My name is Martin Scorsese and I was the director, co-writer and co-producer of “Killers of the Flower Moon.” At this point in history, it has become quite obvious that the people who carried out the disappearances and murders of the Osage Native Americans in order to gain their rights, oil money, are under investigation. And they determined who they thought would be the weakest link. The one they know they could probably get the information from or break is Ernest Burkhart. And he’s played by Leo DiCaprio. “Well, here we go.” As the characters all revolve around each other in the film and the circle gets tighter and tighter, my drawing for the shot was simply a circle with an arrow. That was it. “My wife is really sick.” I want it to become a kind of circular ballet. He stands up, he walks in circles, the camera circles around him, and as this happens other characters enter the frame from left to right. And while he turns around and tries to explain that his wife is sick, which is an understatement, the camera keeps following. “You got it, you got it all wrong.” Until finally, we get to the door, and he says to his little son, which is an improvisation, he says, go with him now, my son, go with him. “My wife, she’s really sick!” It was one of the most enjoyable moments to realize this plan. And then the interrogation begins. At that point I had to be very careful, because once scenes and stories like this end in police stations or interrogation rooms, I find that the images become flat and uninteresting. And so I said, let’s deal with the angles that are like boring for the characters. Not boring images, but boring, really focused on them. The angles should be frontal. But what interested me is that when we move on to Leo, when he is very tired, it disappears. But then it comes back. And when it comes back, you’re still in the same plane. We were maybe gone for an hour or two hours. You don’t expect to fade back into the same image. That’s what I hope. “I need to sit down.” “Yes, you do, but you’re standing.” That’s when he really lost his mind and was really, really tired. “I’m going to have to get some sleep.” In a way, what I had to do was fight against a tendency to over-engineer the interpretation of the camera. And in doing so, that tension, I think, is maintained within the frame. And then finally, when it moves, it means something. When it cuts, it means something, as much as possible. “And did you put the explosives under the house?” “I don’t know anything about the absence of explosives.”
Baby Nepo Christian Wilkins poses with Kylie Minogue as he attends her Las Vegas residency
By Matt Demarco for Daily Mail Australia Published: 5:31 a.m. EDT, April 28, 2024 | Update: 6:04 a.m. EDT, April...
Read more