Bestselling author talks "Killers of the Flower Moon" during EOSC presentation

Apr. 4—Bestselling author David Grann said his work into writing "Killers of the Flower Moon" began after noticing a missing panel from a picture at the Osage Nation Museum in Pawhuska.

"There was this huge photograph on the wall that was taken in 1924 that showed members of the Osage Nation with white settlers, and I noticed that part of the photograph was missing, and I asked what had happened to it," Grann said.

The author was told the museum decided to remove the panel because "the devil was standing right there." The missing panel was then shown to Grann, which showed one of the Osage murderers staring at the camera "very creepily."

"It's very rare that a book has an origin story, but that really was the origin story," Grann said.

Grann told the story to a group of approximately 300 people Wednesday night in Wilburton as part of Eastern Oklahoma State College's Rothbaum lecture series.

The Rothbaum lecture series is an endowment that brings recognized authorities to the campus for lectureships addressing issues of public affairs at the national, state, or local levels.

"Killers of the Flower Moon" was adapted into a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, and Jesse Plemons.

When asked about his thoughts about the movie, Grann said books and works of history can only do so much being two-dimensional.

"I'm trying to create images through words," Grann said. "And in a film, it's three dimensional, it's visual, you suddenly have actors playing these people. They are literally expressing consciousness of these people you're writing about. They are communicating to you just in a wink or in an expression."

Grann said he never expects a film to be a replica of a book and that he was happy the way Scorsese portrayed his book because he treated the movie with respect to the history and to the Osage people.

"The only thing I really cared about was that they worked closely with the Osage Nation," Grann said. "I spent five years working on this book and have developed these relationships, and I thought it was important given the seriousness of this subject that the movie folks developed those relationships on their own."

The author then joked that when it comes to filmmaking, you never say to Scorsese, "You know, I don't like that tracking shot."

Grann said another motivating factor for him to write books like "Killers of the Flower Moon" is to address his own ignorance and to "try to hopefully learn a little bit more."

"I was amazed that I know nothing about this," Grann said. "And I was also amazed at how many other people outside Osage Territory that really knew about this outside the Osage community, so all these things were motivating factors for me to tell this particular story."

The author said he didn't know when he began it would take him more than five years to research and write the book.

"I was probably being a little naïve thinking in two years, I might have a book," Grann said.

But he said despite the time it took, the book was worth the time spent.

"The story was important enough to keep going," Grann said.