While some would shudder at the thought of offering suggestions to Martin Scorsese about the art of filmmaking, Jodie Foster is willing to try her idea on for size. According to the actress from Contact and The Silence of the Lambs, Martin Scorsese’s 2013 Western thriller, Killers of the Flower Moon, could have been more effective as an 8-hour streaming series rather than a three-and-a-half-hour film.
Foster said as much about Scorsese’s film on stage at the Marrakech Film Festival, where she was to receive a tribute award. While in the spotlight, Foster discussed what she believes is the future of cinema, including opportunities afforded to the long-form streaming model. Foster got a taste for the format while working on her season of True Detective, which, from the sound of it, was an eye-opening experience.
Foster on the stroytelling power of the streaming format
“Streaming is able to do things that we’re not able to do in traditional mainstream movies anymore. Real narrative now in the United States is on streaming. Big franchise superhero movies are what you see in the movie theaters, but the real, real narrative is on streaming,” she said.
“I’m embracing this idea of there being these two opposite ends of the industry, one which is mainstream Hollywood, mainstream distributor films, and more independent films on the other end, which are entirely similar to the independent industry that you have in Europe and in other places,” she continued.
“Then there’s streaming. You’re able to tell eight-hour stories, or five-season stories, where you can explore every angle in a way that you could never in a feature. I love the freedom of that.”
Foster on Scorsese’s film as an episodic series
As an example, Foster used Scorsese’s powerful film about the murders of Osage tribe members in 1920s Oklahoma.
“He wanted to explore the experience of Native America at that time and what we had was a very interesting movie about two guys who go back and forth and talk to each other,” she said, referring to the characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
She then suggested that a streaming format could have worked to tell a broader story.
“Everybody was sort of excited that the native story was going to be told and what they found was like, ‘Wow, all the native women are dead’,” she commented.
“They said, ‘Well, it’s a feature, we didn’t have time’, but there was time. There was an eight-hour limited series that was not made, that could have been made where, if you really needed to explore all the male toxic masculinity, you could have done that, but you could have had episode two actually centered on the native story.”
Foster’s got a great point, don’t you think? I’m in no position to tell anyone how to make their film, but Foster’s version appeals to me more. It would be interesting to see Scorsese adapt to the long-form streaming format, provided he has the right story to tell. What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below.
