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Killers of the Flower Moon
17 Plays10 days ago
Killers of the Flower Moon is a big book that deserves a big episode. It's not true crime, it's nonfiction.
In this episode, we discuss love, violence in movies, and telling stories outside of your own culture. We also gush about the undeniable talent of Lily Gladstone.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Book Club Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Two nerds went to college and found each other in the English department basement and became instant friends. Eight years and three degrees later, they're reunited.
00:00:12
Speaker
You're listening to Book Club, the movie, the podcast.
Historical Significance of the Flower Moon in Osage Nation
00:00:39
Speaker
The Flower Moon takes place in the month of May, when all of the flowers begin to bloom in the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. It was during the Flower Moon of 1921 when the body of Anna Brown was discovered, and the reign of terror against the Osage people officially began.
00:00:57
Speaker
Oil was discovered in Oklahoma, and by the 1920s, the members of the Osage tribe became the wealthiest people in the world. They built big, beautiful houses, rode around in fancy chauffeured cars, and were able to give their families the best of everything.
00:01:13
Speaker
While the Osage were wealthy, they were not entirely in control of their finances. The federal government deemed them incompetent and required their funds be managed by legal guardians.
00:01:24
Speaker
This included Molly Kyle, also known as Molly Burkhart, and her sisters Minnie, Anna, and Rita.
David Grann's Book and Its Impact on Osage History
00:01:32
Speaker
Anna was the woman found murdered in May of 1921.
00:01:36
Speaker
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Gran is about the conspiracy to steal oil rights from the Osage people, murder, and the birth of the FBI.
00:01:53
Speaker
Over 20 confirmed, like, quote unquote, like, solved murders. But ah David Graham writes that, you know, it could be in the scores or hundreds.
00:02:06
Speaker
Like, was the, it was it was just the It's who knows. Nobody knows. Nobody knows for sure. There is no exact number. Right. even those 20. 24, think was the count. Even those, even those 24, there was no justice.
00:02:27
Speaker
Right. No. Some people went to jail for like a hot second, but you know, like had they murdered white people, then they probably would have suffered from capital punishment and, and been executed. um But since it was just just Native Americans, um you know, they went to prison with life sentences and then got out early and were able to live long into their 80s and 90s, which does not sound fair at all.
00:03:00
Speaker
No, because it wasn't. It wasn't fair at all. It was awful. This whole thing is awful. um Definitely wasn't taught this in school. At all. we We learned, we had like a paragraph about the Trail of Tears.
00:03:14
Speaker
Right. and and And that was just like, it was a bummer. And then they moved and it was fine. And that's, you know, that's not what happened. Yeah.
00:03:26
Speaker
I think this, I think it's a it's <unk> a really important story. And yeah, it's definitely like, traumatizing to read it's awful but this is this is so important it is yeah extremely extremely important um piece of american history i think that that needs to be taught um more and yeah david gran right person to write it i think Why do you think he was the person to write it? Yeah. I mean, so let's get into that, right? So the book came out in 2018, right? Or was it published in 2017? think was 2017.
00:04:08
Speaker
i think it was twenty seventeen Oh, it was April 18th, 2017. Okay. Let's talk about the different kinds of stories that the two are telling and for in this instance. So for the book, um the book was published in 2018. It's a pretty new book. twenty seventeen God damn it. The book was published in 2017.
00:04:32
Speaker
Shit. I'm marking it again. Okay, marked. ah Okay, the book was published in 2017. I'm going to let you take the book. How about that? I'll do the movie.
00:04:47
Speaker
Okay, I'm marking it again. Marked.
00:04:51
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:54
Speaker
the book was published in 2017, which I read was also the time that Martin Scorsese picked it up, um, and immediately read it and immediately decided, uh, dibs, I want to make a movie about this. Mine. um god mine, which we'll talk about that in a minute. Um,
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, published in 2017, written by David Gran. David Gran is a staff writer for the New York Times. He's been published everywhere, all of the big magazines. He's written, it's like six or seven books. He's written a lot of books. Maybe most famously, The Lost City of Z from 2009, published in 2009. Yes. Yeah.
00:05:42
Speaker
yes um And all of his books are this kind of investigative reporting. Literally journalism. Yeah. the kind of thing.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah. Which is taking up, I mean, that sort of thing takes up a pretty big section of my bookcase. um But he he manages to keep it, like, fairly, like, it feels...
00:06:06
Speaker
like a narrative, like he's just telling a story. And this is, it does read like a whodunit. um I was, ah and I feel silly, but I was caught off guard by one particular character, only one.
00:06:23
Speaker
um I, spoiler alert, was, was totally on board with Ernest at the beginning. And I was like, okay, well, I really don't like, i just, I didn't know anything yet. I had zero information for who was really doing all of these big bad things. And the ma I didn't know who the mastermind was, but I had a theory.
00:06:43
Speaker
very good idea based on virtually nothing. But I, I wanted Ernest to be a good guy. I wanted Ernest to be, to be my man, you know, my little, my little goofy Ernie. And that's not what happened. And I feel pretty dumb that I, I was duped by him. Right. But that was kind of genius because David Grand wasn't even telling me to like him or care about him. There wasn't like any, I wasn't even being pushed emotionally in one direction or another.
00:07:20
Speaker
That's just how I decided to read it, I guess. um But the way that the information is laid out really just lets you discover things. like almost in chronological order of how it happened, which was genius.
00:07:37
Speaker
that is That was awesome. That made this story like so rich. I think it's really interesting how he chose to write a true story right it's a true story it has there are some public records right there's still there are still a lot of um loose ends i guess um because the the murders and the the racism was so systematic like there's there's just a lot of uh very unsettling unsolved aspects to
00:08:10
Speaker
the whole situation, but like the, like the core cases, the ones that have been solved, the the ones where people were convicted, um that's all like fairly well recorded or at least as as good as we're going to get at this point.
Exploring Narrative Angles and Osage Perspective
00:08:27
Speaker
But he still chose to, to, to write the story as, as a whodunit, as a murder mystery, um, as a, you know, ah we're staying close to like ah kind of our main protagonist, Molly, um, and close to her family. And she, she was in the dark until the trials. Um, she didn't know who was committing these murders, um, of her sisters and her mother. and, um,
00:09:00
Speaker
and And Henry Rohn and everybody else. Her first husband. first husband, everybody. everybody yeah um her first husband and her cousin, like just her whole community. Right. Like, um and it's like, even if it's someone who's not actually related to her or isn't in her like closer circle, it's still part of her larger community of like, you know, I think there were 2000 names on the original Osage Scrolls. Right. And it's like, man, if they killed 100 people, like that's a significant percentage. If they killed two people, that's a significant percentage. It's it's not acceptable no matter what. But it's just like just seeing members of your community being systematically murdered and then no one's there to help you.
00:09:51
Speaker
All that to say is. Typically, like nonfiction, right, doesn't get to
00:10:01
Speaker
keep the facts close to the chest or, you know, like hide the cards like that because it's nonfiction and we're supposed to be true and honest and um get to the truth of it, you know, and in the most true way, I guess. Yeah.
00:10:18
Speaker
But I really enjoyed that Gran... let us discover the bad guys. I couldn't wait to learn who the bad guys were. Like, I just couldn't stand it. and So like I... Did you Google it?
00:10:31
Speaker
Oh yeah. After like the second page, I was like, all right, who's the bad guy? And I was like, oh, it's Hale. And I don't know if you remember, but while you were reading it, I was like, do you want me to spoil it for you? Because I was peeking at your your book notes and I was like, your book notes said something like, I'm not too sure about this Hale guy.
00:10:49
Speaker
Right. it's like, oh, he sounds like immediately. OK, but just a little sketch. And I was like, oh, she knows. Like, I won't ruin And that was like the first like maybe 15 pages. And like, like literally I remember the moment I read like, oh, he went to Oklahoma and he lived in dirt and then he got cows and then he had money. Look at him go. And I was like,
00:11:13
Speaker
I don't like it. I don't know why I don't like that. My whole family has, you know, raised cattle and stuff. I don't know. i just, I didn't like his face. Yeah, it takes a few generations to like, yeah I would think, to build wealth like that typically. Yeah. So I was just like, how?
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah. How do you do that? How did he do that? And I mean, sure, circumstances back then were probably a little bit different as far as building wealth, but I just didn't trust him from the get go.
00:11:42
Speaker
Again, based on nothing. I was being mean, but then ah that just all got confirmed. So I don't feel bad about it. Right. Yeah. so So why do you think David Grand was the one to write this? Like, what why him and not an Osage writer or someone who...
00:12:02
Speaker
who is native, like another like another indigenous person. Why was it David Graham? Why do you think? ah Well, I mean, I think an Osage author totally could have written this book.
00:12:12
Speaker
um and And I think there's still room for an Osage author to write a book about this topic if they wanted to. um I can also see how the topic would be like potentially like really traumatizing for someone of the Osage community to, to dig into and to research. I think for any person it would be really traumatizing, but especially if it's like, these are your ancestors, these are your, your, your community ancestors, right? Like, um but David Grant specifically, like, I mean, we talked about kind of his, his,
00:12:49
Speaker
literary clout, I guess, um or his writerly <unk> clout. So, you know, he has he has that to back him up. So if he shows up in a town and is like, hi, I'm David Grant. I i wrote this book and I'm researching this other thing, you know, like people might not like throw him off their porch.
00:13:08
Speaker
um So certainly like That that ethos gave him maybe an in in the community to be able to talk to. um You know, sort of descendants of survivors, descendants of victims. um And and he also like apparently it's just extremely well connected, like he knew about the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA? I only knew about FOIA from an episode of King of the Hill.
00:13:39
Speaker
And I didn't know it was a thing at all. like um So he knew how to like he knew how to like request for files from the FBI. And I'm like,
00:13:50
Speaker
I would be terrified that would land me on a list somewhere. And then I wouldn't be able to like shop online or something. I don't know. Like you might be on a list. Who knows? Maybe I am. knows I don't know where to check the lists, but he might be on one. Um, or asking questions.
00:14:10
Speaker
Right. And he's, he's just like not concerned. Um, Yeah, I mean, people know his name now. And I mean, they knew it before 2017 when this book was published as well um because of the Velocity of Z. Anyway, so so not only did he have like kind of the know-how on how to get that information and he had the – the byline, I guess, to, to get like the access and to be able to, to be trusted and let in the door, get his foot in the door. But like, he also had like, uh, like people that who were retired from the FBI, or retired from like the government who were like, Oh yeah, like I can go get that, that for you. Like, let me just, let me call it my buddy kind of thing. And yeah so,
00:15:01
Speaker
He's just like really well connected. And that's something that like. Someone who wasn't as well connected, like personally might have had more trouble and a lot more red tape to get the information. Yeah. And well FOIA is red tape. Right. FOIA is red tape. But it's like if if he's also using like personal connections that to kind of like maybe not skirt the red tape, but like and expedite it.
00:15:30
Speaker
You know, he's well connected and um he also gave special credit to the historian. um Is it Louis or Louis? Do we know? and think it's Louis. Okay. I don't know. I'm going to say Louis. Okay. He gave special credit to the historian Louis F. Burns and poet John Joseph Matthews, two Osage writers. So like the Osage reign of terror as these these murders are sometimes referred to, um like it it is written about, um, it is there, there are like reference works. There are some, there's a novel out there. um so, I mean, it's written about in fiction too, but there are also nonfiction accounts. Um, so, you know, it's not like there's nothing on it. It's just, it seems like maybe there's 10 or 15 like books or like creative works that,
00:16:24
Speaker
that exist and like maybe there should be like a thousand um or more. yes Right. more Just more. Yeah. Because I'm not, and I don't want to sound like a true crime buff because I'm not. Me neither.
00:16:39
Speaker
I'm not. um i mean, and I grew up watching, you know, like, Caps and Cold Case Files or whatever the heck. I did. i totally did. i was such a little creep as a kid.
00:16:50
Speaker
um And I don't want to sound like a true crime buff. I'm not. But i I do want more information on this. It only scratches the surface.
00:17:01
Speaker
It's a very satisfying scratch, I will say. but But like, you know, my back's still itching a bit. There's got to be more. And I and i do, i want to hear more from surviving family members. I want to hear more. and and and they are in this book.
00:17:17
Speaker
ah We do get i not an interview, but we do have ah quite a bit of information ah coming from Molly's ah granddaughter, Margie Burkhart.
00:17:29
Speaker
This happened five minutes ago. You know, I mean, it happened, you know, 100 years ago, but it five minutes ago is how it really feels. 100 years is really not that long.
00:17:40
Speaker
So i I would like more of the of the Osage side of things. That's what I want. Right. And nobody has to give it to me. i don't, like, need it. But I would really appreciate it.
00:17:53
Speaker
i guess I don't know if, like, an encyclopedia on it would really bring justice to the situation. I feel like – Oh, no, course not. I feel like the Osage community has not received justice for this.
00:18:03
Speaker
um And they they need it. They deserve it. So I don't know what what that looks like. But –
00:18:15
Speaker
Ideally, more art, more more appreciation for their culture, more absolute more support for their culture to thrive and endure. And um especially because some people decided it was time to eradicate it back in the 1920s because they were greedy for oil money.
00:18:39
Speaker
Okay, so I think we've talked about the kind of story that the book is telling.
Scorsese's Film Adaptation: Shifts and Focus
00:18:43
Speaker
do you want to Do you want to get into the kind of story that the movie tells? We can talk about that for a little bit. The movie is ah is a why done it.
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah, he ah Scorsese just immediately showed us who was who and what they were doing and what they wanted. Like he immediately showed us everybody's cards, everything out on the table.
00:19:05
Speaker
It was a lot more gut wrenching from from the get go. In an interview, he actually ah talked about how he wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to be Tom White. That was the original plan.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah. That was the original plan. It was for him to be Tom White, and it was going to be more of a a police or a legal procedural type thing, like a um like a law and order SVU type situation.
00:19:31
Speaker
They had the script. ah He wrote it with, um oh, who did he write it with? Eric Roth is his co-writer on the script? Yes. Yes, with Eric Roth, because Eric Roth writes everything. um So they worked on the script and they just weren't feeling it. And then the more Scorsese learned about it, he decided that ah their story was focusing only on the white characters. And so he decided that he wanted to try to center it a little bit more on the Osage people.
00:20:03
Speaker
I don't know if he did that exactly, but it sounds like it was better than the original plan. It's not mine to give, but I'll give him that. Right. It sounds like he was he was putting in the effort.
00:20:15
Speaker
And he did work directly with the Osage people. on this movie. ah And a huge group of Osage went to the premiere in in Los Angeles. And the photos are really cool of all of that. But anyway, so DiCaprio, no longer Tom White. And now he is Ernest. And he is way too old to play Ernest. Everybody is too freaking old. i mean, I feel like... um Lily Gladstone is ah an excellent Molly. Like she's she looks the part like I mean, it's all good.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah, she was great. Everybody else is so damn old. DiCaprio like is like the age that Hale was, I think. Yes. And looks like he could have been Hale. But the yeah the problem, I think, with like the movie is it's like, well, it's Leonardo DiCaprio.
00:21:08
Speaker
He can't be in a supporting role if he's in a movie. He has to be the main character. So he has to be the lead actor. So whatever part he's playing is the lead part.
00:21:20
Speaker
If he had been Hale, then that would have also changed the story. Like it it would have been, i guess, more gangster. Um, or more a about the gangster and the crime of it. And Robert De Niro did a great job being Hale. It's just like he is in his eighties and Hale was not that old, right? Like Hale lived to his eighties. He got to live to his eighties and, and died in like a nursing home in Kansas somewhere. um He was like Wichita. um
00:21:52
Speaker
But like he wasn't in his 80s when he was murdering people or like masterminding the murders of all of these Osage people.
00:22:03
Speaker
So –
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah. But it's Leonardo DiCaprio. So if we're going to focus on Molly and Ernest's relationship, then he gets to be Ernest rather than someone else. And I mean, I don't know.
00:22:21
Speaker
Lily Gladstone is like such a phenomenal actor. And I feel like she commanded every scene she was in. So I don't know that someone who was like less of an actor than Leonardo DiCaprio could have like stood up, like, you know, really stood their ground in a scene with her. Like she was amazing. Yeah, no I agree. Yeah.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah. I just kind of wish like she was the main, she was the lead actor, right? Like I wish it was her. But Leo in a supporting role, we want we want Lily. Right.
00:22:55
Speaker
Yes. We want Lily. We want Molly. We want Lily. She was awesome. And just the side eye that she kept giving. She wasn't even saying anything, but just the way that she looked out of the side of her, of her face basically. And it's just like,
00:23:10
Speaker
I know everything that she is thinking right now. Like it's just she made it look so effortless. Right. And she was just she was totally in control as an actor like on the screen. Like that. But then then that's what I mean. But she commanded every scene she was in. i could not look away from her.
00:23:26
Speaker
Ernest DiCaprio be damned. I guess something else to note is that the shift the shift to to move. Leonardo DiCaprio from playing Tom White to playing Ernest Burkhart also was encouraged by um Molly's granddaughter Margie Burkhart.
00:23:45
Speaker
She also in a conversation, she Scorsese talks about in this interview that, which I guess we'll link in the show notes. No, I guess we will link it in the show notes. um She helped kind of convince him that the heart of the story was their love, their marriage, which is Just like really, really complicated like for me to wrap my brain around. But like, I mean, i don't know. I trust her that she believes that her grandparents did love each other. It's really, really hard to believe that. It's hard to wrap your head around. Yeah. And I think that's maybe the problem of the movie. If we want to quote a member of the Osage community, believe he's a member of the Osage community. um Christopher Coate um from a Vulture article, which we'll also link in the show notes. yeah and And he was a he was a language consultant. Yeah, he's an Osage language consultant on the film. yes um He told The Hollywood Reporter on October 19th, 2023, that Martin Scorsese not being Osage, I think he did a great job representing our people.
00:24:51
Speaker
But this history is being told almost from the perspective of Ernest Burkhardt. They kind of give him this conscience and they kind of depict that there's love. um But when somebody conspires to to murder your entire family, that's not love.
00:25:05
Speaker
That's just beyond abuse. And then he continued to say, i think in the end, the question that you can be left with is how long will you will you be complacent with racism? How long will you go along with something and not say something, not speak up? How long will be you be complacent? I think that's because this film isn't made for an Osage audience. It was made for everybody, not Osage.
00:25:30
Speaker
For those that have been dis disenfranchised, they can relate. But for other countries that have their acts and their history of oppression, this is an opportunity for them to ask themselves this question of morality. And that's how I feel about this film. He like really wraps up like a lot of thoughts all just in that one quote. I think he's he's spot on.
00:25:51
Speaker
A hundred percent. And that's, and I mean, we'll talk more about the, their love story, their quote unquote love story in a little bit, but I mean, it's, it's not real love. You got it, Chris. You're correct. yeah I don't think, nope, not at all. So this movie, it wasn't made,
00:26:11
Speaker
by Osage director. it wasn't it wasn't written by an Osage writer um and neither was the book. However, because David Graham and Martin Scorsese have the reach that they do and they have the funds that they do and their background and just their collective skills to create these stories that will resonate with everybody that watches it or reads it.
00:26:39
Speaker
I think in this, just for this specific book and this specific movie, they were definitely the people to do it. It feels like they were very self-aware. um in in the process of both writing the book and and making the movie that, you know, hey, ah that they were self-aware of, like, their whiteness. um and And therefore, like, they really did their homework. They really did their research. And they also gave credit where credit was due.
00:27:12
Speaker
um You know, from what I've seen in the interviews I've read, like, with Martin Scorsese, right? Like, he is constantly pointing to The team of consultants um who are the experts. He's not the expert. He's relying a lot on their expert help. He's the expert on making the movie a movie.
00:27:32
Speaker
him Maybe he's taking credit for like the camera angles, but not... Not the set design or the costuming or, you know, just... a Language or the story. Right, right. the feeling and the culture that's depicted. yeah Yeah, it's not like, oh, God, I can't even think of another movie right now because my brain has been all Killers of the Flower Moon for the last right like minute. um Yeah, it's it's not like...
00:28:03
Speaker
Peter Pan, where they just make up a bunch of weird crap and be super, super freaking racist. Yeah. You know, he, I feel like, and again, it is not my place to make this judgment, but just from what I've read for the most part, it seems like they really, really tried. And this is such an important story to get out there. Right.
00:28:24
Speaker
That I think there's a ton of value in it. Right. And yeah, I mean, totally acknowledging our own whiteness, like we're not the authorities to talk on whether or not they did a good job of ah being white, telling a non-white story.
00:28:40
Speaker
So um that's not us for not for us to like really like judge and determine. I think objectively we can look at it and say, well, probably, yeah.
00:28:52
Speaker
But no, I think your your point about about the about the fact that both of them just had the – they have the reputation and the connections and the – honestly, the clout.
00:29:04
Speaker
I keep saying clout, but literary clout, is cinema clout, film clout. They had that to make it happen, to to make both things happen and for them both to be –
00:29:19
Speaker
sensational and I want to say that in like a not a gentle way yeah I'm like i don't want it to be like it's sensationalizing these murders because I don't think either of them are doing that but just like maybe phenomenal um is a better word but um they've given the story a greater reach than it's ever had before right yeah yes that's a great way to put it What do you think the movie would have looked like if it were written from the Osage perspective, though?
00:29:51
Speaker
If it wasn't ah Eric Roth and Scorsese writing it? Man, i don't know. i kind of wonder if it would be more about um the community's struggle with like needing help from the federal government.
00:30:07
Speaker
um Because you know the the book and the movie both talk about how – both show and and and write about how the Osage – you know the osage Like they sent a representative to Washington, D.C. That representative was murdered like the night he arrived. um So he was clearly like followed all the way to D.C. by people from in this community of killers. um in Oklahoma. And um when, so so their representative, and actually he was he was white. um He was a white representative. He was married to an Osage woman. So he was respected in the Osage community or appeared to be anyways. He was a
00:30:54
Speaker
you know, he was part of it. He was married into it. So um as a white persons married into it. And we're going to bring him up again, but he was married into it, but then he actually genuinely was a helpful part of the community. Right. Yeah. No, he, I mean, he was murdered, so he wasn't like a part of the ring of killers. So they sent him. And then a few years later, like a whole group of, of Osage community members went to Washington DC themselves to meet with president Coolidge and like,
00:31:23
Speaker
just plead for help. um And, you know, the movie shows Molly in that group and um the book doesn't talk about Molly going. Timeline wise, it seems like she might have been, we might have been in the phase where she was being poisoned with her insulin shots. And so, I mean,
00:31:47
Speaker
Obviously, she was ah an extremely resilient woman, um so would not doubt like her strength, but man, that would be arduous to travel from Oklahoma to D.C. via train while you're being slowly killed um by nondescript poison. So I think with if this were to be created by an Osage writer, Osage director, like if we just took this movie as it is right now and just flipped it a little bit, I think that there would have been way more of a focus like within the Osage community.
00:32:22
Speaker
Like it absolutely would have been... from their perspective and therefore I don't think we would have seen as much of Tom White. I think we definitely would have seen more from like the tribal elders. Cause we had some really good quotes from them in the in the movie.
00:32:38
Speaker
They said, we can't turn to the county to help us. We can't go to the state of Oklahoma to help us. And why we ever thought they would, i don't know. ah We were here before them. This is our homeland we came to. We've all got to realize this evil that's come here You have something at once.
00:32:55
Speaker
And then this is the one that really killed me, this line. We never prayed for the good life. We just prayed for life. Yeah. I want to see a movie about that line. Right.
00:33:09
Speaker
Another quote from later, ah they were all gathered again and talking to, I believe it was Tom White, and they said, in the old days, we would fight these people.
00:33:19
Speaker
If we could find these people, we would kill them. Right. Yeah, no, they were talking to Tom White. That was like in the yeah barber shop pool yeah billiard hall thing. Yeah.
00:33:31
Speaker
Combo. Yeah. Because Scorsese focused so much of the story on the white people and on Ernest and even of Hale and Tom White, all of that, I think there's so much room for another movie.
00:33:47
Speaker
This was only, i mean, like, yes, he did give a decent amount of screen time to Molly and the Osage people, but there's so much room for more of that.
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah. On the first watch of the movie, I was kind of pissed because I felt like once Molly started to become ill, I felt like her only presence on screen was just like a few seconds or a few minutes of like just her being sick in bed. um And I was like, I just wasn't happy with that. I was like, she's too strong of a character. She deserves more screen time. She deserves better screen time, better quality time. Um, but then on the second watch, like, I don't know. I don't know if it just, um, since I'd seen it before I knew what was coming or what was expected, but on the second watch, um, it still felt imbalanced. Um, but I guess I was able to like recognize the, the challenge of the acting in those scenes where she, she,
00:34:58
Speaker
I mean, you could just lay there and be sick, right? But she didn't do that. She was writhing in pain, you know, like it, I don't know, her acting was just phenomenal. So like, yeah.
00:35:09
Speaker
Um, but no, I, I think, um, I think a movie from the Osage perspective would have hopefully a lot less white people in it um and yeah a lot more um Osage, I would say, characters. I don't know how many actors or, you know, how many actors would be Osage, but. um Lily Gladstone, she's not Osage. She's Blackfoot.
00:35:37
Speaker
ah But she did learn the Osage language. Nez Percy. Oh, and Nez Pierce. Nez Pierce. Yeah. Yes, she's Blackfoot and Nez Pierce, but she did learn the Osage language for the movie, which I don't understand how people can just learn a new language just like that.
00:35:58
Speaker
My brain don't work like that. A lot of actors in this film learned... ah I mean, i would I doubt any of them are probably fluent in Osage. Yeah. But, I mean, they certainly learned their lines in Osage. They had lines in Osage. And what I found to be interesting was sometimes the lines um in Osage were were um transcribed at the bottom. You know, we had the written words. And then sometimes they weren't. So, like, and really early in the film when hail
00:36:34
Speaker
um brings but Ernest is brought back to Hale's home by Henry Rohn. Henry Rohn picks him up at the the train depot, drives him all the way to um his uncle's, William Hale, um which that drive is really just awesome because Ernest is like, whose land is this? And Henry Rohn's like, my land.
00:36:59
Speaker
Ernest is like, your land? He's like, yeah, my land. um And it's like, yeah, you're on his land. Get off. Did you have no information before moving here? Did you just, did you fall off a turnip truck? What's your problem? Right. Right. Somebody. Yeah. Anyway. um Anyway. So like when Ernest is like walking into the house, like Hale and Henry are talking to each other in Osage and there's no, there's no, we don't, I don't know what they're saying. um It's not,
00:37:33
Speaker
transcribed for us. there's There are no captions at the bottom and for that scene. But there are captions later on down in the movie. So it's interesting when they choose to do the captions and when they choose not to.
00:37:44
Speaker
i think they do that because so whenever ah whenever Henry an Hale are speaking in Osage in front of Ernest, he hasn't heard the language before.
00:37:55
Speaker
So he doesn't know what they're saying at all. Right. Right. Therefore, we as viewers are also not going to know what they are saying at all. Fair. And as he, because he did learn, ah he did learn the language. um And then we get more, more subtitles along with him.
00:38:16
Speaker
That's fair. feel like there's a scene later on whenever, um Molly hasn't quite made up her mind about Ernest yet or not, and she's just kind of sitting with her sisters, all of her sisters, and they're just chit-chatting, and one sister's like, he's a snake, and another one's like, loves that he's like a bunny. Well, yeah, because it reminds you of your sister's.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah. um And then she's like, no, he's the coyote. Coyote wants money. Right. Coyote wants money. and She knew it. She knew it from the get go. But she was also like coyote kind of cute.
00:38:52
Speaker
I think, you know, I mean, she didn't say that, but yeah, that was the vibe. lied Yeah. 54 year old coyote cute or however old he is now. think he's only like 48. Yeah.
00:39:04
Speaker
What? No, he's not. Hold on. Okay. How old are you, Leo? I'm pretty sure he's, like, old. I'm looking. I'm looking right now. Okay, he's 48. I said 54. was right. He's 48. Oh,
00:39:22
Speaker
I'm not apologizing for anything. He's too old for this part. That's fair. Man, I just, I Googled him, and the very first picture, he's got, like, a terrible neck beard.
00:39:33
Speaker
o I think he's, he's taken a break from looking presentable. Really? Yeah. You know, guys, I've, I've been an attractive man for just too long. So we're going to grow some facial hair. That's not appealing.
00:39:50
Speaker
I never never found him attractive whenever he was younger, ever. Whenever he had like, yeah, like Titanic. I don't like that. He looks like a stretched out, beautiful toddler. It's just, I don't, I am not into that. I don't know. i think I need a little bit more chest hair. i need just, I need him to go through puberty first. I don't know. I just did not find him attractive at all. And this isn't me being bisexual or anything. Like I just genuinely ugh.
00:40:20
Speaker
Ever. And I do like pretty boys. I like pretty girls. I like pretty people. But I remember sitting there watching Titanic and everybody around me being like, oh my gosh, he's so hot. I love him. And I'm just like, I could pick him up and throw him across the room. Like he just, I don't know, not into it. But then as soon as he hit like 40,
00:40:42
Speaker
forty I was like, okay, this is good now. Now we're good. Interesting. Good. So maybe I just like ugly old guys more. I don't know. I mean, i was totally fine with young Leonardo DiCaprio.
00:40:55
Speaker
I recognize the attractiveness.
00:41:02
Speaker
So how about that opening scene with the pipe person? Because did read about it. and And that's the one thing that like I struggle with the movie because I know that the movie, like they also did more research on top of what they were getting from the book. Mm-hmm.
00:41:16
Speaker
they did They did more research. And guess what? They didn't publish their research. So it's really hard for me to figure out. ah where Where is your bibliography?
00:41:28
Speaker
Yes, where your annotated bibliography. Yes, please. where I need the footnotes. I'm sure it's somewhere. i didn't see any of their research. So there's so many things where I'm like, that wasn't in the book because they were working directly with the Osage people. I don't want to say, oh, the Osage person who told you this is wrong because it wasn't in the white guy's book. I don't want to do that. um yeah you That would be stupid of me. I'm not doing that. I cannot stress that enough. Okay.
00:42:00
Speaker
my God. Cannot stress it enough. Anyway. I think i think our our our our our position here, right, is, I mean, our whole goal here is we're talking about a book. It's been made into a movie. And we're talking about the differences, the similarities, you know, ah yeah or even maybe like – hoping to like discuss like why was this made for the like is this a good story to be told on screen like hint for this one yes absolutely ah yes and also I have issues with it though yeah well I mean yeah
00:42:35
Speaker
Yes. Even a good movie can have bad parts and issues. So with the pipe person at the very beginning of the movie, ah this wasn't in the book, but I think that it was a really great way to ah illustrate what was happening ah and explain that ah they were losing their culture and their language and their land all very, very quickly without being just a big chunk of exposition.
00:43:01
Speaker
Um, there wasn't a character standing in a field saying, oh yeah, this happened. And then we got pushed away and it's awful. Instead it was turned into a ceremony and I couldn't find,
00:43:14
Speaker
ay anything about this as a ceremony. And also it's so hard to find a good source online that I can trust with these sorts of things, you know, and, uh, but I did read in one article that it's very likely that this sort of ceremony took place.
00:43:35
Speaker
Um, But i I loved it. I thought it was great. I loved all the little kids running around i outside of their... liked that they were peeking through and watching it, even though clearly they weren't, like, invited to this ceremony because age or or what what have you. or just because they're like, you are your children and you're running around as children do. Get out. We're doing something. Well, and i I think it's... ah I think it's important to note too that that Molly's parents were like both full Osage and both like like were forced to migrate, right, to to Oklahoma. Like they they grew, like previously they they were living in like what is now Kansas. um I'm not exactly sure where in Kansas because it's a big state. um But so like,
00:44:33
Speaker
Well, and in Missouri. Yeah, and I i mean, yeah the the Osage Nation, I think, covers like all the way up to like Nebraska. i just think that the book talks about her parents specifically coming from like what is now Kansas and what we now call Kansas. Yeah. um And then, you know, they moved to this purchased land in Osage County, what became Osage County, Oklahoma. The Osage tribe specifically bought this land and they – I mean they purchased it. Like it it wasn't a gift. It wasn't given to them because clearly the federal government when it gives things – gives things to people, it thinks it can take it away when they want to. And it totally – the federal government totally would have taken this land from the Osage people once the oil was found had they been able – like if the Osage people had not purchased the land.
00:45:22
Speaker
So – Well, that and and the method of them buying it, ah the government and everybody assumed like, oh, if every a individual owns their own plot of land, it will be easier to then buy them off one by one. Right. so They were still trying to systematically steal their land in whatever way that they could. Yeah. Or or let if the federal government was going to steal their land, they were going to let the local like white people do it.
00:45:52
Speaker
Anyway, so so, yeah, we do get this beautiful, um like, just, like, heart-wrenching ceremony of burying a pipe person. You know, it does feel very... um Solemn. Yeah. Solemn is an excellent word. It feels very solemn. Like, you know, I had been wearing a hat, I would have taken it off. um Kind of thing. And then we just cut to this like scene of like this little bit of oil in the ground. And it's just kind of like gurgling and bubbling. And then it just erupts and
00:46:32
Speaker
And we get this like rock and roll kind of jazzy tune. And then we get like – It's jazzy. It's like rock and roll. Like, I mean, it's jam. It is a jam. It was – Oh, my gosh. What's the word that I'm trying to think of? ah ah Outlaw country. Rock. Yeah. I mean, it it's like it's like a like a like the guitar is like like it's a bad boy guitar. um um
00:47:03
Speaker
You know, like it's it's it's a it's a little rebellious. Right. And it's just like we get we we get this scene. I don't even I'm not sure how long it is. It's probably a few minutes, um but we just get this scene of like.
00:47:17
Speaker
ah six Osage men just dancing. Like, their shirts are off, right? And they're just they're just dancing in this, like... Think of like children dancing in like a sprinkler, right? Not to infantilize them, but um I botched the how to say that. Not to make them seem like children. They're not, right? But they're just. like yeah Yeah. No, it was it was so joyful.
00:47:42
Speaker
yeah. Because, you know, I mean, it was it was beautiful because we went immediately from this very sad, solemn scene of a of a funeral of a ceremonial funeral, right.
00:47:54
Speaker
Uh, for their culture and their children and their land and everything. And then we immediately go to, you know, the the oil dance party, which was awesome. It was beautiful. Um, you know, we went from everybody's stealing their, their land and their lives from them. And then they finally got some kind of win.
00:48:14
Speaker
And, and the book did talk about how, uh, the oil was considered a cursed blessing. Yeah. They did know that the oil wouldn't be around forever. They knew that they eventually probably wouldn't have fancy things. They knew that it wasn't permanent.
00:48:29
Speaker
And ah one Osage chief even said, one day all this is going to be gone. We won't have the fancy things anymore. And then we'll actually be happy again. So. Yeah.
00:48:42
Speaker
Yeah. Beautiful. I loved that scene. Right. Right. I thought that was that was awesome. It was just a a a glimmer of hope. It wasn't a glimmer. It was a giant burst of hope right for them.
00:48:56
Speaker
Yeah. And so I think and an important thing is like the opening scene of the
Book vs. Movie: Depictions and Narrative Choices
00:49:01
Speaker
movie. The movie kind of took like a chronological approach mostly. We definitely had some – throughout the movie we had some like flashbacks or – don't think we ever flashed forward or anything or not really any foreshadowing. I mean, the very, very last scene, but.
00:49:17
Speaker
Yeah, I guess the very last, yeah the very ending, which we'll talk about later. ah we'll talk about about later we will talk about openings and endings. But the book, um the book kind of starts in media res. Like it starts with um the, I mean, the very first paragraph is like,
00:49:33
Speaker
place writing. It's really setting the place. it's It gives you right away like why it's called Killers of the Flower Moon. It explains what the flowers are, what the flower moon is. like It's a beautiful paragraph. And then like we jump right into...
00:49:51
Speaker
Molly Burkhart and like her family yeah were, we jump right into essentially the day that, um, actually, no, we're three, we're three days after, um Anna has disappeared. Her sister has disappeared. So, um you know, we're we're in 1921. Like, we're not – because the the Osage were forced to move to Oklahoma in, like, the late 1800s. And then I don't think that they discovered oil until, like, the 19-teens.
00:50:26
Speaker
That sounds right. um So, you know, nineteen twenty s they're they're settling into their new wealth for sure. at that point. But, um, so, you know,
00:50:40
Speaker
there's There's a difference in what makes a compelling start to a movie and a compelling start to a book. And um David Grant's, because I think he's telling a different story, um because he's telling a murder mystery, a whodunit, you know, he does need to drop us right in, you know, on the first page. Okay, here's our mystery. A sister has disappeared. Where has she gone? What's happened to her?
00:51:07
Speaker
So let's talk about the excessive violence. Oh, my God. i want to Honestly, my big issue with it and everybody else's big issue with it is the excessive violence, because we start the movie out immediately with um oh five.
00:51:24
Speaker
is it five people? one two, three, four. four five Yeah. Yeah. Two men, three women. Yeah, immediately with five very quick in succession murders. And and they the camera doesn't cut away. Like you you watch these people die, one right after another. And ah all but one of them, no investigation, all the way down to Sarah Butler, who we watched get shot outside in front of her house with her baby. Yeah. And they ruled it suicide. Right.
00:52:00
Speaker
I don't know how necessary any of that was because we don't, you can insinuate violence a whole lot more whenever you're dealing with real people, right? Because these were real people. This isn't just a movie. This isn't made up.
00:52:14
Speaker
They're, they're real. Yeah. Because the story needs to be told and it is a very violent story. So I wonder how else they could have done this, how else they could have portrayed the murders without,
00:52:29
Speaker
straight up gratuitous violence. i There was a Vulture article i that talked about Devery Jacobs. She's on Reservation Dogs, which is an awesome TV show.
00:52:42
Speaker
um Very funny, but also completely heart-wrenching. um She put out a series of tweets about the movie. ah She said, i don't feel that these very real people were shown honor or dignity in the horrific portrayal of their deaths.
00:52:57
Speaker
Contrarily, I believe that by showing more murdered Native women on screen, it normalizes the violence committed against us and further dehumanizes our people. And I 100% agree with that.
00:53:08
Speaker
ah Women go missing from the reservations all over the place all the time, and they still go unsolved. Yeah. so Into present day. That's not a... present day, right now. It's a historical precedent, but it's also still happening.
00:53:25
Speaker
It's just upsetting and unnecessary. um Like, i don't I don't think we needed to see and hear Anna's body the way that we did. i don't think we needed to see Rita's body the way that we did, especially at the angle. i don't think we needed to see the back of her head, right? like no we did not need to see that.
00:53:45
Speaker
ah You know, it could have just been the person who found her and, like, focusing on them and, and like, their instant grief of finding Rita and she's deceased, you know.
00:53:58
Speaker
I would rather these very real people were honored, not turned into a spectacle. Right. Right. and And the book is also violent.
00:54:09
Speaker
It is um But there's always more of a distance whenever you're reading. And I don't think any of his descriptions were like, over the top visceral either. ah no because his descriptions were, I mean, it was it was journalism. His descriptions were essentially these are the facts. These are the facts as they're known. It wasn't over the top descriptive. i think that the information that he gave us was necessary. It wasn't pleasant, but it was necessary. So like whenever he was describing and the smell of Anna's body. Yeah.
00:54:46
Speaker
he wasn't over the top with it he wasn't trying to shock anybody right and i don't know if scorsese was trying to shock anybody i don't know but it definitely felt that way yeah and i think i mean it was it was shocking um I don't know if the violence of showing so much violence was how much of it was necessary and how much of it wasn't.
00:55:16
Speaker
um But I wonder if if not really. i wonder if because Leonardo DiCaprio was the lead actor. And so we're kind of seeing things through Ernest Burkhart's perspective. Um, and if we want to talk about the Rita scene, right after Bill and Rita's home is, um, blown up and it's in shreds, um, you know, earnest rather than rushing to go help. He just rushes to go look. Um, and I mean, he's visibly horrified at what he sees, but, um,
00:55:57
Speaker
You know, so like we are actually seeing Rita through his eyes in that scene, I guess is what I'm trying to say. um Yeah. So I don't know how. And at the same time, we also know that like he's complicit in that murder and in in her death and in her how she's being shown on screen. So, yeah, maybe maybe it is.
00:56:21
Speaker
Maybe it is intentional for it to be so shocking because we're getting a scene through his perspective, through literally through his eyes. um And it's his own damn fault because he's the one who, mean, Hale ordered him to order the hit, essentially, to press go. But he is the one who pressed go.
00:57:01
Speaker
Do you think the movie was telling the story honestly, or do you think it was re-traumatizing people i with all the onscreen violence um towards the Osage people and especially the women?
00:57:16
Speaker
I feel like we saw a lot. I mean, it was Molly's sisters so and her mother, so I feel like maybe it was leaning a little heavily towards ah violence against Osage women.
00:57:27
Speaker
But do you do you think it was being honest, or do you think this was all just re-trauma? re-traumatizing i think the movie was trying to be honest um so again that back to my what i said earlier a for effort um maybe type of thing and i mean it was certainly traumatizing to me as a white person um so i would imagine it would be traumatizing or re-traumatizing for members of the osage community but i mean i can't i can't speak for them so
00:58:01
Speaker
um i I think that the story in and of itself, though, is trauma, is traumatizing. Oh, 100%. So it's like to tell an honest story, you i don't know how you can not experience that. I don't i don't know how to how to tell that story or how one would tell that story without you know, with distancing or removing the trauma, like that's integral to it. So yeah, that's a really tough question.
00:58:41
Speaker
Yeah. it' was really hard to answer. Yeah. And I don't think we are the people to answer it, but I'm just going to make an educated guess that it's, it's a yes.
00:58:53
Speaker
yeah It's a yes. It is definitely traumatizing. um
00:59:00
Speaker
Yeah. For sure. yeah Yeah. Well, and I, you know, you know, the movie is claiming to to try to be a love story about Molly and Ernest, about their love and about their marriage.
00:59:13
Speaker
And, you know, at that, I don't think. If that's the case, I don't think that we get enough interior narrative or we don't get close enough to like Ernest and Molly to really truly see that side of it. Like, yes, we get good banter between them and it's fun to watch them act with each other, you know, play off with yeah one another.
00:59:38
Speaker
it's fun to see them in a scene together. But like, don't know, we're not really invited into that love, that love story. Not the love part of things. No, we're definitely seeing, you know, just, we're seeing him be, you know, cute and driving her around and and being a little dumb earnest and everything. And, and,
01:00:01
Speaker
And we do get the scene ay in her house where she invites him in for food. and And then they sit there in the thunderstorm, which I have things to say about thunderstorms with the soundtrack and everything. um And just the sound design in general.
01:00:18
Speaker
um We do see that, but that's pretty much it because it's this movie, ah the pacing is weird. It just goes so fast. it's It's very, very – and you even mentioned that you felt kind of like it was in vignettes. Yeah. On the first watch, yeah I was like, man, this is like vignettes. It's like – it's just like stop.
01:00:44
Speaker
Stop moving around. Like hold on. Let's stick here for a minute. Yeah. So in the movie, we're definitely getting jerked around emotionally a little bit, I think. It's just different whenever we're watching it on screen versus reading it in the book. Because in the book, I was on board with them because that's what I was told. I was told, oh yeah, they love each other and they have a marriage. And I'm like, awesome, I love their love. But then you see it on the screen, it's harder to believe it. And maybe, maybe he did love her.
01:01:14
Speaker
Maybe he did. I don't know. the book The book kind of does a little bit... i of that emotional jerk around, right? Yeah, it does. And I do feel very silly and duped because I don't think that he really truly loved her. i think he was like a highly unintelligent narcissist.
01:01:33
Speaker
um And he just thought that he loved her. i was seeing it as him being possessive. Like, so in his own sick way, he did love her, but it was it it was him being possessive. He felt entitled to her money.
01:01:45
Speaker
He felt entitled to her family's money, and therefore he also felt entitled to her. That's what I think was actually happening, like in in real life. It wasn't quite that severe of what I just described in the movie.
01:01:59
Speaker
I feel like he was just kind of stumbling through it all, honestly. i don't think his heart was really truly in it. right Maybe he I could see him as thinking he loved her.
01:02:13
Speaker
And it's easy to say that you love somebody. And think that you are, but not it's very easy to think that, but also not be in love with them. Right. So I think I think he thought he loved her.
01:02:25
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, in the movie, we get that scene um where Hale kind of pulls Ernest aside, like they're at Hale's house and stuff. And Ernest is like, I'm going I'm going to propose to Molly, essentially. And Hale's like, you really love this girl. You think you can marry her? You think you can be faithful? and He's like, oh, yeah, like, I I really love her. I I truly think she is a lady. Like she could be anything else. I don't, I didn't know what to make of that, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It's like, it seemed like he was trying to like convince himself verbally or something.
01:02:59
Speaker
Yeah. But at the same time, like, I don't know. I don't know. He's just adamant throughout that he loves her. Every conversation that he has with Hale about women is six it's it's sexist and racist. I almost combined the two words together.
01:03:20
Speaker
How would you combine them? I almost said sexist. Sexist. Okay. Sexist and racist. Because even at the beginning of the movie, Hale says, oh, do you like women? And he just lists off a whole bunch of different quote unquote types of women. Ernest even says like, oh, I'm i'm i'm greedy. And every conversation that they have about women is like that because they see them on as objects.
01:03:42
Speaker
Right. ah And as paychecks. And they also like... um And in that scene too, like at the very beginning, like that scene specifically, the the very first scene with Ernest and Hale where they're in his like parlor sitting room area.
01:03:58
Speaker
There was something really interesting going on with the lighting where when we looked at Hale, we were facing away from a window. So like Hale's face was bright, but his background was really dark. And then when we were looking at Ernest, his face was like dark.
01:04:11
Speaker
we We were facing a window. So his face was dark, but his background was really light. So it was like light and dark, white and black, kind of like. Like on screen, it was there was like it was high contrast, I guess is what I'm maybe trying to get. And it to me, it seemed like Hale was sussing out. Like, how can I manipulate you? How can I make you my puppet?
01:04:32
Speaker
How can I bring you into the dark side of the room with me? Right. Like how – you know, I'm masterminding this. And then Ernest is like, hey, man, like I just got to town. Like I was promised a bed and like food and stuff and I don't really want to fuck that up. So – Yeah, i like women. Yeah, i like money.
01:04:50
Speaker
I'll be a cab driver. Yes. and And that kind of actually, so with the lighting, that actually comes up several times throughout the movie. And actually in one of my favorites.
01:05:01
Speaker
Yes, the light and the dark. Because skipping ahead a little bit. Oh, sorry. Yeah. That's okay. No, I'm skipping ahead a little bit. You didn't. I am. I'm apologizing to me. I'm sorry, Emily. We're skipping ahead a little bit. ah Light and dark in the... ah The scene during the trial, whenever ah Ernest, dum-dum, says, oh yeah, I'll talk to the lawyer. And everybody in John Lithgow is so pissed. And so they go into that back room. And the back room is like everything is black. The walls are black. The furniture is dark. The fireplace is painted black. Everybody's wearing dark clothes. And it's just all of these bright white faces.
01:05:43
Speaker
All in the dark. And they're all asking him to lie and do this evil shit. Right. So back to the beginning of the movie, the lunch scene. oh my God. The lunch scene. I know. so this is like, OK, so so let's talk about this. This is like chapter one of the book, right? yeah And this is 40 minutes into the movie.
01:06:04
Speaker
Yes. So that just to like. Because we we had to watch Ernest and Molly make out in a car first. And then we got to the luncheon scene. I read one like interview or article or something that was like, oh, that's like essentially the the author of the article was like, I felt like that was a callback to Titanic. And I'm like, really? Like, really? Leonardo DiCaprio can't make out in the car with a woman and ah it can't be related to the Titanic. Like, this is madness. will It will haunt him forever. Anyway.
01:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, we had to like watch their watch him, you know, be, I guess, sort of sworn into this killer society. um You know, like leading up to this point, we see him rob like an Osage couple, like rob them with a hood over his head and at gunpoint. And then lose all of the money in ah in a poker game. In a really dumb dumb loss on I don't even know poker yeah and I knew that like his like 10 of hearts or whatever was like a bad card to go all in on wasn't an yeah no so like if you were just going to play like a regular hand sure that that's that's worth it I think to lose a dollar over or whatever but put in one pearl that you stole at gunpoint yeah
01:07:22
Speaker
Just one ring. Not the whole whatever. Not all of it. Anyway. Not all of it. Not the whole kit and caboodle. We're not a poker podcast. We're not a poker podcast. Don't know poker. I don't think I've actually ever played.
01:07:33
Speaker
But. I'm actually pretty good at poker. Okay. I think I'd be bad at it because I'm – you can see everything on my face. No, you would be terrible at it. and I would clean house against you. Rude.
01:07:48
Speaker
all right so the luncheon scene this is luncheon scene 40 minutes into the movie in the book it's in the first chapter right because it's the day anna goes missing pages yeah yeah it's the last day anna's seen alive essentially um at least by by her sister so um yeah by molly and some of her other family members um who are also there so um Yeah, so in in the movie, the scene kind of... so i mean, does it really start with Lizzie's...
01:08:22
Speaker
um vision or does it start little, it starts a little earlier. how you remember it. That's how you remember it. i mean, it doesn't really make that big of a difference, but so Lizzie's in the living room. Lizzie is Molly's mother.
01:08:37
Speaker
Yes. And, and she's, she's not feeling good. She's, she's laying there. She's just hanging out. Cause Molly, Molly loved to throw ah luncheons. She loved to host people. Mm-hmm.
01:08:49
Speaker
um So this is a very typical thing happening at at Molly's house. um But her mother is laying down, just kind of relaxing and just not feeling good and and just, you know, being included.
01:09:01
Speaker
um And ah directly in front of her across this big room is the ah the table, the dining room table. And it's surrounded by neighbors, neighbors.
01:09:13
Speaker
ah tons of little kids and some of Ernest's family members. um Actually, in the book, it's one of his racist aunts. In the movie, it's the racist aunt and the racist uncle, like a racist uncle. And they just say some really just not not so pleasant things.
01:09:30
Speaker
um And I've totally heard people say the exact same sentiment. And this is also an aunt who's visiting. in yeah it I think it's Hale's, like, no, maybe it's Hale's wife's sister or something.
01:09:43
Speaker
I don't know. It's not, um, yeah it's not Hale and his wife. It's a different, because Hale is his uncle. Hale's wife would be his aunt-in-law, aunt-in-law. We're from Missouri. I say aunt. Um, I say aunt.
01:09:58
Speaker
It's one of, it's a set of his, of of one of his uncles and aunts, but it's not Hale. And, and they're just being little racist assholes. Right. And so this table is full of white people.
01:10:09
Speaker
um, In the movie. And ah Lizzie like blinks or opens her eyes and the table's gone. There's like, the table is gone. There's no furniture in the room. Nothing. It's just a bare empty room. And and an owl ah comes through the window. Just flies in. And jumps down to the floor. Just flies in. And is like...
01:10:32
Speaker
Hello, I'm an owl. I tried to find a definite information and I couldn't. I found a lot of different sources, but I looked on powwows.com, which is all owned and written, like articles written by ah Native Indigenous people. Um, and they had a whole long list all about owls and the different tribes and stuff. And so they take on a whole bunch of different meanings from tribe to tribe.
01:11:00
Speaker
Some believes that owls are a symbol of death, uh, cause owls are only out at night, nighttime death, that sort of connection. Uh, some of them believe that owls represent the afterlife, but also other tribes, uh, believe that they symbolize rebirth.
01:11:18
Speaker
Either way, big change. Owl is big change. Basically. That's how I'm reading it as. I actually, ah fun little aside, I did find an Osage comic book artist and writer. ah His name is Skylar Ammons. And he wrote a series about a Native American superhero called The Owl. Oh.
01:11:39
Speaker
You know, I love comics, so I'm on board with that. That's really freaking cool. um Everybody should check that out, which I can link it. Yeah, we'll we it we'll link it in the show notes for sure.
01:11:52
Speaker
Al flew in the room, and ah so she wakes back up again. al is gone. ah the table is now back in place with all of the white people. I think that Scorsese...
01:12:05
Speaker
i was just i think the Scorsese... Sorry. i was going to say it's not like a like a fade in, fade out. It is a boom it is shift. It is. Boom shift, room's gone, just her and the owl.
01:12:19
Speaker
Boom shift, room's back, and it's back to these white people, this table full of white people, mostly. The symbolism hits you in the face. It slaps you.
01:12:30
Speaker
Which I think also in the book, ah David Graham's book, he describes Hale as having an owl-like face. Yeah, owlish face. Which I'm just choosing to make those connections from two different mediums.
01:12:45
Speaker
There you go Well, you know, and I wonder how much of it, like, like I think it it maybe adds to... um to rounding out like the character too like to to giving bring us insight into like I think Lizzie yeah has like 10 lines in the whole movie. And I mean, Tantu Cardinal is a phenomenal actor. And she also commands every scene she's in. I'm seeing a theme here. i did want to talk a little bit about ah the lunch scene with Anna and and Byron a little bit.
01:13:25
Speaker
i mean Brian? Byron. We'll talk about that in a minute. Byron. Brown. um No, not Brown.
01:13:37
Speaker
bre Byron. Byron. Anyway, ah in the book, Anna only threatens to kill Byron, Byron, Brian.
01:13:49
Speaker
When he asks a servant out to a dance, which seems it wasn't quite as like over the top crazy in the book. It was just, oh, he asked girl out to dance. Anna said, if you do that again, I'm going to kill you. Right.
01:14:02
Speaker
And that was it. It wasn't this crazy, awkward scene. Whereas how in the movie it felt so clunky. it felt... It felt gross because instead in the movie, ah Brian Byron basically assaults a girl over the lunch table in front of racist aunt and children.
01:14:23
Speaker
and then Anna threatens to kill them both. And I feel like they were making Anna out to be a lot more violent than she was described in the book.
01:14:33
Speaker
Yeah. She just felt like she was way more violent. Either way more violent or like, way like drunker or way more combative as ah while she was creative inebriated. Yeah. And yeah.
01:14:52
Speaker
And I don't know that that does the real person of Anna Brown justice. Right. Like, I don't know if that's fair. They made her really, really sloppy. Yeah. Yeah.
01:15:06
Speaker
let's talk about Brian Byron. on his tomb On his tombstone, I looked on findagrave.com, it reads Brian Bradford, quote, Brian Burkhart.
01:15:20
Speaker
Byron Bradford. Byron. Brian. byron Quote, unquote, Brian Burkhart. Yeah, Brian is in the nickname. So Byron Bradford Burkhart. kind of bbb and it's a ah whisper of brian i guess i would interpret that to mean that his his christian name was byron but sometimes people called him brian brian and he still answered yeah yeah ah so which is really confusing because the the book always refers to him as brian burkhart never does it mention his name could be byron
01:15:59
Speaker
Yeah. And that it gets really confusing when you get to the movie and you're like, wait, are they calling him Byron? And it wasn't to like the very end where I was like, they are calling him Byron. Like I knew for certain i was uncertain until like the very last time they said his name. And was like, oh, no, it's definitely Byron. What the fuck?
01:16:17
Speaker
Horace was just M.I.A. Oh, yeah. ah Ernest has a third brother and Horace also lived in Osage County. And ah did he do dirty deeds for Hale? We don't know. He's not. He's mentioned in the book like in one sentence.
01:16:33
Speaker
And then he's not in the movie at all, like not even on screen at all. Never. Maybe he said no. How? How would you say no to Hale? How would you say no to Hale? He would be like, no? Okay. Maybe he was kind of like pussyfooting around it. And Hale's like, Boris, you need to go do this. And he's like, okay, I'm in the bathroom. I'll be out in a minute.
01:16:53
Speaker
And he just stayed in there the whole time. Okay. For decades? Yeah, cool. For decades. He just hid. I don't know. um But in the movie, whenever Molly invites Ernest in for dinner, like, she gives him the hat and she's like, are you hungry? And he's like, yeah. And then he comes inside to get dinner. ah And Molly actually asks him, oh, your brother's Brian, right? And he just responds, ah Byron, why?
01:17:20
Speaker
then And then I feel like Byron gets pronounced several different ways yeah throughout the movie. Like everybody has a different way of saying his name. And I don't know if this is intentional, but I think it would be great if it was because I heard Byron and I also, I heard like Byron and, and, and Byrne. I swear somebody called him Byrne. Maybe somebody called him Byrne. don't know, but they just pronounced it however they wanted.
01:17:47
Speaker
yeah, It kept me on my toes. um But I thought that was just an interesting detail to go. yeah Your brother's Brian. Byron. It was definitely a cute – it was a cute scene. Yeah. And yeah, yeah I mean, side side tangent on that too. Like people's accents kind of drove me a little nuts. Yeah. Oh, bonkers. Because like we're we're not from Oklahoma. We're not from Osage County.
01:18:12
Speaker
But we're both from Missouri, which is very close. And we're from, you know, like kind of the Ozarks part of Missouri. But anyway, like I know in the movie they were like, oh, yeah, like Missouri and stuff. Like they would talk about it like Missouri. Well, you're even still not pronouncing it as bad as they did because they said Missouri. Missouri.
01:18:36
Speaker
Zora. After this luncheon scene, right, or or towards the end of the day, we get this scene with Ernest and Byron, Brian, murroom were were his brother. Byron.
01:18:51
Speaker
they're away from the house. I don't know. I think they're like next to a shed or something. And Byron kind of just looks at him says, it's time for me to take out a home. And Ernest like, you know, kind of stiffens and is like, okay.
01:19:06
Speaker
You know, like they were just kind of shooting the shit before that. And so then Ernest goes back into the house and like collects Anna and everything. And um I think on the first time that we watched this, um after after that, we talked a little bit. And I was like, did you think that Ernest, because I think after the first watch, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but after the first watch, you were like, I think Ernest like was just too dumb to know anything for most of it. ah That was definitely how I watched it the first time, but I was very busy taking notes. Right. And also ah having an allergic reaction yeah to something in the theater. Yeah. So I was having a mild medical emergency and also not paying the right kind of attention to it. So no, I definitely did think that he was too stupid the first time. And then the second time I watched it, I was like, oh, never mind. Okay. That's what I yeah yeah i was wondering. I was like, if on the second watch, if you were like if it if your mind had changed at all. um about that. Like after the first one, after the first watch, like I wasn't totally sure how complicit, how in the know he was with a lot of this. um
01:20:14
Speaker
Because again, i was trying to take
Character Analysis: Ernest and His Role
01:20:16
Speaker
notes. I was trying to remember what happened in the book and you know, assess like split second decision wise, like, oh, was that, did that happen in the book? Like, is that true? Is that right? Is it different? You know, like kind of assess that in the moment. and maybe I should have just like turned that part of my brain off somehow, but. you were so We were so busy paying attention that we weren't paying attention. Right, right. that got Yeah. So on a second watch, I was like, saw it and I was like, oh yeah, fuck yeah, he knows. He totally knows what he means. Yeah.
01:20:49
Speaker
Yes. He might not understand like his emotions behind it, but he knows what's happening. Yeah. He knows what's going on. He knows who's going to do what. Like he absolutely knew that early in the movie. Right. um And then. a hundred Yeah. And then he kind of like he walks back into the house. But then like when when he sees Molly, like it seems like he kind of starts like stumbling and stuff. He's like, oh, Barnes is going to take.
01:21:16
Speaker
Anna home because I'm too drunk. You know? And Molly's like, yeah, you are. she's like not happy. She is not pleased with him. Yeah. Because she just got done dealing with Anna being drunk. And in the book, she was described as being little bit belligerent.
01:21:36
Speaker
But with like everybody. Like she was just Anna. Yeah. she Yeah. anna Anna was. Like Anna was being a little bit messy. Yeah. Right. i don't – but again, i think that they made her way, way, way worse in the movie. Right.
01:21:52
Speaker
Yeah. Way worse. So, yeah. And so – so, yeah. I mean, he – I think in that scene he's he's pretending to be a little, like, drunker than he really is. Like, sure, maybe he's tipsy or something, but –
01:22:11
Speaker
I think maybe that's so that like Molly can't be like, well, why can't you take her home? Why does it have to be Byron or something? Or like, you know, maybe Ernest knows what's coming. So it's like, well, I'm off the hook because I'm going to be real drunk and I'm too drunk to drive. Yeah. so Or be maybe he was wrestling with emotions that he absolutely could not comprehend um or guilt. And he didn't know what guilt was. So he was like, h what is this feeling in my belly? I don't understand. I must be drunk. Let's stumble. Yeah.
01:22:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But no, I think he absolutely, and I think that this was, it really, that scene really set up for the rest of the things that he did because he was absolutely complacent in Anna's murder. 100%. He knew it was happening. He easily could have stopped it and he didn't because it was part of the plan, right? So he was okay with that.
01:23:06
Speaker
So then of course he's okay with blowing up Rita, you know, with with the nitro and and then he was, ah we're going to talk about the insulin, but he was obviously okay with all of it. He was okay with murdering people.
01:23:19
Speaker
That was just his first little taste of it. He wasn't even there. Right. But it's still eased him into the whole thing. I think. Yeah. Let it happen. I think it's one of those things where it's like,
01:23:34
Speaker
it It wasn't his idea, and it's not something I think he probably ever would have thought of himself. No. But he knew enough to new know better um and to know that he was what he was doing was completely wrong. Yeah.
01:23:52
Speaker
So I don't know. I feel like I've i've read some things and i've I've definitely listened to some things where they're like, well, I just think he was like dumbass and, you know, kind of didn't know what he was doing. Like, no, he knew. He knew what he was doing. oh He needs to be held responsible.
01:24:07
Speaker
Somebody said that he was just reprising his role in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Right. And that's not the take that that person thought it was. Okay. So we have Ernest, who is most certainly complicit. um he's He's not the mastermind, but he's a puppet. He's an agent.
01:24:28
Speaker
in in these mass murders, in this, like, cultural genocide. um and then And then he's asked by a team of doctors, a duo of doctors, the Schoen brothers, which in the book, I thought it was, like,
01:24:46
Speaker
The Shoon brothers, but in the movie they pronounced it Shown. Oh, I've been pronouncing it Shown in my head the whole time because that was easier. Yeah, I don't know. For some reason. I don't know what it is. Anyway, these two doctor brothers who could not be trusted and yeah um clearly were like...
01:25:05
Speaker
Violating the Hippocratic Oath. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. every day greed and gain and wealth and all that terrible stuff. Anyway, Hale secures insulin for Molly. Molly's able – Molly's diabetic. um She was, I guess, like born that way.
01:25:25
Speaker
know. The book never really – nothing ever really gets into like how she became diabetic. No, they just call it – they just cut Well, I don't think they knew one way or the other. They just knew that she was diabetic. Right. Yeah. Yeah. They called it the sugar sickness at one point, too. Yeah.
01:25:39
Speaker
Once insulin is created, Hale's somehow able to make sure Molly is able to get insulin. And um the Schoen brothers are originally, like, giving it to her, administering the medication to her. And they're they the Schoen brothers are shown mixing things in on screen.
01:25:58
Speaker
And um then after she becomes rightfully um skeptical and paranoid and, you know. She's getting sicker. Yeah. And she's yeah getting more and more ill.
01:26:13
Speaker
um she She lays down some ground rules. And that's, you know, we're not eating any food that's not prepared by, like, our staff. We're not. you are picking up my medication from the train. Nobody's going to be able to tamper with it from the train to when it gets home. And so we get to the point where, where Ernest is the one administering the insulin and also the one in administering the poison that's being mixed in with it. Um, which to him it's pitched hail and the Schoen brothers pitch it as we're just going slow her down. We're just going to slow down.
01:26:49
Speaker
Slow her down so that she can't meddle with us murdering her family and community. Yeah. Because they we've got to pick them off one by one so we can get her money. And Ernest was okay with this. He said, okay, that sounds like a plan. Let's do it. Break. And then he did it.
01:27:06
Speaker
I have two different takes on this. I think that if if Ernest truly believed ah or believed that he truly loved Molly, ah maybe he was being willfully ignorant because what dumbass?
01:27:19
Speaker
Read between the lines, Ernie. You know, like, I don't i don't understand. ah But maybe he was being willfully ignorant and he was just choosing to think that he was only slowing her down and that he wasn't actively killing her, right? Maybe maybe he really was that stupid because I kind of took him as not necessarily as dumb as other people think of him, but he's not an intelligent person. Maybe he thought that...
01:27:45
Speaker
he was going to be immune from the overarching plan and therefore maybe his wife molly was going to be somewhat immune from the big plan he didn't want to believe that he was physically hurting her i saw a ton of denial in him and whether or not he didn't really know anything at all i think is up for for debate uh kind of like whenever uh Because he did, he drank some of the poison. Like, he didn't mix it all in with her insulin the way that he was told to. He poured it in his whiskey and and he drank some of it and then he became ill. And I took that as him just like.
01:28:22
Speaker
That was only in one scene. I didn't see him become ill after that. He like held his belly and was like, oh, my Toby hurts. And then he laid down on the bed. ah I took that as him immediately being like, oh, I don't feel a good. Either way, he drank it.
01:28:39
Speaker
And I think that was just as a confirmation to him or an experiment almost just to confirm what he probably already knew. yeah Yeah, I think it could be either or. i think the really important like thing to note here, though, is that in the book, the book doesn't mention that that Molly started taking, uh,
01:29:03
Speaker
that that Molly ever, I guess, left the care of the Schoen brothers. Yeah. Of the Schoen doctors. She, the book doesn't say that Ernest started administering the medication because she didn't, no longer trusted the medical doctors. um That's where I'm like, hmm, is this like a Hollywood cinematic kind of like fabrication?
01:29:25
Speaker
Yeah. Did they make it up for the sake of the story or did they find information on this? Again. Right. Where's your bibliography? Where, where are your notes? I want your receipts. Where are your notes? yes Yeah. No, i I mean, that's something that maybe if there's ever a director's cut, which if there's not yet there, I mean, there's not yet, but if it's not in the process of being made, it needs to be. um Or the, not the director's cut, the ah director's commentary. That's what I meant. The director's commentary. Yeah. Yeah. um That needs to be in there of, you know, why they chose to show him on screen. What is this based on? Is it based on did they find it in a diary somewhere or in a record somewhere? And that's like, wow, no, that's important. That's a because that is.
01:30:12
Speaker
That changes the story. It changes the story a lot.
Cultural Representation in the Film
01:30:16
Speaker
Whereas if it's if it didn't actually happen and it's just like a Hollywood dramatization, then then i feel a little a little pissed, honestly. Then I feel like they're using this, like they're trying to make Ernest a complicated character when he's not. They're trying to make it complicated because it's like, oh, well, I love my wife, but my ah my uncle wants me to poison her, so I'm going to, but then I'm going to feel bad about it and I'll give myself some of the poison.
01:30:45
Speaker
And so feel bad for me. And it's like, yeah i I don't. I don't feel bad for you because you're an awful human who has killed way too many people.
01:30:56
Speaker
i mean, one even one person is too many people. I mean, he you're a murderer. i don't i don't have sympathy for you. no I agree. i i don't. I don't want to be sympathetic towards him. And I wonder if they even, I wonder what the movie would look like if they didn't even try to make him sympathetic.
01:31:15
Speaker
Right. That's true. You know, which, I mean, this is, this is a Leonardo DiCaprio character. This is, this is what he does. Making you know non-sympathetic characters sympathetic?
01:31:28
Speaker
ah Yeah, yeah, he does that. Or, i mean, he he always... His characters are always, like, that exact brand of of complicated. Interesting. For the most part. At least a lot of his more recent ones are.
01:31:44
Speaker
so something that I think that the the movie... I feel like we keep being like, well, the movie i was like, no, this was nice. But then it was like bad. um Something that I think that the movie did really, really well that, that the book couldn't quite achieve just because of the, like the, it's has limitations because of the medium was yeah the movie really brought the culture to life. The book is awesome.
01:32:09
Speaker
but just It's excellently excellently written. um And it also has just lots of like archive archival photos throughout the book. um which And it has a lot of information, yeah Like it it just very plainly says, this was what they did for this cultural thing. Right. And that's great. It's a wonderful resource. Right.
01:32:32
Speaker
um And it's not as pretty. It doesn't feel it doesn't feel like a textbook when you're reading it, especially because of the way that it's written with the the whole whodunit kind of narrative structure. ah yeah But it, you know, it's it's limited in the medium because it's two dimensional. It's a page, you know, and it's the the the to round out the dimensions to make it 3D or forty d or, you know, to make it more dimensions, it requires the reader's mind. And, um you know, like, I don't know what 1920s Osage County looked like or couldn't really picture, like, the the dichotomy of, like – you know, extravagant wealth and um elaborate like wedding outfits, you know, against like this prairie landscape, you know, like that didn't that didn't come through in the book as well as it did on screen.
01:33:35
Speaker
I mean, unless unless you're on like powwow TikTok, you probably don't really see right a lot of these things, right? And I've never seen any kind of bridal outfit stuff. So I've i've never seen this sort of thing before. So again, increasing the reach and and showing more people all of these things, it's it's it's beautiful. It's interesting.
01:33:58
Speaker
Sad story, right? a lot of people died. A lot of ah lot of people were murdered. A lot of people were buried. In the movie, we see like they place apples on the caskets and we were kind of like wondering what that meant and um and like looking that up like um it's in Osage customs and their tradition to to send people off with like three days food for the journey to the happy hunting ground. So it seems like maybe that is a nod to that aspect of their culture. And then they also have like the youngest family member walks across um like a casket of someone in their family who's died. Yeah, that was very interesting.
01:34:42
Speaker
and And they also they were able to use the funerals to give us more information about what is happening, because at the very beginning, whenever we have those funerals, there's a lot of Osage people there. There's people at the funeral and it is an Osage funeral or Osage combined with Catholic funeral. It's both cultures and customs together in one.
01:35:05
Speaker
But then at the end of the movie, whenever we have Anna's, ah baby Anna's funeral, there's nobody there. There is no Osage custom happening at all. It is just an outdoor Catholic funeral.
01:35:18
Speaker
Yeah. And it's just there's nobody there. Ernest. And then like some FBI agents or future what would become the FBI, but at the time just Bureau of Investigation. They're just off in the corner. Yeah.
Reflections on Justice and Systemic Racism
01:35:30
Speaker
ah So Bill and Rita home exploding. not ah not a true crime person, not ah an investigator, but from the shows that I've watched, I mean, I've seen like every episode of Bones, right? Like, um, um it didn't fit the MO. um No. Uh, it, you know, it seemed like a lot of the people who they were murdering, they, they chose poison or they chose guns. Um, and the explosion was kind of an anomaly. And I'm,
01:36:04
Speaker
Definitely think people were – the right people were accused. The right people were prosecuted. They should have probably been hanged for their crimes, um even though I have mixed feelings about capital punishment. But I kind of wish Hale hadn't – also have mixed feelings, but – Hale should not have lived to his 80s.
01:36:23
Speaker
I'll say No. He shouldn't have lived to his 80s as a free man. No. Or yeah honestly, even as an um like an imprisoned man. um I think he was beyond reform. um So I just... ah ah Yeah. i know we don't have to We don't have to debate capital punishment right right now. Fair. Yeah. early for that So I kind of wondered if if that was if they were trying to throw people off their scent or something by like...
01:36:54
Speaker
let's, let's explode their home instead. um but I don't know. I mean, we, we, we can never know. Um, you know, the, unless there's a hidden journal or something somewhere, but the, the interesting thing about Bill and Rita is that they had a clause in their will that if they died at the same time, Rita's head rights would go to Molly.
01:37:20
Speaker
i guess that's what I can't wrap my head around, right? If their typical MO was to murder people by shooting them in the back of the head um or just shooting them, then if you shot Bill and Rita, same time, they would both die at the same time.
01:37:41
Speaker
Blowing up their home, theoretically, should have killed them both at the same time. However, it did not. Bill lived longer. but Bill lived a few days, which I'm sure was just pure agony um because he, I think every inch of his body was burned. Yeah.
01:38:02
Speaker
from the explosion. So um because Bill lived a few days longer, Bill inherited Rita's head rights as her husband. And then when Bill passed, his relative inherited from him. So Hale and his goonies, um the the head rights did not go to Molly. So Hale and his goonies didn't get to like They blew them up for nothing, basically. Yeah.
01:38:34
Speaker
It's even more infuriating because we're not dealing with criminal masterminds, clearly. They are dumbasses. They're very stupid. And yet they got away with it for so long because of systemic racism, because yeah local government could be bought or or local enforcement. local government was in on it. Yeah, or part of it, they were pulling the trigger or sending the note to pull the trigger. um Yeah. and then And then there was no real like federal program to provide assistance for this.
01:39:11
Speaker
And then when there sort of was, it took them like a while for the cavalry really to come in. And even then it it was a ah an awesome troop of like eight dudes trying to wrangle this whole community of killers. Yeah.
01:39:29
Speaker
And they still didn't get complete justice. No. And they still didn't solve. They still knew that there were further suspicious deaths. And, you know, well, we solved the big ones. We put somebody in prison. So time to move on to the next thing so we can keep building our good reputation.
01:39:48
Speaker
Do you want to talk about Molly's guardian in the movie? Yeah. Yeah, so this was where it was interesting. So in the movie, Molly had a guardian, somebody in charge of her money through the whole movie, and it wasn't Ernest.
01:40:02
Speaker
In the book, whenever they got married, Ernest became her guardian and was therefore in charge of her money and how it was spent. Yeah. And I feel like it maybe would have been a little bit too much to put all of that in the movie just for time's sake. But also I wonder if he were just in the movie, would they have been able to show his character still having incentive to murder all these other people if he was already in charge of this big fortune?
01:40:35
Speaker
Do you think that would have affected it a little bit? Yeah. I mean, kind of wondered if him, if Ernest, if I don't think it would have taken that long for them to show that he was now the guardian, right? Like it would have been one scene of him, of it all being signed over to him. can be two minutes. And then like couple reminders throughout that, that Molly has to ask him 300 bucks whatever. Yeah. It could have literally been, Ernest, you're in charge of her checkbook now, right?
01:41:08
Speaker
Yep. Yep, I am. There we go. That's the whole thing. They don't even have to show the background info on it or anything. Right. I do wonder if it would have changed the the character and what the character wants and what they need to get it. i I just wonder if he would have been more complacent in the movie. I think it would have made him less complicated, right? Yeah. I think it would have meant that, oh, like,
01:41:32
Speaker
He's in control over money. Yeah, he's guilty. Yeah, he doesn't have a conscience. Yeah, he's in it for the money. for the I mean, he's greedy. Which he even even calls himself greedy. Very early on, yeah.
01:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think it i would have made him less complicated. It would have made his motives clearer and left less up to interpretation for the audience. It it might have changed the story, just a a tinge.
01:41:58
Speaker
Yeah. so And I mean, you know, just as a fun, super fun side note is ah Mr. Beattie, who plays Molly's guardian in the movie, um yeah he's in the KKK. Like, he's seen... in In a parade, in a KKK parade, just marching happily down the street. He doesn't even have like the white pointy hood thing on. And he's just like, oh, hey, how's it going? At one scene, mall Molly's at Hale's house and she's over for dinner. And she actually mentions to Hale that she's been talking with her
Omissions and Alterations in the Film
01:42:40
Speaker
guardian, Mr. Beattie. And Mr. Beattie's wanting to, um, Mr. Beattie thinks that, um, that, uh, you know, the local riffraff are, uh, the ones responsible for these murders, i.e.,
01:42:57
Speaker
Local African-Americans, local black people, um which yeah I don't think we really see any black people on screen in this movie. um I don't remember seeing any black people in this movie. Yeah.
01:43:09
Speaker
um So he wants Mr. Beattie wants to get the KKK involved in solving these murders. And so we have Molly saying, Hale, like, what do you think about involving the KKK? And Hale's like, well, i don't really support the KKK. Like, I don't really believe in their mission and stuff.
01:43:31
Speaker
And it's like, that's nice. But also... Yes. I think you're a little bit disingenuous here. Right. And then later, after Bill and Rita's home um is blown up, we see Hale and Mr. Beattie interact. And Mr. Beattie says, I think you're showing you're exposing yourself too much here. Yeah.
01:43:51
Speaker
So Mr. Beattie is fully aware of who the local riffraff is. And he's fully aware that it is not... not a white not not a black person it's a bunch of white people um so yeah that's real real shitty um real shitty real complicated real messy um i guess it's not complicated real racist that's what it is yeah yeah so anyway yikes Yikes, indeed.
01:44:24
Speaker
in the movie, we are missing two important people. We're missing W.W. Vaughn and we're missing George Big Heart. Yeah. They're not in the movie at all. When George Big Heart died, his head rights and fortune, it all went to his wife and his daughter, right? And and there's a lot of of questions about why he was murdered exactly and by who.
01:44:41
Speaker
And David Grant actually found the information that obviously it's not, there's not a a trial for it or anything, so it can't be definite. But it's, I think he pretty much figured it out.
01:44:54
Speaker
So whenever he died, ah his rights and fortune went to his wife and daughter. And his daughter did have a guardian over her spending. And that just so happened to be one H.G. Burt, who was a business associate of Hale.
01:45:07
Speaker
And Burt was also the guardian of several other Osage who were also murdered. And I think that Vaughn George Bighart weren't necessarily, they weren't mentioned because ah it probably deviated a little bit from the narrative that the movie was trying to portray.
01:45:22
Speaker
um i don't think we would have had as much time to care about George Bighart's character the way that we did with others. Because, I mean, we were moving at a really fast clip through the whole movie. So I don't think having another storyline that wasn't directly related to Molly and her sisters, I don't i don't think it would have fit in as well. Hale did want him silenced. And and and hale Hale needed Vaughn gone. He did. In order to prevent secrets from reaching the Bureau and him being found out.
01:45:50
Speaker
Right? Yeah, well, so W.W. Vaughn had been collecting his own evidence, essentially, for who he thought was responsible for these murders. George Bighart was poisoned, right?
01:46:02
Speaker
um And so George Bighart was, like, dying in Oklahoma City. So W.W. Vaughn got a phone call from him. um and this is all in the book, obviously. It's nothing in the movie. um George Bighart says, hey, man, I'm dying.
01:46:17
Speaker
You need to come see me. I think I know who's responsible. And I'd like to give, I like to tell you what I know. I like to give you the information that I have so that you can bring justice to this situation, whatever. So WW Vaughn rushes to Oklahoma city, um tells his wife before he goes, his wife who he has 10 children with, um, like anyway, um,
01:46:44
Speaker
Tells his wife that there's some money in a safe as well as some evidence that he's been collecting and um ah goes to Oklahoma City. He's on his way back and he disappears from the train and then his body's found later.
01:46:59
Speaker
um And, you know, they couldn't determine if he had been killed and then pushed from the train or if the, the you know, he'd been pushed from the train and that fall killed him. um Either way, he was most certainly um He died under suspicious...
01:47:16
Speaker
ah Suspicious... Circumstances? Is that them? Circumstances, yeah. So that's why I think if the movie were Obviously the movie's trying to tell a love story. It's not really doing a great job of that. Yeah, it's it wouldn't it wouldn't fit in If it had been more of maybe a police procedural or a whodunit kind of movie, then I think these characters...
01:47:43
Speaker
these Real people, I think, would have been portrayed in the movie and and would have had some space. Let's talk about the soundtrack.
Soundtrack and Emotional Depth
01:47:51
Speaker
I love the soundtrack. Me too.
01:47:54
Speaker
So good. Oh, my gosh. It was so – I've been listening to it just like in the background. too, yeah. um of Of working on all of this so that I can like stay in the moment. And it is just – it's phenomenal.
01:48:06
Speaker
and is. Yeah. That's really good. And just the sound for the whole movie, period. Because like in the beginning, whenever Molly invites Ernest in and it starts like thunderstorming really hard and she's like, no, we need to sit here and we need to be quiet and just and just listen to the thunderstorm. And one, i love thunderstorms. I do that. I do that too, Molly.
01:48:27
Speaker
And makes him just sit there. And be quiet. Just calm down. Just listen to the thunderstorm. And I love that. Because then at the very end of the movie, after the credits, like during the credits, like it goes from music into thunderstorm.
01:48:40
Speaker
And it's a hard thunderstorm. I mean, I sit there until like the lights come on and they tell me to leave. hu Just hard thunderstorm. Beautiful. and then it And then it finally fades out.
01:48:54
Speaker
And then it turns into like crickets. And you can hear a coyote in the background howling and stuff. And oh, beautiful, calm night. Anyway, soundtrack. It was all written by ah Robbie Robertson.
01:49:07
Speaker
who was the former lead guitarist for Bob Dylan, being concerned about Native people, Indigenous people working on this movie. His mother was actually Native, and she frequently took him to Six Nations ah Indian Reserve. Until his death, ah he still frequently went to Six Nations and other reserves and stuff and was still involved in the community.
01:49:28
Speaker
And he spent quite a lot of time in Oklahoma with the Osage people while he was preparing for the movie. And it totally showed because the soundtrack was perfect. Yeah. With capital P. now at the very end we have this um you know just like beautiful tribal song um i don't know if he wrote that one i think it was performed by like the osage tribe tribal choir yeah is who gets the credit but um and that's like that's what takes us out of the movie and into the credits and everything and it's just
01:50:04
Speaker
So good. More ending scenes. Let's talk about baby Anna's death and Ernest with his... I understand crying for your child. I get it.
01:50:17
Speaker
You should cry if anybody dies. I'm not saying that he shouldn't. However... Where do you see the big issue in all of this, Jen? Oh, my God. So baby Anna dies. Precious baby Anna. I think she had like lung problems or something, probably because her mother was like being poisoned. Yeah.
01:50:40
Speaker
Well, she was pregnant and didn't know it. So awesome. Hate that. um and And so we we cut. Baby Anna dies. We cut to the scene. she's We have a lot of these scenes, right, where these Osage members are – they've died and they're peacefully resting like on – A bed. um And i mean, they're always jarring. The scenes are always jarring. But baby Anna was especially jarring because she's so little. She's like four. She was wrapped up in a little blanket and just tiny little baby. Right. On a bed. And Molly cries over her for like a second.
01:51:23
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm sure she like cries over her much longer, but that's all we get to see. we see like two, three sobs. and then And then it cuts to a scene our boy ernie our boy Ernie in the jail. and And Tom White comes to him to say, oh, your which was which of your kids had like lung issues or whatever? Well, she's dead. And I was in a ah row all by myself. So I took out my phone and I used my stopwatch and I checked. And Ernest sobbed on the ground, rolling around, writhing and just sobbing for a minute and eight seconds. It was like a minute and then 8.93 seconds.
01:52:06
Speaker
He just chewed all the scene. and And this isn't a knock on Leo or anything. i just, it was... Again, trying to make him a more sympathetic character.
01:52:18
Speaker
Right. And it didn't work at all. Yeah. I don't feel sorry for him. I don't feel sorry for Ernest. I feel sorry for Molly. I feel sorry for baby Anna. Yeah. Whose life was like honestly probably impacted by the fact that her mother was being poisoned. Oh, yeah.
01:52:38
Speaker
Ernest did that. Yeah. Ernest did that. It's his own damn fault. Ernie did that. Yeah. And, you know, and then Hale's like trying like comfort him from the other cell. And it's just like – it's just icky.
01:52:50
Speaker
It's just really icky. Mm-hmm. And I think it was it was supposed to be icky with Hale for sure. Like I was from like a movie perspective, I was on board with Hale being a creep. Oh, yeah. in thatly That's totally fine.
01:53:03
Speaker
But I think Ernest rolling on the ground and crying for as long as he did was just a bit over the top. think they wanted us to feel bad for Ernest and to like feel his grief. And I.
01:53:16
Speaker
i I never had a child. I've never lost a child. um I'm very attached to my dog and I get extremely emotional when I think about him dying of old age. um Yeah. So is different it's extremely different, but that's the closest thing I have to a child of my own. um That's my, that's my parallel there. So i can totally understand the pain and anguish of losing a child. um I've lost a parent. um I know what that kind of grief is like um of losing someone who's so close to you.
01:53:55
Speaker
But Ernest is so racist and he's he's so he's just evil. um he is a murderer. So I don't care. yeah I don't care about it. I don't care about his grief. Therefore, i was less comfortable watching.
01:54:11
Speaker
him experience it for as long as he did. Right. I would have rather seen, well, I didn't want to see a minute of Molly grieving, but no I mean. Because that, she just really broke my heart. One more, one more thing about baby Anna though, is, is the movie really seems to kind of play up that she's like a cat, like her baby Anna's death is a catalyst for earnest. Yeah.
01:54:36
Speaker
switching sides in the trial. So yeah Ernest goes into this trial representing the prosecution. you know He's going to tell the truth. He's going to point fingers. He's going to tell them who did it. And then first day, he sits down and the defense attorney is like, that's my client. And the judge is like, is this man your attorney? And he need you and he's like...
01:54:58
Speaker
No, but I'll talk to him. Ernest flips to the defense and then he's on the defense side, um starts lying. You know, everything changes. And then he learns about his daughter dying.
01:55:12
Speaker
And also something I want to point out is when Tom White comes in and says, your child has died, he goes, cowboy? No, not cowboy. Is it cowboy? He doesn't care.
01:55:24
Speaker
He doesn't care about the other two because even then later, he asks Molly, like, oh, does does cowboy miss me? And she's like, yeah. So does Elizabeth, yeah you asshole. So even then, he's like, is it cowboy?
01:55:37
Speaker
Tell me it's not cowboy. It better not be cowboy. And then and then Tom White's like, it's some it's the child with the lung problems. And he's like... oh that's anna and then we and it just it just feels very fake and insincere anyway all that to say is it seems like the movie really tries to amplify that like baby anna dies and then he decides okay i am gonna tell the truth i am gonna be yeah try to be a good person finally or something yeah um and again he's he's a he's a narcissist right he's
01:56:12
Speaker
I'm diagnosing him. I guess. You're totally qualified to do that. I am very qualified to do that with my English degree. I know what I'm talking about for reals.
01:56:24
Speaker
And so so I guess the the thing I want to highlight here is the movie makes it seem like very ah causational, right? um Like A happened and that caused B to happen. And therefore. There's a lot of and therefores. Right. Whereas – Which is a great way to write the story, but – Well, and the the book, you know, being literary journalism and it's not like – I don't think Ernest ever said, well, I decided it was time to tell the truth because –
01:56:57
Speaker
My yeah baby daughter died. And, you know, because there's not that level of testimony or something, the book doesn't the the book points it out.
01:57:08
Speaker
And the book says, well, baby Anna died. And then um so basically baby Anna died on like June 3rd in the middle of the trial.
Causality and Motivations
01:57:19
Speaker
And then on June 7th, Ernest slips a note. to the ah like warden person and who gets it to the prosecution side and basically says like, I want to talk. um And then on June 9th, so six days after his daughter dies, um he returns to the courtroom representing the prosecution side. um So, you know, it is definitely connected. um Yeah.
01:57:50
Speaker
I just felt like the movie, like. The movie used it as more of a device than yeah what happened. Yeah. if It used it more yeah like yeah i felt a little yeah little tricky in the movie. I think they were, they were trying to insert reason. Yeah. I think. Yeah. Yeah. And so I didn't like that as much.
01:58:07
Speaker
And on the one hand, I don't like it, but also I see it from like a story standpoint. I'm like, that's gross. Good idea. yeah I like gross, messy characters. I do. But it's just like, again, we're dealing with real people. Therefore, I'm not really on board with it.
01:58:24
Speaker
Another thing that I'm not on board with ah is how early in the movie, Ernest learns about Molly's marriage to Henry Roan.
01:58:36
Speaker
Whereas how in real life in the book, he doesn't find out about this until at the trial. Yeah, I mean, like for all we know. Yeah, for all we know. don't For all we know.
01:58:47
Speaker
All of this is for all we know. Right. Don't take anything that I say as gospel truth. This is just what i read. This is in the book. Yeah. This is what I'm in the book. Right. So, but.
01:58:59
Speaker
I felt like it changed the characters and their motivations in the movie because he found out that Molly was married to Henry so early in the movie. I feel like that gave him more of a reason to want to see him dead.
01:59:14
Speaker
I feel like it gave him more of an excuse versus just going along with this scheme that his uncle had. I feel like it almost added a little touch of crime of passion. And like, yes, he did say in passing, he's like, wait a minute. So if they were married before, would that give him claim over some of the fortune?
01:59:32
Speaker
Good question, Ernest. Why don't you ask a lawyer about that? Why don't you ask a lawyer about that? Like little baby mouth guy. yeah. Whose name I just can't remember right now. Kelsey Morrison. What a dumbass. like how I can say baby mouth and then you don't name the actor. You just name the real person. um Yeah. I don't know what he looks like in real life. I don't know.
01:59:54
Speaker
I think I looked up the pictures and like he was perfectly cast. Yeah. It just, it changed the motivations just a little bit. And just that kind of switch, I think, really affects a lot of things. And even if it's not, like, blatant and in your face, I think it does affect the characters and their motivations, like, a great deal.
02:00:11
Speaker
Kind of like how making Anna sloppier. Right. In the movie. Totally. It all, it it changes things, you know? It's, and I've written about this before. It's, it's almost like giving them more reasons and almost like, uh,
02:00:27
Speaker
Trying to say, do you see audience? This is why it had to happen. Look at it. In another story that's not real, it's at least just interesting. It's an interesting change. But it does, it affects the characters.
02:00:40
Speaker
Right. Yeah. No, yeah. it There's like, there's there's ripple effects. There's ramifications to decisions like that for sure. um when you're you When you're dramatizing things or like. Yeah.
02:00:55
Speaker
you know, making it Hollywood. Yeah.
Critical Engagement with Film and Book
02:00:59
Speaker
yeah Yeah. It's just, it's a question I have. And if Martin scorsate Scorsese wants to like email me, we'd answer.
02:01:09
Speaker
I would answer him very quickly. I'll just keep checking my phone for the future. Just in case. I don't know. He might, he might, I'm not going to give him my email. It's going to have to be organic. Or but or if he's working on his director's commentary,
02:01:24
Speaker
you know i guess I could wait for that. we can We can give him some pointers on questions we have. Yeah. We will send him And I think it's also important to note that like you know a lot of people are going to be like, damn, dudes. You don't have to read it that closely or watch it that closely. And it's like, yes, but we do. when We do. That is the point of this. I can't just enjoy things.
02:01:49
Speaker
Right. i have to I need to dissect it.
02:01:56
Speaker
right let's talk about those ending scenes. Oh, my God. Because there's different ones. We got two endings to this story. Just like we kind of got like two beginnings. Yeah. You know? did Interesting.
02:02:08
Speaker
Yeah. So, OK, you want to take the first one?
02:02:13
Speaker
Uh, sure. Cause I have things to add, but yeah, take it, go for it. Tell me about the, the Ernie and Molly scene. Ernie and Molly. Oh my God. Um, so, you know, court trial ends, right?
02:02:25
Speaker
People are sentenced. Um, then we get this, this ending scene between Ernest and Molly and then Tom White, um, from the future FBI is kind of off in a corner.
02:02:38
Speaker
But Ernest and Molly are kind of in this side room and they're just, they're kind of just chatting. And she's like, yeah I think she's just trying to take it all in. Right. She's just like, wow, I'm, I don't know you anymore. I'm looking at a stranger. well because we've, we've seen her face through all of the trial. Yeah.
02:02:57
Speaker
And, and again, Lily Gladstone does not say a word cause you're not supposed to whenever you're watching the trial, but You know exactly what she's thinking. And her heart is breaking through this whole this whole trial. Everything that she's hearing is confirming all the things that she didn't want to believe.
02:03:15
Speaker
And then she gets in there. And again, we have Ernest asking about cowboy only, all of that crap. And and then... Then she asks him.
02:03:26
Speaker
Yeah. She asks him, my medicine you gave me, what was in it? um And he's like, insulin. And then she – He like pauses for a very long time too. And then he just – She asks him more than once. yeah She's like, what was in those shots? Like she asks him in a couple different ways. And every time he's like – ah you your medicine, your medicine, insulin, your, your, your medicine, you know, and you can just, you can tell on his face that like, he's guilty. It's like a child. It's a child who's lying to you. And it's like, and, and he, he no longer believes what he's saying. Right.
02:04:05
Speaker
Yeah. You know, he, he knows that he's lying and he knows that, that she knows that he's lying. He's, he's now lost everything, but he has one final,
02:04:16
Speaker
lie for her right and then she just stands up and walks away yeah she's not gonna take a shit she's like yeah you're gonna lie again more now to me to my face after everything that she just heard after you killed my entire family like yes And I wonder if they were trying to make it look like she was giving him one more chance or was she just trying to get this confirmation for herself so that she can have closure?
02:04:47
Speaker
I think I took it as a closure thing. I'm taking it as a closure thing because I don't want to think of Molly as somebody who would be okay with any of that, any of the things that he did. And she wasn't okay with it. No, no. Obviously. No, no, she wasn't.
02:04:59
Speaker
She wanted a confirmation. i mean, I think she wanted one last testimony. She wanted him to look her in the eye and say, I poisoned you. Like. Yeah, that's what yeah I think that's what she wanted. And then he is a fucking coward. So um on top of everything else and could not tell her the truth because the truth is terrible.
02:05:22
Speaker
The truth was in the lie, I guess. She had her answer either way. She had her answer. Molly gets up. She walks out the room. and then And then Ernest kind of looks at Tom White. And Tom White's kind of like, man, you fucking made your bed. You know, like, that's just what I see. Like, it nothing is said. But that's just like, that's in my brain. That's what's being said. It's like, you made your bed. Lie in it. um And then it it cuts. It cuts to...
02:05:50
Speaker
Totally different scene. Totally different. We're in a different like world almost like. We're in a different decade. We are several. yeah Yeah. We have moved on and it is. And this is, ah I kind of likened it to like ah the ending of like Stand By Me where ah they say, oh, well, so-and-so became a circus performer and whatever did this. And then this guy, we never heard from him again. Like that kind of like 80s ending to movies. But instead of doing that,
02:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's the radio play featuring Jack White and Martin Scorsese, Jack White of the White Stripes. Yeah. And in it's it is the radio play because radio plays actually came out of this whole story.
Legacy and Resilience of the Osage
02:06:31
Speaker
It was the radio plays that were talking up the FBI and working almost just like an advertisement for the Bureau, correct?
02:06:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's what the radio plays were. um They were an advertisement for the FBI like, hey, look at us. We solved these murders. and We're to tell you about the ones we didn't solve because, you know, we found like 20 them.
02:06:54
Speaker
it it was a It was a good alternative. like i I preferred that to, you know, pictures of the real people and, like, white text on a black screen of synopsis of the rest of their life or something. Like, I i feel like they took, like, a little bit of an artistic leap at the end that was still, like... they They borrowed from actual events. Like, there was a radio play.
02:07:20
Speaker
feels like a very true honest way to sum it up um yeah at the end that is more satisfying than a yeah than a montage montage of photos um of archival photos and you know paragraphs of text kind of thing so yeah um it was pretty neat um And then, of course, it ends with Martin Scorsese reading Molly's obituary, um which she passed away at the age of like 50, which ah it pisses me off. It pisses me off that Molly, you know, only had 50 years on the earth and like fucking hell.
02:08:03
Speaker
Yeah. Fucking hell got to live to be like 82. Yeah. And then I believe Ernest lived into his 90s. That's some fucking bullshit. That pisses me off. That pisses me off so much.
02:08:16
Speaker
Knowing what I know of the world, shitty people tend to live the longest and I don't know why. It's not cool. It's not cool. Anyway, so. Anyway, Molly Cobb, you know, he reads her obituary for Molly Cobb and um then he adds something on at the end that there was no mention of the murders. um I got chills just now. who I got chills in the movie a lot and I just got chills just now about that. um So, you know, i if that was Molly had a had already pre-written her obituary, like we don't know. um Or if that's just how her family wanted her to be remembered in on paper um at that time. yeah.
02:09:01
Speaker
Yeah. she's She's more, Molly Burkhart is more Molly Cobb. um Molly Kyle is her maiden name. um yeah She is more than then the ah murder of her family, the story of the murder of her family. 100%. And then from the radio play, we cut to um this beautiful scene of um like the Osage tribe. They're performing a song. um And we start in the center of the circle, like the camera starts at the center of the circle. Like we're at a like a over the top ah view, like bird's eye view. Yeah. And.
02:09:42
Speaker
yeah um and we're We're really close in on a drum and then it just zooms out and keeps zooming and keeps zooming and keeps zooming. And it's just really, really cool um because you have like this kind of like core circle of like drummers. And then there's like a half circle of like these singers. And then you have just um a mass of everyone else who's dancing around them. Yeah.
02:10:08
Speaker
It was really cool. It was extremely powerful and moving. I mean, it showed. It's like we are still here. Yeah, we're still here. we're still strong We're still here. We're still doing it. We're still we are still people and we do still have our culture and our customs and the resilient. Yeah.
02:10:25
Speaker
Well, and it's so different from from the books ending. Right. Because the yeah the book kind of ends with um David Graham kind of kind like writing about the Like an interview that he had or and so maybe even series of interviews that he had with like one of the um descendants.
02:10:50
Speaker
um With Margie? No, no. With Mary Jo Webb. She was a retired teacher who spent decades investigating the suspicious death of her grandfather during the reign of terror.
02:11:02
Speaker
Yes. I remember now. Yeah. So um she has like all of these like boxes and boxes of documents that she shares with him, including like guardian expense reports and probate records and court testimony. I mean, she did her research. Yeah, she did. She gathered a lot of information about her grandfather, Paul Peace, um and he was one of the victims who did not show up in the FBI files and whose killers did not go to prison. So that – I just got chills again. Oh, yeah.
02:11:36
Speaker
yeah Essentially, the theory is that he was like ah he not the theory. He's he suspected that his wife, who was white, was poisoning him. And this is in December of 1926. And then he went to go see an attorney.
02:11:55
Speaker
um And it was the attorney Comstock, whom Webb described as one of the few decent white attorneys at the time. Peace wanted to get a will and change, wanted to get a divorce and change his will to disinherit his wife. um And so, um and she actually, Mary Jo Webb actually named Shun brothers, Shun brothers, um as like probably where she was getting the poison. um to poison her husband.
02:12:28
Speaker
The book ends on this story of of of Paul Peace. He vowed to disinherit and divorce the wife he suspected of poisoning him. And then in February of 1927, he was injured in a hit and run and left to bleed out on the road. And basically, Mary Jo Webb was like, maybe you, like in the book, you know, she's, he quotes her saying, maybe you could look into it. And he nods, though he – and he writes, though I knew that in my own way I was as lost in the mist as Tom White or Molly Burkhart had been. then in the final paragraph, we get this beautiful kind of like place writing, right, where says,
02:13:20
Speaker
This land is saturated with blood, Webb said. For a moment, she fell silent and we could hear the leaves of the blackjacks rattling restlessly in the wind. Then she repeated what God told Cain before he killed Abel. The blood cries out from the ground.
02:13:36
Speaker
And that's where we end. And my whole body is chills. So... so We end in very different spots in the book and in the movie. And again, it comes back to they're telling different stories, I think. So require different openings, different beginnings, different endings. Yeah.
02:13:58
Speaker
But but all are extremely powerful.
Conclusion and Call for Osage-directed Film
02:14:06
Speaker
We fucking did it. We did it. So then here's my last question for you. Are you a book nerd or a movie buff? Shit, man, don't know. Can you go first on that one?
02:14:19
Speaker
What are you So on the one hand,
02:14:26
Speaker
i think i'm i think I'm a book nerd on this. I think I have to go with the book is better. And only because i feel like it does the people justice. Yeah. And that's that is because the movie cinematically is beautiful. It is. I mean, because even even the best movie can be problematic. This movie was problematic, but damn, it was a good movie.
02:14:47
Speaker
But i I'm going to have to go. i'm going to have to go with the book on this one. I'm a book nerd, too. I am. I think I want to be a movie buff on this one.
02:14:58
Speaker
Oh, I want to be a movie buff. But I can't be. But I think it's, yeah. I think if if an Osage director wanted to remake this movie, you could turn me easily.
02:15:12
Speaker
Because I desperately want to be a movie buff. I need more Molly. I need more of her sisters. I need more of what was making them happy during that time. i need, I need a little bit more pleasantness at the beginning, at least just to show. i need more of them laying on a blanket and yeah just talking shit. need more.
02:15:33
Speaker
I need more. I loved the shit talking scenes. i need more humanity. And, and the book definitely has like more of an emotional distance to it, but Yeah, and the book does focus more on the the investigation. that That chronicle, it's you know three chronicles, three parts. That chronicle longer than all the others, but um it's not that it's like 50, 40 pages longer than um Molly's section, the first chronicle. so But i would love I would love to see not even a remake, just...
02:16:09
Speaker
Another movie. Oh, yeah. No, not a remake. Just so just starring. Tell me a difference. Tell me. Tell me the same information, but tell me a different story. Yeah. Starring Lily Gladstone still. She can just. Please keep her in it. That's her She can be whoever. And also I want Tantoo Cardinal because she's great, too.
02:16:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
02:16:30
Speaker
And make Leo be Hale or something. He doesn't get to be in it We don't want him. We don't want him here. that is He's old enough. And, like, it's part of the story. So we have him. But he'll be a ah supporting character. Recycle all of the cast members. But flip-flop who's the lead.
02:16:49
Speaker
Yeah. just And then I would definitely be a movie buff. But... I got to with the book. I don't know. i wret I was wrestling with this and i had my mind made up before the podcast. And then like I had decided I'm a book nerd. And then we did this. We recorded all of this. And I was like, shit, man, movie was pretty good. Maybe I am a movie buff. And then I was like, no I really, i really just can't get over all the murder.
02:17:15
Speaker
i I really don't think I could be a buff on this one. So murder necessary, but gratuitous violence. Right. Right. I can't get over all the violence. And I like hyper violence, but again, only about fictional people. Yeah.
02:17:30
Speaker
Yeah. I don't like, I don't. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. Book nerds.
02:17:48
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Book Club, the movie, the podcast. Watch for new episodes out the third Thursday of each month. You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Book Club, the movie.
02:18:03
Speaker
You can also find us on Patreon, Facebook, or on our website, bookclubthemovie.com. This podcast was created and produced by Jen Moyer and M. Lord. Our music and mixing is by Jason Lord of Studio Topaz.
02:18:17
Speaker
Voice acted by Ethan Gallardo. And we just want to give a big thank you to our friends and family for your love and support. And thank you, dear listener, for joining our book club. See you next time, nerds. And buffs.
02:18:41
Speaker
All right, I'm back. What did you say smells like farts? I don't know you'd be able to hear that or not. yeah Adam has been doing egg white stuff lately. So egg white omelets, just like egg white on an English muffin thing. And it makes our whole house smell like farts. And he doesn't worry. but he...
02:19:07
Speaker
This morning before because he's eating it. Probably. So his insides now smell like farts too. So he can't even go. um But this morning before he left for the gym, he was like, do you want me to make you an egg white thing? And I was like, no, I don't want to eat farts.
02:19:21
Speaker
um He was like, well, it's really yummy. I'm like, that's a personal opinion. And so he just asked me again. He's like, are you sure you don't want me to make you an egg white thing?
02:19:34
Speaker
and I'm like, I still don't want to eat farts. It still smells like farts. Normal eggs don't smell like farts, but egg whites apparently do. so Did you ever ah in your um like elementary or middle school growing up, i like sulfur would get into the water and then all of the water fountains would make the entire hallway smell like an egg fart? No.
02:19:59
Speaker
That happened all the time. who Constantly. Yeah, we'd be walking. And I think that's why I didn't like eggs for the longest time, because I'd be walking through the elementary school just trying to learn how to do math and everything smells like an egg fart. too So therefore I struggled in algebra later. You're like, why am I craving eggs?
02:20:22
Speaker
Why am I craving