TAXI DRIVER Writer Says Leonardo DiCaprio Should’ve Played FBI Agent and Not "an Idiot" in KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
Screenwriter Paul Schrader, who wrote Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, recently opened up about the director’s recent film Killers of the Flower Moon, and he would have done things a lot differently had he been the one to write the film.
In a recent interview with France’s Le Monde, Schrader called Killers of the Flower Moon a “good movie” but one that could’ve been a lot better had Leonardo DiCaprio actually played the FBI agent investigating the Osage murders like he was originally supposed to. The writer didn’t seem to enjoy watching DiCaprio play “an idiot” for almost four hours. He said:
“Marty compares me to a Flemish miniaturist. He would be more the type who paints Renaissance frescoes. Give him $200 million, a good film will inevitably come out of it. That said, I would have preferred Leonardo DiCaprio to play the role of the cop in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ rather than the role of the idiot. Spending three-and-a-half hours in the company of an idiot is a long time.”
While I liked the movie, I agree with Schrader. I did not like DiCaprio in that role and thought that he played it way too over the top. He was almost cartoonish in a way.
Schrader went on to reveal that he prefers Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, calling it “the best, most important film of this century.” He added: If you see one film in cinemas this year it should be Oppenheimer. I’m not a Nolan groupie but this one blows the door off the hinges.”
Scorsese previously talked about his original vision for the story, saying it would have focused more on the FBI character Tom White played by Jesse Plemons. But, DiCaprio was originally going to play the role. It was going to lean into the whole FBI side of the story. But, DiCaprio is the one who requested the script change.
The filmmaker previously told The Irish Times: “Myself and [my co-screenwriter] Eric Roth talked about telling the story from the point of view of the bureau agents coming in to investigate. After two years of working on the script, Leo came to me and asked, ‘Where is the heart of this story?’ I had had meetings and dinners with the Osage, and I thought, ‘Well, there’s the story.’ The real story, we felt, was not necessarily coming from the outside, with the bureau, but rather from the inside, from Oklahoma.”
Scorsese also said that while writing the original script he realized he “was making a movie about all the white guys…Meaning I was taking the approach from the outside in, which concerned me. It just didn’t feel like it got to the heart of it. We weren’t immersed in the Osage story. There was this tiny, small scene between Mollie and Ernest that provoked such emotion in us at the reading, and we just started to penetrate into what that relationship was, because it was so twisted and bizarre and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
Killers of the Flower Moon is now available to rent or purchase on VOD and digital platforms. It will stream exclusively on Apple TV+ sometime in 2024.