Martin Scorsese: “I want to tell stories, and there’s no

Famed director Martin Scorsese has many stories he wants to share, but feels like it may be too late, he said in a recent interview with Deadline.

“I wish I could take a break for eight weeks and make a film at the same time,” Scorsese, 80, said while discussing his narrative process for his upcoming movie Killers of the Flower Moon. “The whole world has opened up to me, but it’s too late. It’s too late.”

Part of this reflection was sparked by ruminating on the moment filmmaker Akira Kurosawa received his honorary Oscar from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in 1990.

“I’m old. I read stuff. I see things. I want to tell stories, and there’s no more time,” Scorsese explained. “[Kurosawa] said, ‘I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too late.’ He was 83. At the time, I said, ‘What does he mean?’ Now I know what he means.”

Set to come out October 6th, the film is based on the historical nonfiction novel Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, told from the perspective of the Texas Ranger turned FBI agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) investigating the mysterious murders of Osage tribe members.

Originally emphasizing the white savior aspect of the story, Scorsese revised the script to focus on the conflicting love story between white murder suspect Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Osage member Mollie (Lily Gladstone). Ernest’s relationship with his uncle Bill Hale (Robert De Niro) also became a focus.

“Leo DiCaprio looked at me and said, ‘Where’s the heart in this movie?’ This was when Eric Roth and I were writing the script from the point of view of the FBI coming in and unraveling everything,” Scorsese remembered. “Eric and I enjoyed working on that first version; it had all the tropes of the Western genre that I grew up with, and I was so tempted to do it that way. But I said, ‘The only person that has heart, besides Mollie Burkhart, is her husband Ernest, because they’re in love.’”

The dissonance between Burkhart’s love for his wife and the potential thirst for her tribe’s oil money posed a heavy weight that needed to be expressed in Killers of the Flower Moon, which has a three-hour and 26-minute runtime.

According to Scorsese, however, it’s well worth the time. “Make a commitment. Your life might be enriched. This is a different kind of picture,” he said. “Spending the evening, or the afternoon with this picture, with this story, with these people, with this world that reflects on the world we are in today, more so than we might realize.”

Killers of the Flower Moon will premiere at Cannes later this month before opening for wide release in US theaters on October 6th. The star-studded cast also includes Brendan Fraser, John Lithgow, Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, and Jack White.

Read The Full Article Here