“Killers of the Flower Moon” cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto was a guest on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast and was asked about the “rumor” that Paul Thomas Anderson rewrote the film for Scorsese.
Maron initiated it by saying he had “heard a rumor” that PTA had done an uncredited rewrite. At first, Prieto played clueless, but Maron pushed him further by replying “oh come on, you know” — they both sneakily chuckled, no doubt at the unspoken truth of the matter, and Prieto finally relented with an ambiguous answer …
There were people involved in rejigging the story and Scorsese was very deep into that. Thats all I’ll say.
I guess Prieto was told, much like the rest of the ‘Killers’ crew, not to mention that PTA was part of the creative process. Call it a goodwill gesture on PTA’s part, towards one of his idols, Scorsese. In the end, only Eric Roth, who had written the original unused draft, got credited for the final screenplay, but was not Oscar-nominated.
You can check out the whole story behind this PTA/Scorsese/Killers team-up here. It’s most definitely not a “rumor,” it’s been corroborated.
Roth, who wrote the original ‘Killers’ screenplay, took a crack at the rewrites. However, at some point in the process, Paul Thomas Anderson was hired by Scorsese to take part in rewriting a good portion of the script. I’m actually surprised that this has not been reported yet by any of the trades.
Earlier in the year, after Charles Bramesco spilled the beans on X, I contacted a source of mine who told me that PTA definitely wrote “a big chunk” if not all of the final draft. Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells then checked in with a person who had ties to ‘Killers’, and his source didn’t pour water on the rumor either. He called PTA “an artist” and said “anything he may have done [rewrite-wise] could have only helped.”