The Two Very Different Versions of Killers of the Flower Moon

How do you build a mystery around a hundred-year-old scandal? In David Grann’s 2017 book Killers of the Flower Moon, it was only possible because the scandal — the systematic murder of dozens of members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma — had been almost entirely forgotten by the broader culture. Grann’s book changed all of that, returning the chilling story of the Osage murders, and the lingering impact they still have on the tribe’s members, to their place in American history. 

And now they’re about to become even more prominent, with Martin Scorsese’s adaptation on its way to theaters in October, following its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Though its source is relatively compact for a history book, Scorsese’s film is a sprawling three hours, and is an ambitious departure from the Grann’s structure. In the first section of his book, Grann lays out the facts of the mystery and its main characters—particularly Molllie Burkhart (played by Lily Gladstone in the film) and her three sisters, all of whom died under suspicious circumstances. By the time Mollie herself is sick in bed with a mysterious wasting illness, the case is under investigation by the nascent FBI, led by former Texas Ranger Tom White (Jesse Plemons). The reader follows along as White pieces together the clues, revealing a killer — and a wide-ranging plot — that’s been shockingly close to Mollie and her family all along. 

In Scorsese’s film there’s never much of a mystery of who perpetrated the murders, and the revelation near the end of Grann’s book — that the crimes against the Osage were widespread, and rooted in white supremacy, far beyond a single evildoer — is a baseline assumption in the film, as seen in the indelible “Can you find the wolves in this picture?” moment from the trailer. So how can the same story unfold so differently in two different tellings? That’s part of the conversation on this week’s Little Gold Men podcast, which kicks off the monthlong book club series with a discussion of Killers of the Flower Moon. While limiting discussion of the movie itself (we promise), David Canfield, Katey Rich, and Richard Lawson explore the focus of each version of the story, and what the overarching context of the book can offer to anyone who sees the movie after they’ve caught up on the source material.