‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Producer Daniel Lupi on Working With Osage Consultants on the Film: “You Always Felt Like You Were Making Their Story”

Producer Daniel Lupi had worked for years with the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Spielberg, but until Killers of the Flower Moon, he had never collaborated with Martin Scorsese. So when he got the call to come on board, it was a no-brainer. “How could you say no to Martin Scorsese?” he says. “He’s Martin Scorsese. Paul Thomas Anderson would probably say the same thing. Some of the shots in Boogie Nights, you could argue, were inspired by Goodfellas.” 

Lupi came on board after the script for the adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction book had already been rewritten to focus on the relationship between Lily Gladstone’s Mollie, an Osage woman, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart amid the genocide that Ernest participated in which targeted Mollie’s family. With the updated screenplay in hand, Lupi was tasked with helping get the production to Oklahoma, where he helped oversee a crew that wanted to get the story right down to the minute details. 

There were all these delays that kept bubbling up with this project, but do you think there was a benefit to working through those?

I can’t imagine the film, the other version actually, just because we were so embedded with Mollie and Ernest, and their life. And so when I became involved, a lot of work had happened on the project. There were good relationships with Chief Standing Bear, who was the chief at that time. The marching orders were: Get to Oklahoma and figure a plan out. We also made a change in production designer. Originally it was Dante Ferretti, and then that changed to Jack Fisk for different reasons. Jack had done There Will Be Blood with me and had done a bunch of PTA movies, costume, there were some changes there, and we ended up with Jacqueline West. And then the AD, Adam Somner, who had done Wolf of Wall Street, but also done all the PTA movies and Spielberg movies with me. Basically [we] just seemed to get the right team in place to try to pull it off.

How did you start figuring out how to make it happen in Oklahoma? 

We scouted Oklahoma. We went with Jack Fisk, and Jack is so forensic. Jack goes and looks at the death records of all the people involved, and looks at the land registries. Jack was pulling it way back more into what really happened. We shot the film in Pawhuska, which is the main city of the Osage nation. But the film takes place in Fairfax, which is near Gray Horse, which is further into the Osage lands. But we ended up in Shouns’ office, where the doctors were — we shot in the real [location]. The scene where we go into the [Masonic Lodge], that office is next door to the Shouns’ office. On the walls, it has all these photographs, which go back to the ’20s. And Pitts Beaty, who’s the guy [in the scene] where you meet Mollie, his picture was on the wall. The Masons had not changed since 1920. Where we blew the house up, I think it was like a street away from where the original one happened, and we found someone who kindly let us blow … We didn’t blow their house up, they let us make it seem like [we did]. And then we gave them an empty lot because they were looking to build a new house. Mollie’s house, again, was close to where she lived, so we found a great period house.

What did all of this bring to the experience of filming it?

I think it was a bit like on Lincoln, with Daniel Day-Lewis, we shot it in Richmond. Everyone wanted us to shoot it in Canada or in a tax rebate. [But] we grounded it where the film took place, and I think you can’t beat that. I think from a crew point of view, it was quite emotional. Because also on set every day, we had linguists, we had people from costume, we had lots of Osage with us every day. And obviously to them, this was a hard story to tell. The first day of shooting I remember a chief and the elders came out to say a prayer. You always felt like you were making their story.

What was the impact of having so many Osage consultants on set? 

Marty was incredibly detail-oriented. Julia O’Keefe was our Osage costume consultant. There’s various ways you can wear a blanket and depending on how you wear it there are different occasions. Watching the film, when you see Bob De Niro speaking Osage, I didn’t realize that he’d learned it so well — and I mean he really got into it. We borrowed lots of artifacts from various people who had ceremonial outfits or costumes, and we had a lot of locals.

You have said the script was a “living organism,” how did that impact your job? 

We were shooting somewhat in order, within reason, so all the sets actually, for the most part, were standing the whole movie. For instance, that’s why you see all the seasonal changes in Mollie’s house. There was a financial impact. I mean, basically, we had miles of cable, which lit Mollie’s house, all buried under the ground. And so leaving it down for 20 weeks, normally you tend to shoot a location you move on. To put this film in perspective, the oil derrick where one of the Osage gets killed and you see the guys drilling? That oil well, we shot for two days. On There Will Be Blood, that was the centerpiece of the whole movie. So literally, we built the same thing for a two-day shoot, which on There Will Be Blood, we shot for a 10-week shoot. Oklahoma was pretty amazing. Everyone lent us things, and borrowed, and rented. Bringing the steam train in was a big deal. We laid the tracks, we brought the train. To rent that and lay the track is like $1,000,000. The other thing we did was the black and white footage at the beginning, Marty wanted to do this kind of newsreel footage. [Cinematographer and director] Ellen Kuras, who’s worked with Marty in the past, came in and basically borrowed Marty’s hand-crank camera. And we shot all that footage in black and white with a hand-crank camera.

You’ve worked with some greats. What distinguishes Martin Scorsese? 

His recall of cinema history is second to none. And then the other thing with him is, you’ll be talking about a problem on this film, and then he’ll be talking about the problem. But then you realize he’s talking about how he had the same problem on, like, Raging Bull. In other words, you’ll be talking about how we’ve got a problem and we have to solve that, and maybe we have to talk to the studio, and then he’ll be going on about the studio, and you’ll realize he’s actually talking about Raging Bull. 

How did it feel sort of working on this film and knowing the importance of the story it was telling?

I think it certainly made the crew push on. In other words, obviously all films have ups and downs, not every day good or bad. And I think it helped focus people probably on what was important. I think we were just trying to show the most authentic film. And that went on into post [production].