Monthly Archives: October 2023

Interview: Killers of the Flower Moon Author David Grann (from 2017)



As loyal Frotcast listeners may have already known, I interviewed David Grann, author of the best-selling book on which the new Martin Scorsese movie was based, back in 2017. We got deep into what the book meant, the  characters involved, why he wanted to write it, what it means, and how  he reported it. At the very least, it’s a nice little  background/companion piece for the film (which is much different than  the book, even if most of the facts are the same).

Here’s how I described the book in my review that I haven’t finished writing:

Flower Moon the book is a lot of things,  but mostly it’s the story of a genocide told through the structure of a  true crime tale. Grann delivers a barn burner of a murder mystery about a  greedy landowner, his cat’s-paw nephew, his nephew’s Osage wife, and  the FBI agent who uncovers it all, before zooming out to reveal that it  was all part of a larger-scale plan of dispossession and erasure in  which virtually the entire state of Oklahoma was complicit.

Anyway, enjoy the interview, I certainly did.