Episode 79: Killers of the Flower Moon with Eric Roth
Can you find the wolves in this podcast? Our guest today, Eric Roth, is the Academy Award-winning writer behind films like Forrest Gump. He wrote The Insider for Michael Mann, Munich for Steven Spielberg, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for David Fincher and 2018’s A Star Is Born for Bradley Cooper, and two years ago, we had the delight of his company as we broke down his script for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune on this very show. Today, we're joined by him once more to discuss what – whisper it – may just be his crowning accomplishment.
Few films this year have left the extraordinary imprint left behind by Killers of the Flower Moon – a tale of love, murder and quite-literally-poisonous greed in 1920s America, directed by Martin Scorsese. Eric’s script for the film, which he co-wrote with the beloved auteur, was adapted from a non-fiction book by author David Grann, but with a very different approach to the story told in that tome. The book investigated a series of killings of members of the indigenous Osage Nation – deaths caused, then covered up, by white men who coveted their oil-rich land. At the heart of all this was a woman: Mollie Kyle, played in the film by Lily Gladstone, who marries a first world war veteran named Ernest Burkhart, played by Leo DiCaprio.
Ernest had a corrupt uncle, William King Hale, portrayed by Robert DeNiro, who masqueraded as an upstanding member of the community. Molly was forced to watch in horror as at least 24 family members and friends were systematically killed as a result of Hale’s scheming – unaware that her uncle-in-law was masterminding these deaths and unaware that the man she loved was helping him.
Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon, however, was subtitled “the birth of the FBI” for a reason – it focused on the white law enforcement response to the killings as much as the Osage Nation victims themselves. As you’ll discover in this episode, Eric’s first draft of this movie adaptation followed suit, before he and Scorsese realised they had a responsibility to navigate this tale from a different perspective. It wasn’t as simple as making Molly the lead. That story, as non-indigenous filmmakers, Scorsese has implied, wasn’t theirs to tell. Instead, they set about making a film about complicity that would centre Ernest in all his cowardice.
In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, we break down all of the film’s key scenes, uncover some fascinating details about its first draft and break down the meaning of the movie’s astounding finale – a moment on film unlike anything else in Scorsese’s filmography. Eric, as ever, was a total pleasure to chat with: a storyteller so inspiringly in love with what he does, that at 78-years-old, there’s no sign of him slowing down. Writing screenplays is simply what he does.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.
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