Pawhuska gets a vintage look as Martin Scorsese films 'Killers of the Flower Moon' in Oklahoma - Oklahoman.com

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PAWHUSKA — On a recent sunny spring Saturday, people stroll the sidewalks of downtown Pawhuska, swinging shopping bags from the popular Pioneer Woman Mercantile, taking snapshots of the quaint brick buildings and wandering in and out of stores with their doors open to the customers and the breeze. 

Inside the boutique The Honey Pot, mother-and-daughter co-owners Penney Johnson and Amber Hurd last weekend gazed out at the familiar sight, which they won't be seeing for the next two and a half months. 

"This is going to be a jewelry store in the movie. They're going to cover the road in dirt — complete dirt — all the way from my corner all the way up to the hill," Hurd said. "They're going to take all my windows out, they're going to take my awnings off, and they're going to make it look like the 1920s."

Excitement has been building in Osage County since filming began April 19 on director Martin Scorsese's eagerly anticipated adaptation of "Killers of the Flower Moon." Over the past week, crew members have been busily building facades on Kihekah Avenue, while residents and business owners have been settling into a proverbial front-row seat with the production moving into the heart of Pawhuska. 

"All you need is popcorn and Milk Duds," Kelly Bland, executive director of Osage County Tourism, said with a laugh Friday afternoon. 

"There's an anticipation," Bland said. "There's something exciting on the horizon that's coming and about to happen."

Big-budget moviemaking comes to Oklahoma

With its reported $200 million budget and starry cast featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons and Native American actress Lily Gladstone, Scorsese's fact-based Western is believed to be the biggest movie production ever undertaken in Oklahoma. And with the industry still trying to come back from the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be the biggest movie made in America this year. 

"We are thrilled to finally start production on 'Killers of the Flower Moon' in Oklahoma,” Scorsese said in an April statement. "To be able to tell this story on the land where these events took place is incredibly important and critical to allowing us to portray an accurate depiction of the time and people." 

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Calling it "a time in American history that should not be forgotten," Scorsese is adapting David Grann's 2018 best-seller “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI." His film will chronicle the slayings of Osage Nation citizens in 1920s Oklahoma, after the oil boom made them wealthy. The killings became known as the "Reign of Terror" and led to an investigation by the then-fledgling FBI. 

"In Osage County, we believe in happy endings, and I know that this story is not one of the sort of happy-ending stories. ... But from a tourism standpoint, I feel like if anyone benefits from this movie, I want it to be the Osage Nation, because it was them who've suffered. ... They're getting to tell their story, and they're working directly with the movie company to make sure it's done in a way that needs to be done," Bland said, noting that the production was delayed a year due to the pandemic.

More: How 'Minari' came together 100 miles from Lee Isaac Chung's hometown on the Arkansas/Oklahoma line

The perks of filming in Oklahoma 

In a 2020 interview, Grann, the author of the book, praised Scorsese's decision to film in Oklahoma.

"I think it's in the hands of people who seem to really care about getting it right, about being sensitive and being authentic," Grann said. 

Garrett Hartness, a docent and director at the Osage County Historical Museum, said the Pawhuska attraction already has seen an uptick in visitors over the past few years due to the popularity of Grann's book. If Scorsese's film version proves to be a blockbuster, he said the effects could be profound on the community. 

"It has gotten now to where it's probably about 50% people come to our museum because of the Pioneer Woman and probably 50% come because of the movie or the book," Hartness said, telling of a pre-pandemic visitor who traveled there from Norway because of Grann's best-seller.

Pawhuska already has changed dramatically in the past four and a half years with the opening of local Food Network star Ree Drummond's Pioneer Woman Mercantile. The booming tourist attraction is south on Kihekah Avenue from where filming ramps up this week, Bland said. 

"From Sixth Street going north ... that's going to be the movie set. It's going to be downtown Fairfax is what it's supposed to be, but in Pawhuska," Bland said, adding that she doesn't anticipate The Merc, as Drummond's hot spot is known, will close for the moviemaking.

Over the past few weeks, film crews have been constructing a facade on a church in Fairfax that recreates an early 20th-century Catholic church in the area, along with building a wooden shell around a brick structure, the remains of a freight building, on the Midland Valley Railroad depot site. The latter will serve as a 1920s train station for the movie. 

Now, the cinematic action also is chugging into Pawhuska's downtown business district, and between The Merc and the movie, Cathi Ball, co-owner of Mariposa boutique, said it's an exciting time there. 

"I just saw a lady on the street, and they're from Mississippi. She said they came here because they heard they were filming a movie, and she didn't know the name of it," said Ball, whose store is on Kihekah Avenue. 

"Leonardo DiCaprio was out here shooting a selfie with the Triangle Building in the background. … They had some neat old cars in town … and then there was a truckload that had Rolls Royces on it one day. So, it's very interesting."

 After watching crews working on pre-production for the past six months around the area, the mother-and-daughter co-owners at The Honey Pot said they're eager to see what happens next. 

"I think it's awesome. Look at the old buildings, they're getting fresh paint. It's just revitalized the downtown," Johnson said, adding that they're being compensated by the production for temporarily shuttering their shop. 

"The buildings that are empty, they've already been in those doing things. … They're painting (around) the windows right across the street," Hurd added, pointing to the historic Kennedy Building across Sixth Street.

On Friday, Hurd and Johnson finished moving out all their merchandise and closed down their shop for filming. They anticipate being closed through July 15. 

On May 17, Hurd is due to give birth to her third son. 

"We're loving it because we get a little paid vacation. … And I won't have to bring a fresh, new baby here to work, so that's nice."

Contributing: Pawhuska Journal-Capital's Robert Smith. 

COMING SOON

In next Sunday's The Oklahoman, members of the Osage Nation discuss the making of Martin Scorsese's fact-based film "Killers of the Flower Moon."

The Link Lonk


May 02, 2021 at 06:18PM
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/entertainment/2021/05/02/martin-scorsese-killers-flower-moon-film-transforms-pawhuska-oklahoma/7373115002/

Pawhuska gets a vintage look as Martin Scorsese films 'Killers of the Flower Moon' in Oklahoma - Oklahoman.com

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