How ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ reimagined one of America’s most heinous crimes

By Thomas Page, CNN

(CNN) — Jack Fisk had an audacious request.

The production designer behind “The Revenant” and “There Will Be Blood,” whose collaborations with Terrence Malick, Paul Thomas Anderson and David Lynch have made him the stuff of industry legend, was about to recreate a crime scene.

Fisk was on location in Oklahoma preparing for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the latest film by Martin Scorsese, a retelling of the Osage murders in which an Indigenous nation in the 1920s was targeted for its oil wealth. Two victims of what became known as the “Reign of Terror” were Bill and Rita Smith, the latter Osage, who on March 10, 1923, were killed by a bomb in their home in the town of Fairfax. Fisk had found a house that looked almost identical for earlier scenes. The explosion would happen off screen; the audience would only see a wreckage. But, he asked, would the owners mind if he blew up their house anyway?

The two women said yes. Then they explained why.

“Their father, who was Osage, had lived in that home,” Fisk told CNN. “He had a White wife; she was his guardian.” (Historically, the Osage were forced to hand over control of their financial assets to White family or associates.) “She took all his money, made his life miserable and now he had died. They were glad to see it all disappear. It was a cathartic moment.”

Fisk is known for resurrecting the ghosts of America past. “Killers of the Flower Moon” also called on him to exorcise its demons.

The adaption of David Grann’s 2017 book of the same title recounts one of America’s most heinous crimes. For a time, the Osage were the richest community in the world. They had a unique arrangement among Indigenous nations, as they owned the mineral rights to their land.

When vast reserves of oil were discovered beneath their pastures in the late 19th Century, prospectors paid handsomely for the chance to tap the land, and the Osage made fortunes in return. But though the Osage were wealthy, they were deprived of their financial autonomy through guardianships. White opportunists circled like vultures; guardianships were ripe for graft and corruption, and the Osage had little recourse. Events turned murderous, as a conspiracy sought to transfer land “headrights” — effectively deeds of ownership — into White hands through marriage and inheritance. Dozens of Osage were killed during the Reign of Terror, though the exact number remains unknown, Grann writes.

Scorsese’s movie focuses on Mollie Burkhart, whose feckless husband Ernest and his uncle William Hale conspired to funnel her family’s headrights into their back pocket. (Rita Smith was Mollie’s sister.) The film, starring Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, debuted to ecstatic praise at the Cannes Film Festival in May ahead of a theatrical release on October 20.

This painful chapter of history was told with the blessing and cooperation of the Osage Nation and shot among many of the places where events happened. To realize his vision Scorsese turned to Fisk, one of the great on-location production designers, for what would be their first collaboration.

Fisk says he entered the business “kind of by accident” more than half a century ago. He didn’t know what his responsibilities were, so he did everything: building, painting and dressing. Just shy of 80 today, he still likes to get his hands dirty. Among his first big gigs was Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” (1978), where his guileless approach resulted in one of cinemas most famous houses, designed to be shot from any angle, from inside or out. Fisk says he has only worked on a soundstage once, with his old friend David Lynch for “Mulholland Drive” (2001). Residing on a farm in Virginia when he’s not working, he prefers the outdoors life.

Malick would later enlist Fisk’s services on “The New World” (2005) where he built Jamestown circa 1607 and collaborated with the Algonquin and Powhatan peoples, historically from Virginia, to build structures in their vernacular. Fisk says his process was “a lot of research, some common sense and some conjecture.” Historians were taken aback with the veracity of his Jamestown, which contained touches and techniques archaeologists would only later unearth at the site of the real fort, which was discovered in 1994.

“I’m married to an actor (Sissy Spacek, the two met on Malick’s ‘Badlands’) and production design to me is supporting the actors and telling you more about them than the dialogue,” Fisk said.

“I try to build the sets as completely as possible. They’re good in 360 degrees … It’s unlike how a lot of films are done,” said Fisk. “It’s harder for the carpenters, because usually the time that we’re building is either freezing cold or blistering hot or raining or something, but it’s worth it.”

That rigor and flexibility was what Scorsese needed. Fisk entered “Killers” four years into pre-production and began poring over research belonging to Grann and executive producer Marianne Bowers (also Scorsese’s archivist). He conducted his own, reading anything he could find, from the US government’s treaties with the Osage in 1808 to 1920s periodicals. Osage artist Addie Roanhorse came on board to assist with production design. Then Fisk began reaching out to the Osage in Oklahoma, leaving notes on their doors asking them to give him a call.

“I started meeting Osage people that lived in Gray Horse, where Mollie and her family lived, and they were so generous. They would show me Osage artefacts, pictures of their family, talked about the gatherings and how many people would come and stay,” he recalled.

Fisk tracked down the house where he believed Mollie Burkhart had lived with Ernest, which had belonged to her mother, Lizzie Q Kyle, and which was passed down through generations to Maggie Burkhart, Mollie’s granddaughter and a key voice in Grann’s book. The home was small, he said, far from the splendour he expected. Weaving together what he saw and what he’d learned from the Osage and their social routines, Fisk designed a replica built on a ranch outside Pawhuska.

“These houses had to be built strong because of tornadoes. They couldn’t leak because we had set dressing in there and wallpaper,” he said of his sets. “They had to last for several months, because of the way Marty was shooting. Lilly would have to lose weight or gain weight, so we would come back, then we go away, then come back.”

Many of the 50 or so locations utilized buildings still standing in the town of Pawhuska (Fairfax had lost most of its period buildings and so Pawhuska’s stood in). Period windows were installed, old signage fitted, and the road covered over until Fairfax’s former thoroughfare Kihekah Avenue emerged.

One important location for Scorsese was a pool hall habituated by Ernest and Bill. Another was a barbershop. “I had grown up in a little town in Illinois and when I was a kid, I used to get my hair cut at the pool hall, because the barbershop was in there,” said Fisk. “I suggested to (Scorsese) that we mixed the two and he loved the idea … (it) made the scenes more interesting I think, because there was already something going on in the background.”

There’s a cohesion to most of “Killers’” production design, typifying the Osage and White cultures’ uneasy co-assimilation in Oklahoma. There’s also one notable exception: the Masonic Lodge in Fairfax, where some conspirators including Hale are members. The de facto seat of White supremacism looks unlike anywhere else in the film, with tall dark walls, ornate dressing and a threatening aura. Fisk says the production used the real 1924 Masonic lodge, painted the interior dark blue, added a black and white chequered floor and prized opened old skylights. It’s here that the film’s most unexpected scene takes place: Robert De Niro’s Bill dealing out corporal punishment on Ernest with a wooden paddle. “It’s such a bizarre scene anyway, for Leo to be spanked. The room need some kind of gravity to it, and ritual,” said Fisk.

Part of the tragedy of the Osage murders was how little punishment was eventually meted out. Many crimes were never solved; many murders never even investigated. No film can right those wrongs, but the care and sensitivity taken by Scorsese and his team has not gone unnoticed by the Osage. The director has described the movie as “an offering that acknowledges the extent of the terror they experienced, and one that might also give some kind of solace.”

The house that stood in for Bill and Rita Smith’s home was razed to the ground by the production. The destruction needed to be absolute: a result of the overzealous use of nitro-glycerine. But simulating this act of terror gave it an unexpected new life. It became something cleansing, helping an Osage family move beyond trauma caused by the same exploitation at the rotten heart of Scorsese’s movie.

After filming, Fisk’s crew cleared the land of the wreckage and returned it to its owners. They laid grass over the earth before they left.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is released in cinemas on October 20.

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