46
•
LMGI COMPASS
|
Summer 2026
It was 2020 and he was working
on Martin Scorsese's Killers of the
Flower Moon, one of the highest
profile productions ever to be
filmed in the state. At the same time,
Sterlin Harjo's new television series
Reservation Dogs—whose pilot Kucharski had been working on
before COVID shutdowns—was picked up for its first season.
"Sterlin did a bunch of smaller independent feature films that
were really brilliant, very thoughtful," Kucharski says. "Even
when it's a dark, serious subject matter, he's got a way of bringing
levity. I made what at the time was a crazy decision to step away
from a Martin Scorsese project to work on a TV show. Working
on Killers of the Flower Moon was such an enlightening learning
experience, it was a tough decision." But the choice would prove
transformative, shaping a synergistic creative partnership in
northeastern Oklahoma over three seasons of the groundbreaking
Indigenous dramedy, and ultimately leading to The Lowdown.
Building Truthstorian Lee Raybon's World
Kucharski understood that Tulsa's complex history and offbeat
local culture needed to mirror Lee's inner life and define the
story's emotional identity. Ethan Hawke's performance as Lee
Raybon gains much of its power from how physically connected
the character feels to Tulsa. Hawke moved his family to the area
during filming and explored its local haunts, soaking up the vibe
of the city's neighborhoods to better inform his portrayal of the
quirky amateur detective.
The team committed to a stripped-down ethos similar to Lee's own
investigational approach: go where life happens. "This character
manages to amble through all these different landscapes and
cultural zones while never truly being a part of it, always an
observer," explains Tonner-Connolly.
One of the defining production choices on The Lowdown was to
film inside real, operational spaces whenever possible. They spent
months traversing a patchwork of neighborhoods, industrial
sectors and overlooked pockets of infrastructure to negotiate
access to buildings and transitional spaces: abandoned strip
malls, aging motels and municipal buildings with decades of wear.
Apartments were borrowed, offices adapted to feel like evidence
of lives already in progress.
The city's layered architecture became one of the production's
greatest assets. Old oil wealth gleams in Art Deco towers
and sprawling estates while working-class communities
Hood Owl Bookstore Before & After
