For “Killers of the Flower Moon” co-producer Justine Conte, the David Grann book on which the film is based “really stuck with me” because of “everything that happened to [the Osage people] at the time,” but also because of “the ongoing trauma.” She explains, “Going into producing the film, what we were thinking about a lot is that we were telling the story of families that are still really traumatized to this day.” We talked to Conte as part of our “Meet the Experts” film producers panel. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” tells the true story of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma. The Osage members came into great wealth after oil was discovered on their tribal land, but they were targeted and murdered by whites who sought their money and property. Director Martin Scorsese made sure to receive input from the Osage Nation in the process of making the film. “That’s always really important for Marty, I think, on all of his films, making sure everything is historically accurate and exactly right,” Conte points out, “and it was doubly important on this movie because we knew the people were going to be watching and seeing whether or not we did them right.”
Conte’s first producing credit with Scorsese was on his docuseries “Pretend It’s a City” about author Fran Lebowitz, but “Flower Moon” was “a completely new world for me.” It was a “daunting” task, but “being part of Marty’s company for so many years and really learning how he works and how his crew works and everybody, I felt really fortunate to have that background going into it and really confident that I knew what needed to be done.” There’s a lot of pressure in the fact that “my first major producing was a $200 million Martin Scorsese movie, but it was an incredible experience.”
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