exploitative conservatorships that came with that money For thousands of years, the Osage Nation resided on a vast stretch of territory that extended from the Ohio River across the Mississippi and into Oklahoma and across southern Kansas. In the 19th century, however, as white settlers encroached on their territory and anti-Indigenous sentiment flourished, the US government began a series of forced relocations, resettling the Osage repeatedly until finally, by the 1870s, the government forced the Osage to relocate to northern Oklahoma. The government had intentionally resettled the Osage to some of the worst farmland in Oklahoma — only to accidentally relocate them to the richest oil deposits in the country. In the late 1890s, the oil reserves were discovered, and the Osage people suddenly came into possession of confounding amounts of wealth, abruptly becoming the richest community on the planet. And then, as they had so often before, the vultures began circling. The massive land rush that followed the discovery of the oil swelled the prairie with grifters, grafters, scammers, and quick-buck seekers, all of whom arrived with the goal of exploiting the Indigenous people and their newfound wealth. Tribal allotments established between 1905 and 1907 meant that all of the existing Osage land was legally reserved to the remaining tribal members. But outsiders could still obtain leases to mine and drill the land in exchange for a share of the profits. At the peak of the oil rush in the 1920s, auctions for oil leases regularly generated millions of dollars. Outsiders could also marry into Osage families, which would allow them to access Osage money. This tree became known in the region as the “Million-Dollar Elm” because of the millions of dollars in oil and natural gas leases that were regularly auctioned beneath it. Courtesy of the Bartlesville Area History Museum As white fortune hunters flocked to the countryside hoping to secure deals and access to the land, the government, via the Bureau of Indian Affairs, mandated that nearly all members of the Osage be appointed a white “guardian” who would manage (control) their money for them. Members of the tribe had to get permission to access their own bank accounts, have their purchases approved, withdraw their own money — nearly always with entirely racist assumptions embedded in the judgments about which Osage “deserved” to have access to their own money. It was in effect exactly like a modern-day conservatorship, with all of the built-in potential for exploitation that has given the legal structure its still-terrible reputation. The system often resulted in guardians simply withholding or stealing the money completely from the Osage, who rarely had a means of redress within the US legal system because of the conscious indifference or racism of local, state, and federal authorities. “I have a diploma from Lawrence, and they’ve put a guardian over me,” an Osage tribe member named John Goodskin told Harper’s Monthly in November 1920. “I fought in France for this country, and yet I am not allowed even to sign my own checks ... I’m a prisoner in this place.” To understand how the eventual string of murders could have gone unchecked for so long, it’s vital to understand both how exploitative the guardianship system was and how the community revolved around it. White community members sought oil leases and then through guardianship gained further control over the Osage. In order to make this system work, you needed people who were willing to exploit the Osage as their guardians and people who were willing to look the other way while they did it, often in exchange for bribes or access of their own. This meant you needed people within every part of the social and legal system. “They have all the law and all the machinery on their side,” Goodskin told Harper’s. Thus an entire ecosystem of greed and graft quickly arose around the Osage capital of Pawhuska and neighboring Osage city of Fairfax, keeping the money flowing and keeping the white locals, including the newcomers, in control of it. “Many of the county courts are influenced by political considerations, and … Indian guardianships are the plums to be distributed to the faithful friends of the judges as a reward for their support at the polls,” wrote Indigenous activist Zitkala-S̈a in 1924. Once established, the entire white community became incentivized to participate in this system of greed. And once the Osage citizens began dying, it was in the white locals’ best economic interests to let them keep dying. That’s because of how the law concerning the Osage Nation’s shares in the oil fields, known as their headrights, worked. It was illegal for the headrights, the Osages’ most valuable asset, to be sold or given away. But if any member of the Osage Nation died, their headright would pass to their legal heir. This person might be their white spouse, who was often conveniently also their guardian. Or the headright might go to a relative or heir whose guardian already had complete control over their accounts — so that the money would effectively go straight to them. In other words, marrying an Osage who then died, or being appointed guardian over an Osage who suddenly came into an inheritance after someone else died, was the only way for a white man to gain more access to the profits from all that oil. The law concerning the inviolability of Osage headrights, intended to make them less vulnerable to exploitation, instead meant that to their corrupt guardians, the Osage were more valuable dead than alive. President Calvin Coolidge poses with an Osage delegation in front of the White House on January 20, 1924. Bettmann Archive And thanks to the lure of the oil fields, corruption was everywhere. It ran so rampant in the region that, according to FBI records accessed by Grann in Flower Moon, when one of the killers was finally apprehended, he referred to the murders as simply “the state of the game.” It became so unchecked that in 1923, the Osage Nation formally requested that the federal government take over the investigation into the Reign of Terror because there seemed to be no hope for justice from anywhere else. The Osage murders became so prolific that the nation’s first federal investigative agency had to get involved Until that point, the state’s attempts to investigate had gone completely off the rails. Local law enforcement had been, at best, thoroughly intimidated into totally halting their investigations. The best efforts at solving the crimes had been waged by cadres of private investigators working for the families of the victims. Thus far, however, leads had gone nowhere, evidence had mysteriously vanished, plausible theories turned out to be rumors without substance, the region’s unbridled corruption tainted the available case information, witnesses abruptly vanished or stopped talking, and everyone who seemed to be getting somewhere turned up dead. As alarm and hysteria about the deaths spread, a white man named Barney McBride traveled to Washington, DC, to seek federal help in solving the murders. While there, he was attacked, beaten, and fatally stabbed more than 20 times. Three other investigators similarly died by foul play just as they seemed to be getting close to the truth: One was drugged and pushed down a flight of stairs; another was gunned down; the third, a local prosecutor, was thrown from a train while reportedly on his way to reveal the killers’ identities. The bombing of the Smith house, however, brought about a turning point in the murder investigation. The high death toll, as well as the sheer menace involved in a triple-homicide house bombing, finally garnered the attention of national media and prompted the intervention of the federal government and the Bureau of Investigation, the fledgling organization that would ultimately become the FBI. The bureau detectives, led by Tom White, a former Texas Ranger turned bureau veteran, had the herculean task of sorting through a landscape of rumors and misinformation and finding people — anyone — who was a) willing to tell the truth and b) not already dead. No sooner would one lead appear than it would turn out that the lead had already been killed, often under awfully convenient circumstances. Yet working mostly undercover, White and his detectives quickly gained a hypothesis of the murders — a truly chilling conspiracy to kill that led back to the family at the heart of it all. Note: From here on, we will discuss the real-life criminals behind the Osage murders, whose identities constitute major spoilers for both the book and the film Killers of the Flower Moon. If you want to remain unspoiled for either, you should stop reading now. The “who” of this whodunnit is almost as shocking as the “why” It’s a testament to how unproductive the local justice system had been in its efforts to bring the Osage killers to rights that when the FBI took over in the summer of 1925, it only took White and his men three months to find real answers. Those three months, however, were spent unearthing a devastatingly large community plot to orchestrate the murders of Osage tribe members. This plot was either enacted, enabled, or silently complied with by apparently dozens of members of Fairfax’s white society — everyone from judges to pastors to coroners to private detectives to a range of henchmen. At the center of all of it was a single man: William K. Hale, a self-made Fairfax cattle rancher who spent decades steadily amassing power and land in a There Will Be Blood-style saga of bribes, intimidation, murder, and ruthlessness. Hale did all of this while cloaking himself in a public disguise of gentility and charity; he called himself “the Reverend” and was known for lavishly donating to charity and constantly working on behalf of the Osage people. But Hale also steadily took control over nearly every part of the social and legal systems of the region: He gained an appointment as a deputy sheriff, which meant he could come and go in jails at will and could easily manipulate criminals to work for him from behind bars. He had local officials in his pocket, openly terrified to disobey him. Even doctors in the area apparently aided him in discreetly poisoning their patients on his behalf. Hale “had everything fixed from the road-overseer to the governor,” Hale’s nephew stated in a deposition. His ultimate goal, carried out via a string of brazen insurance scams, murder plots, for-hire killings, and fraud, was to amass his fortune by taking it from the Osage people. (This revelation comes as a shock in Grann’s retelling of the murder investigation; one might argue that Scorsese’s choice to cast Robert DeNiro as Hale in the film adaptation gives away the game upfront.) What Tom White and his agents were able to prove centers around the Osage family that Bill Smith married into, which is also the family that Hale’s nephew, Ernest Burkhart, married into. It’s unclear how early Hale’s grand design took form, but what it ultimately coalesced into was this: systematically killing off all of Burkhart’s in-laws until all of their inheritances had passed on to Burkhart’s wife, Mollie. (In Scorsese’s film, Mollie is played by breakout star Gladstone, with DiCaprio in the role of Ernest.) Mollie had outlived her three sisters, several cousins, and her mother. By the time White finally arrested Hale, she was being slowly poisoned — allegedly via injections directly from her doctor under the guise of administering insulin — with the apparent expectation that when she died, her family’s entire fortune would pass to Ernest Burkhart. Burkhart was fully aware of and assisted in the plot to kill his in-laws, including helping facilitate the bombing of the Smiths. It’s unclear when Burkhart learned about his uncle’s plot. It’s a horrifying possibility that he married Mollie with the intent to orchestrate her murder. It’s also possible he learned of the plot to kill Mollie afterward and went along with it, or perhaps learned of it but then proved reluctant to carry it out; after all, this was a woman he’d been married to for decades and had three children with. The possibility he had no knowledge she was being poisoned seems remote. In the final chapters of Flower Moon, Grann offers the chilling possibility that Burkhart not only had full complicity, but had even intended for his wife Mollie and two of their children to die alongside her sister Rita in the bombing of the Smith house. Equally unclear is whether Hale’s plot stopped with Mollie or ultimately included killing off Burkhart as well. Burkhart seemed genuinely remorseful and pleaded guilty to his role in the killing of Mollie’s sister Rita Smith, her husband Bill Smith, and their servant Nettie Brookshire. (The man who allegedly planted the bomb had died under suspicious circumstances that implicated Hale as the mastermind.) After this, Hale allegedly attempted to get one witness to kidnap and kill his nephew before Burkhart could testify against him. Ultimately, despite multiple hung juries (whose members had been bribed by Hale’s attorney), Hale and another man, a career criminal named John Ramsey, were convicted of killing Mollie’s cousin Roan Horse, also known as Henry Roan, in an insurance scam. They were each given life imprisonment. Hale’s other nephew, Bryan Burkhart, helped facilitate the murder of Mollie’s other sister Anna Brown, but after his own trial resulted in a hung jury, he was given immunity in order to testify against the man who pulled the trigger. That man, Kelsie Morrison (whom Grann implicates in a similar plot to murder his wife and her entire family), was also convicted. Although Hale was implicated in dozens of deaths, he was only convicted for one. Both he and Burkhart were eventually paroled, and Burkhart applied for and received a pardon from the state of Oklahoma over the objections of outraged Osage. For her part, Mollie initially supported her husband and believed in Ernest’s innocence, but after learning the full scope of his involvement in the murders, and comprehending just how much death he actively took part in, she divorced him. In 1931, she successfully sued for an end to her own guardianship and finally gained full control over the family fortune others had tried so hard to take. It’s impossible to know the full range of crimes that Hale and his coconspirators committed. That’s due to a range of reasons. For one, records have been lost and might not have been kept well at the time. For another, Hale wasn’t the only white man in the area trying to attain access to Osage wealth via force, violence, coercion, and murder. For another, since at one point local law enforcement simply stopped investigating the murders, the total number of people murdered in the Osage Reign of Terror might never be known. In Flower Moon, Grann cites estimates in the hundreds of victims — and that’s just within the Osage community. Hale also seems to have ruthlessly orchestrated the murders of dozens of people who either investigated the murders, helped him commit them, or had knowledge of them. In this panorama of the Osage Nation taken in the early 1920s, William Hale can be seen standing among the Osage on the left (in a golf cap and glasses). Courtesy of the Bartlesville Area History Museum The specter of death seems to have been all but expected during this period. Even a cursory look into the murders leads immediately to unexpectedly dark places — like the time Hale somehow legally acquired the inheritance of a 12-year-old boy, Charles Bigheart, who suddenly passed away under unknown circumstances, just five years before his father George was suspiciously poisoned to death, allegedly by Hale. Grann, in researching his book, seemed unable to help but stumble across more murders committed by more people — one, a banker in league with Hale, was suspected by FBI agents but never prosecuted; another woman likely murdered her husband for his headright and later narrowly escaped being murdered herself. The earliest victim Grann encountered was bludgeoned to death in 1918 by friends who later posed as her family members in order to access her accounts. The most recent victim he learned about was allegedly poisoned in 1931. Once Grann began looking at specific white men who had multiple guardianships entrusted to them, he realized that many of them seemed to be systematically offing their charges without an apparent second thought. Some simply denied their wards access to health care and let them die. One wealthy woman was held captive and tortured by her husband until the government interceded, as part of yet another alleged town conspiracy to take her wealth. Many guardians seemed to have no qualms about killing children in order to knock off potential obstacles to the prize. And countless members of white society were engaged in helping the guardians make such deaths appear nominally unsuspicious. “Virtually every element of society was complicit in the murderous system,” Grann ultimately concludes after taking in the sheer scope of the killings, “a vast criminal operation that was reaping millions and millions of dollars.” The social system that had begun as an ecosystem of greed had evolved into an ecosystem of death, reaping tragedy and trauma that still haunts the Osage and their descendants. The laws around headrights have changed, but they are still fraught legal subjects, though the Osage wealth has long since dried up, literally, alongside the depleted oil fields. And although the deaths of Indigenous peoples living in the US may not be organized by the steady hand of a single man like William Hale, they still face far higher death rates with lower rates of criminal investigations and prosecutions than white Americans. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women has become a grim acronym in the annals of criminal justice due to the need for increased awareness of such cases. The Osage murders illustrate something profoundly dark about the lie of American identity. The trope is that anyone can find success and happiness — that there’s something mythic and magical about “American” ambition and success. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the government’s approach to Indigenous Americans was to mold them into docile citizens via forced boarding school attendance (Roan Horse, later killed by Hale, was forced to change his name at one such school), forced religious conversions, and the systematic destruction of Indigenous American cultures. The lie that Indigenous peoples were fed as they were forced to assimilate into white culture was that once they had done so successfully, they would be rewarded with greater freedom and autonomy; they would receive their chance to participate in the American dream. Yet as Goodskin pointed out to Harper’s in 1920, that promise, always hollow, completely vanished as soon as actual independence and autonomy were within reach. “In the old days, before we had money, it was easy enough,” he said, describing the plight of the Osage who had a guardian. “All you had to do was not get drunk. But now your good behavior has nothing at all to do with it. Your money draws ’em and you’re absolutely helpless.” In other words, after having fully disenfranchised Indigenous Americans, there was never going to be a version of the “model” Indigenous American that white society could actually tolerate. The discovery of oil on Osage land is what the American dream is supposedly all about. It should have afforded the Osage power, freedom, and agency alongside all that cash. Instead, at the very moment they should have attained everything they were promised, they had less control over their own lives — and deaths — than ever.

The horrifying, nearly forgotten history behind Killers of the Flower Moon A century later, we still don’t know the full, stomach-churning extent of the Osage murders. Four women of the Kyle family all died suspicious deaths, from left to right: Minnie Smith (d. 1921); Anna Kyle Brown (d. 1921); Rita Smith (d. 1923); their mother, Lizzie Q. Kyle (d. 1921). The surviving sister, Mollie, narrowly escaped a similar fate. Bettmann Archive President Calvin Coolidge poses with an Osage delegation in front of the White House on January 20, 1924. Bettmann Archive The Smiths’ house in 1923, before and after the bombing. Bettmann Archive This tree became known in the region as the “Million-Dollar Elm” because of the millions of dollars in oil and natural gas leases that were regularly auctioned beneath it. Courtesy of the Bartlesville Area History Museum In this panorama of the Osage Nation taken in the early 1920s, William Hale can be seen standing among the Osage on the left (in a golf cap and glasses). Courtesy of the Bartlesville Area History Museum

Never underestimate Leo is all I'm saying here Taylor Swift Has No Plans To Shake Off No. 1 As Martin Scorsese’s ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ Eyes $20M+ Opening The AMC-distributed Taylor Swift concert movie Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which paused weekday play from Monday-Thursday, is looking at a 60%-70% dive in its second weekend with $27M-$37M off its first weekend of $92.3M. Those industry projections are based on the front-loaded nature of female-skewing pics, per sources. (...) Apple Original Films’ big splash into a wide theatrical release with Paramount on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon has been looking at a $20M-$25M opening with tracking for a while. That would be mind-blowing for a 3 hour, 26-minute western drama that’s getting released in the midst of the actors strike, which has prevented stars from tubthumping their pics. Such conceived tentpoles as New Regency/20th Century Studios/Disney’s $80M The Creator were impacted greatly by the strike; that pic’s promotion was hamstrung sans an awesome San Diego Comic-Con and fall film festival launch, ultimately opening to $14M and currently at a running cume of $33.4M. Another adult-skewing title, 20th/Disney’s A Haunting in Venice, also took a hit with a $14.2M opening. Why so optimistic on Killers of the Flower Moon? Analysts are bullish on the DiCaprio factor of it all in regards to the draw in a marketing campaign that’s been everywhere in TV spots and outdoor. A $20M+ opening here also would be a notable start for Apple’s foray into wide theatrical releases, its next being the Sony-distributed and Ridley Scott-directed Napoleon on November 22. The DiCaprio-Robert De Niro-Lily Gladstone movie has been on fire with critics since its world premiere at Cannes (which was where the stars previously did press back in May before the strike) with a current Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 96% certified fresh. Adapted by Scorsese and Eric Roth from the David Grann book, Killers of the Flower Moon follows the improbable romance of Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) against the suspicious murders of members of the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world overnight after oil was discovered underneath their land during the 1920s. Given the length of this movie, previews will start as early as 2 p.m. on Thursday. Killers of the Flower Moon is booked in 3,621 theaters and looks to pull in men and women over 25. Working in the Scorsese pic’s advantage is the fact that it will have all the Imax and PLF screens, with little overlap with Eras Tour. In regards to this Apple-financed property, the streamer is handling the marketing and publicity, while Paramount has overseen the distribution and booking of theaters. Overall, the good news between Killers of the Flower Moon and Eras Tour is that neither is cannibalizing the other’s coveted demos. No Apple TV+ streaming date has been set for Killers of the Flower Moon as a guaranteed long theatrical window is being planned due to awards season. DiCaprio’s highest openings with Scorsese are, in order: Shutter Island ($41M in 2010), The Departed ($27M, 2006), The Wolf of Wall Street ($18M, 2013), Gangs of New York ($9.1M, 2002) and The Aviator ($858K first weekend at 40 theaters with a second weekend wide break of $9.1M, 2004). A $20M+ opening for Killers of the Flower Moon would rep the best domestic start for De Niro in a Scorsese film — Cape Fear being the duo’s biggest opening together with $10.2M back in 1991. Cape Fear on a global basis is De Niro’s highest-grossing movie with Scorsese at $182M, while DiCaprio’s is Wolf of Wall Street at $407M.

At least my local cinema has some faith in the movie. It shows KOTFM twice as much as the Taylor concert movie ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Tracking at $20-$25 Million Opening Apple and Paramount are giving Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” a wide theatrical release in over 3600 theaters this weekend and, according to Deadline, the tracking has it at around $20M-$25M. This would be impressive for a 3 hour, 26-minute western drama, with no actors promoting it during the strike, but I sure as hell hope it’ll gross more. May the cinematic Gods grace ‘Killers’ with a $30 million weekend. Apple spent $200 million on ‘Killers,’ mostly for the prestige, Oscar noms and the fact that it could bring in more subscribers on their streaming platform. Breaking even is just an added bonus. But for the sake of cinema’s survival? I sure would like to see a 206 minute, R-rated, non-IP film pull better numbers. Scorsese’s last two films barely made any money. 2016’s “Silence” grossed $22 million, on a $50 million budget, and 2019’s “The Irishman,” which was produced by Netflix, had only been granted a brief, and limited, 2-week theatrical release by the streamer.

Leonardo DiCaprio Still Very Much in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Next Film Yesterday, I spoke to a source who mentioned that Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film is still very much a go and that, if there’s no strike, a February production is being eyed in California. This same person tells me that Leonardo DiCaprio is still very much involved and should be seen as the lead of PTA’s next film. I decided to double-check this intel with Jeff Sneider, who had originally reported that DiCaprio would be part of this mysterious new film, and his response was, “I don’t think anything’s changed.” This past Spring, an assortment of rumors were circling around this project, with Regina Hall and Rachael Taylor offered lead roles in the film. There was also intel of Viggo Mortensen being a part of it. Joaquin Phoenix’s name had also been mention. It’s still a mystery as to whether or not this is in fact an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland.” PTA will be working with Warner Bros. in this next, still untitled film.