In Theaters Now: Killers of the Flower Moon
the story behind our (very tiny) major motion picture debut
How It Began
Once upon a time, I (Rayna) knew a guy (Dick Connette) who knew a guy (Randall Poster) who was a music supervisor looking for stringband music that would be appropriate for a wedding party scene in Oklahoma circa 1919.
This was back in 2021. Randy was working on the Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon, which they were beginning to shoot on location. (Click through if you’re not yet familiar with the story that’s told in the movie—I’ll skip reiterating it here.) We had several conversations about old-time repertoire, stringband instrumentation, and dance styles.
The main objective was recording a specific tune that Martin Scorsese was attached to using for the scene. Old-time geeks like me will appreciate his cool (if not geographically correct) choice: “Tupelo Blues” from Hoyt Ming & His Pep Steppers. Randy wanted to bring me up to New York City to record that tune and a few others, and asked me to put together a band. Obviously I wanted Kieran to play guitar. David Mansfield was recommended by Randy (and others) for mandolin. The Hoyt Ming recording of “Tupelo Blues” has dance calls on it, which was part of what Scorsese was into—so after talking about options for dealing with that aspect of our treatment, I recommended we bring in Phil Jamison, who’s a dancer, caller, scholar, and—a big plus for our recording session—a very fun banjo player.
So we all met up in NYC and did our best to recreate the old 78rpm record of “Tupelo Blues” (including foot tapping and indistinct dance calls), then recorded a whole bunch of other stuff as well “just in case”. It was a really sweet and happy couple of days of cranking out old-time tunes with the wonderful Stewart Lerman at the controls. Here are a few photos from the studio:
Next up was sorting out the whole filming part of the dealio. Once I knew the wedding scene we were a part of was for a “mixed” couple (white and Osage), I advocated for getting Nokosee Fields into the on-screen band, because not only is he one of the most amazing old-time fiddlers anywhere, he also happens to be Osage, Creek, and Cherokee. (He grew up in Stillwater, Oklahoma, but spent loads of time in Osage County for family gatherings, ceremonies, and the traditional summer dances. Bonus Nokosee fact: he’s a direct descendent of Osage chief Claremore!) This, like a lot of surprisingly small details, had to get the okay from Scorsese (aka “Marty”—which, yes, everyone does call him). Randy also gave me final say on which local extras would play banjo and mandolin: Elijah Ragsdale and (unbeknownst to me when I chose him) TikTok-viral phenom humorist and banjo-geek Lucas Ross. Phil would be the on-screen dance caller.
The Shoot
The shoot was in Osage County, Oklahoma—the area where the horrifying history depicted in the film actually happened. So in the summer of 2021, we flew out there and became part of the movie encampment for a week or so.
It’s impossible to convey the scale of the production. There were a staggering number of people at work on the film. They’d brought in crew from all over the country, and many of them had to be there for half the year. (We heard they spent $20 million on Covid protocols alone!) So we got dropped down into the middle of a well-oiled machine.
Preparation
Below are some photos of us in various stages of getting outfitted and made up. All the guys got haircuts that were effective on screen, but slightly unfortunate in real life. As with everything in the production, the attention to detail was meticulous (sometimes to the point of being comical). We knew we were barely going to be visible (if we even made it onto the screen), and yet our clothes were as legit as they could possibly make them. A lot of what I wore was genuinely antique, and they put KK in an old-timey wool suit—not the most pleasant for heat indexes way up in the 90s. Note that even my slip was historically correct!
We rehearsed in a hotel conference room, getting comfy with our in-ear monitors and helping our new band members figure out how to look like they were playing the sounds we’d recorded back in New York. We hung out with the delightful choreographer Michael Arnold, who was overseeing all the dancing in our scene—he got Phil involved with teaching the extras to square dance and prepping actor Louis Cancelmi for his character’s moment of drunken flatfooting.
On Set
We were only on set in costume for two days, but they were long days—schlepping out to the site very early for hair and makeup, followed by sitting around and waiting. But during all that downtime we got to watch a lot of fascinating movie-making. The scene we’re in is the wedding between the characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone. So we saw all kinds of elaborate camera maneuvers (cranes! dollies!), actors acting, beautiful costumes, extras being herded to and fro, and hair and makeup folks dashing about trying to keep everyone from looking too dust-caked and droopy in the heat. Martin Scorsese struck us as the happiest person on the set, full of giddy enthusiasm. When it came time for our scene he was gracious and friendly, introducing himself to each of us.
And So?
In the interest of brevity (!!), we’re leaving out lots of fun tidbits about our time in Oklahoma—side-trips we took and people we met and observations we made. And there’s so much more we could say about this little peek we got into how such an enormous production happens.
A great deal of it was profound and beautiful. I had very moving conversations with folks there about the weight of the task they were undertaking, the telling of this important and awful story. And there’s something impressive simply in the hugeness of the project, how so many people and so many resources join forces to create a document in the hopes that it will be timeless and meaningful. But we also witnessed unsettling aspects of filmmaking—the ingrained sense of hierarchy, the segregation of stardom, and the exploitive nature of a lot of the labor involved. It was a complicated stew, and a fascinating learning experience.
And Now
No, we haven’t seen the movie yet! We’ll get around to it soon. In the meantime, we’re loving hearing folks’ reactions to both the film as a whole and our very brief moment in it.
Till soon —
xo rg & kk
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Excellent. Hollywood bound I say! Ha. We loved the movie. Must see again, now that we know what to look for. Thanks
Fantastic rendering of this adventure. Loved it.