Scoring Killers of the Flower Moon was a daunting prospect for Robbie Robertson. The Band co-founder, who died in August at 80, had a vision he wanted to achieve but was “terrified of delivering something ordinary,” explained orchestrator-conductor Mark Graham during a panel for Martin Scorsese’s epic at Deadline’s Sound and Screen: Film awards-season concert event. “Marty does not want any movie music, so that’s why Robbie would always say, ‘It can’t be movie music,'” added Jared Levine, Robertson’s former manager. “Marty doesn’t want it to comment on what he’s doing.
It has to somehow fit and illuminate something in his film without it being used as a tool to make you feel something or think something is going to happen.
It has to play a different role than what is usual. I had to talk Robbie into it, make him believe that if Marty wants you to do this, what you do is what he needs.” Written for the screen by Eric Roth and Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon is based on David Grann’s bestselling book.
Set in 1920s Oklahoma, it depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror.
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