the county seat of Osage County, to play for downtown
Fairfax in the 1920s. Established in 1872 when the Osage
Tribal government opened offices there, it was named after
the Osage Chief Paw-Hiu-Skah, which means "white hair" in
English.
Pawhuska came of age precisely when the story takes
place. Rolls-Royce opened its first dealership west of the
Mississippi River there and the no. 1 customer of Tiffany's
at the time was the Osage Nation, whose members would
hand out place settings from the New York retailer as gifts.
The Pawhuska Historic Downtown District consists of 101
buildings and structures constructed from 1906 to 1930.
Just prior to the 2019 holiday break, the team began to
narrow down the possibilities in Pawhuska, "At that point, I'd
say we had, probably, 50% of our locations locked in," Mike
recalls.
PAWHUSKA PAUSED
Everyone headed home believing they'd be back in January
but, over the holiday, Fantasia got a call from the producers
and was told the project would be going dark for a rewrite.
It seems that, in working with members of the Osage
community, including Chief Standing Bear, Renfro and cultural
historian Addie Roanhorse (whose grandfather is one of the
supporting characters depicted in the film), Scorsese and
Roth decided they needed to rethink their approach to the
story.
"For one thing," explained Scorsese following a screening at
the Cannes Film Festival, "the book is basically a procedural,
and we've seen those before. So how do you do something
new with that? Also, the question wasn't 'who did it?' But
'who didn't do it?' since there were so many people involved
in these horrific events."
This decision to rewrite was solidified when DiCaprio
asked Scorsese where the heart of the film was. "When he
asked, I knew the answer immediately," Scorsese said. "The
heart of the film was in the relationship between Mollie and
Ernest Burkhart."
According to Scorsese, DiCaprio replied, "Well, maybe I
ought to be playing Ernest then." And that was that.
Fantasia was told they would all reconvene in April, but
he didn't believe it. "Lost in 'development hell,'" he thought.
Then COVID-19 spread across the planet and countries all
around the world went into full lockdown.
"At that point, I thought the project was done for sure," he
says. But the film industry was one of the first to find a way to
get back to work during the pandemic and, sure enough, on
April 1 of 2020, the phone rang again.
"I picked up and they said, 'we're going back to work,' I
couldn't believe it!"
