FADE IN:

EXT. OKLAHOMA RESERVATION

An OSAGE ELDER symbolically buries a PEACE PIPE as his friends and family weep around him.

OSAGE ELDER

Our people are ending. The white man has taken over our land until our traditions and way of life have become impossible to carry forward. Our children will have to learn English and live in the towns and cities of the colonizers, which is an unspeakably tragic-

OSAGE BRAVE

(bursting in, drenched in oil)

HEY EVERYBODY, THE WHITES FUCKED UP, TURNS OUT THIS SO-CALLED WORTHLESS LAND THEY LET US KEEP IS ABSOLUTELY SWIMMING IN OIL AND WE’RE RICH RICH RICH!!!

OSAGE ELDER

(donning tuxedo)

WELL FUCK FORTY THOUSAND YEARS OF NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE THEN, I’M GETTING A ROLLS ROYCE!!!

The OSAGE proceed to purchase ALL THE BLING IN THE WORLD.

INT. DE NIRO CATTLE RANCH

LEONARDO DICAPRIO comes home from WORLD WAR I to his uncle ROBERT DE NIRO.

ROBERT DE NIRO

Nephew! How good to see our fresh-faced young soldier returned safe from the war. Although you do seem to have been hit by some kind of chemical warfare that has made you appear to be almost fifty years old?

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Yeah, Scorsese doesn’t seem ready to accept the idea that his go-to “kid” actor is starting to approach grampa age.

(grins; face audibly creaks)

Anyway, I was hoping I could be of some use around here, although I should warn you, I’m limited by a serious case of Empty Head Syndrome.

(knocks on skull; dull clonking sound reverberates)

In fact I’m such a slow-witted dopey fucker that I reckon I could be manipulated into doing just about anything.

ROBERT DE NIRO

(arches fingers)

In-ter-est-ing... how about scruples? How are you doing for moral scruples?

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

No thanks, I just ate.

ROBERT DE NIRO

Perfect! Now you might have noticed that there’s a whole lot of non-whites around these parts with absolute shittons of money. So presumably you’ve been wondering-

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

How we make that money into our money?

ROBERT DE NIRO

Ah, I see you’ve already had the same idea as the rest of us unforgivably vicious cretins.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Of course. Me and my friends were thinking of going out at night to mug them and then gamble it all away, just stripping the natives of their wealth at gunpoint then immediately squandering it in a very efficient metaphor for... well you know, just the whole thing.

ROBERT DE NIRO

You’re thinking too small. Us whites need to marry into their oil wealth, then figure out how the line of inheritance works and then Kind Hearts and Coronets our way through the whole bunch of them.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Oh, sure, I have no problem with helping to murder dozens if not hundreds of Native Americans, I am a colossal sack of shit after all.

The COLOSSAL SACK OF SHIT goes out to try and seduce wealthy heiress LILY GLADSTONE.

EXT. STREET

LILY GLADSTONE is exiting a good old humiliating session of BEGGING A WHITE MAN FOR SOME OF HER OWN MONEY when LEONARDO scurries over.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Hi there! Mind if I swoop in out of nowhere and start applying an aggressive amount of false charm?

LILY GLADSTONE

Eh, I’m not really in the mood after narrating a super depressing montage of Osage men and women who’ve all met with sudden violent ends recently, with the police having no follow-up questions. Like there was this one lady where they claimed she shot herself through the heart on her front lawn from twenty feet away? At least do us the courtesy of coming up with decent lies, sheesh.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Aw c’mon, give me a chance! I may be dumb as a post but I can make you laugh, and on this occasion I’ll generously overlook the fact that you’re over twenty-five.

LILY GLADSTONE

Okay, it’s pretty easy to tell that you only showed any interest in me because of my money, as I explicitly acknowledge several times in dialogue... but fuck it, let’s get married anyway!

(directly to camera)

Now, you might wonder why exactly I’m hooking up with this dumb, ageing gold digger. To be honest, the script for this movie never bothers to go into that, so you’re going to have to rely entirely on my acting chops to convey my motivations here. Take it away, my facial expressions.

LILY’S FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

The thing is, being cursed with basic pattern recognition, I have zero faith that the current good fortune of the Osage people is going to hold up and fully expect white people to find some way of robbing and killing the lot of us. Being semi-resigned to getting fucked over, I figure Leo is still pretty handsome under the encroaching bloat, and I can at least get some fun times and a handful of kids out of him before he and the rest of them ruin my life.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Besides, it’s not a total sham on my part! I have ended up falling in love with you!

ROBERT DE NIRO

Woah, woah. When you say you “love” her, do you mean in the same way I keep insisting I “love” the Osage people, wink wink, nudge nudge, genocide genocide?

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Nope, I love her! Just, you know, not quite enough to not help murder her entire family.

ROBERT DE NIRO

Oh phew, that’s all I had to hear.

LEONARDO and LILY get MARRIED and have CHILDREN.

ROBERT DE NIRO

Awright, you bagged Lily, heiress to the biggest oil fortune around these parts! And your brother Scott Shepherd nabbed Lily’s sister Cara Jade Myers, so that’s half the set! Annoyingly third sister Jillian Dion was already swept up by some palooka named Jason Isbell, but the fourth and final sister JaNae Collins is still up for grabs, so-

JASON ISBELL

Oh shucks Jillion just died of a mysterious “illness” what a shocker, guess I’ll console myself by immediately moving on to JaNae YOINK

(marries JaNae)

ROBERT DE NIRO

HEY! STOP STEALING MY IDEA, JERK!!

(seethes)

Well I guess that concludes the Seduction phase of my whole scheme. Now we move on to the Atrocities phase. So if you’re not into Atrocities, well, you might want to go take a breather, the next ninety minutes or so is gonna be nonstop atrocities.

(checks Atrocities Schedule)

First let’s bump off Cara. Cara’s a notorious alcoholic known to carry a gun and instigate fights, so making her death look unsuspicious should be a snap.

SCOTT SHEPHERD

Myeh, I guess, but instead me and dumb criminal Louis Cancelmi will just drag her into the woods and unambiguously murder her. I mean it’s not like suspicion could ever fall on me, the husband who profits from her death, and who was in a public screaming match with her like one day earlier!

ROBERT DE NIRO

(sighs)

All right whatever, onto Atrocity Number Two. This is where we have Lily’s mother slowly die of a mysterious “illness”, just like what Jacob did with Jillian, which worked perfectly and left no evidence that a crime even occurred.

(it works perfectly again)

Hmm, kinda makes you wonder why we don’t do that every single time.

INT. COUNCIL MEETING

The TOWN COUNCIL gather to discuss all the MURDERS.

LILY GLADSTONE

This is getting to be an unacceptable level of murders! I want answers and I’m willing to pay to get them!

ROBERT DE NIRO

(hiding Atrocities Schedule behind back)

Er, yeah, me too! Anybody has any information that could lead to the identity of the murderers, bring it specifically to me, okay? And preferably nobody else if you don’t mind.

LILY GLADSTONE

We’re taking action! We’ve hired private detective Gary Basaraba to investigate, and we’ve sent local man Brent Langdon - who is thankfully white and therefore might get somebody to listen to him - to Washington to ask for help!

ROBERT DE NIRO

(sighs, makes additions to Atrocities Schedule)

Wonderful, like I don’t already have enough on my plate.

(has Gary beaten to shit and run out of town)

(has Brent stabbed to death)

But hey, to anybody who wants to accuse me of being racist, as you can see I’ll also take out white people who are inconvenient to me. I consider myself an equal opportunities mass murderer!

INT. DE NIRO CATTLE RANCH

With that matter dealt with, ROBERT is free to return to his regularly-scheduled ATROCITIES.

ROBERT DE NIRO

Let’s see, Atrocity Number Four... ah yes, this one’s not part of the inheritance thing but more of a little side-project. I’ve gone and insured local suicidal drunk William Balleau for a fortune. But he can’t die right away or the policy won’t pay out. We have to work very hard to keep him away from the drink and the suicide until the time is right!

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Aha, then we just withdraw our support and let the situation resolve itself. For once we don’t even have to commit a murder!

ROBERT DE NIRO

Oh no, we’ll still off the dude the second the policy is valid, because by this point it’s sort of our thing, y’know? And since the timing will make it EXTREMELY FUCKING OBVIOUS what I’m doing, the murderer I hire had better be immaculate in making it look like suicide.

DUMB CRIMINAL TY MITCHELL

(post-murder)

Dur, don’t worry, when the cops arrive they’ll easily conclude that he shot himself in the back of the head with this gun here!

(stares at pistol, frowns)

This gun which... then fled the crime scene of its own accord I guess.

ROBERT DE NIRO

(grinds teeth)

Jesus fuckin’ Christ. Fuck it, moving on, Atrocity Number Five has us killing that jerk Jason as well as JaNae, so that the whole family’s oil money winds up in our pocket after all. Leo, I trust that you at least can arrange a fake home invasion without idiotically fucking it up.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Why would you ever think that? Just watch me.

(hires dumb criminal Tommy Schultz)

DUH HEY WHY DON’T I PAY YOU BY GIVING YOU MY CAR AND THEN CLAIMING YOU STOLE IT SO I GET THE INSURANCE MONEY, AND THEN YOU CAN JUST KEEP DRIVING MY CAR AROUND TOWN WHERE WE BOTH LIVE

TOMMY SCHULTZ

DORP THAT PLAN SOUNDS LOGICAL TO ME

(gets arrested)

ROBERT DE NIRO

(throws up hands)

For FUCK’S SAKE, this town SERIOUSLY needs to provide me with a better class of goon here! BAD LEO! NAUGHTY!!

(spanks Leonardo)

(no for real, spanks him, it’s weird)

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Ow, quit it! Look, does it even really matter if every one of your henchmen is the dumbest fuck to ever breathe? None of the crimes get investigated anyway. As long as the law gives zero shits about whether the Osage live or die, we don’t even need to be subtle about it.

ROBERT DE NIRO

...Actually that’s a very good point. The hell with it! Screw the home invasion idea, let’s just get somebody to chuck some TNT in their house and blow them up!

DUMB CRIMINAL PETE YORN

(uses way too much TNT and makes the entire house disintegrate into splinters)

ROBERT DE NIRO

Sure, who cares! We’ll never be arrested anyway! BWA HA HA HA HAAAA

LILY GLADSTONE

That’s IT. I’m going to go to Washington MYSELF and personally ask the PRESIDENT to intervene! I’m gonna get the FBI involved!!

ROBERT DE NIRO

Pfft, do you really think they’re gonna-

LILY GLADSTONE

And we’ll bribe them with ONE SQUILLION DOLLARS to help us.

ROBERT DE NIRO

...Shiiiit, that might actually work.

(takes Leonardo aside)

Say, your wife is getting to be a bit of a pain in our ass. How about from here on out you add a bit of this special, ah, sleepy-time juice to her insulin to make her all weak and bedridden and get her out of our hair.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Sure! ...Wait, those symptoms seem eerily similar to that mysterious “illness” you guys used to murder-

ROBERT DE NIRO

LOOK OVER THERE, A MOOSE!

(runs away)

LEONARDO starts poisoning LILY.

INT. LEONARDO AND LILY’S HOUSE

One day, federal agent JESSE PLEMONS arrives to speak to LEONARDO.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

You say you’re from the “FBI”? The hell is that?

JESSE PLEMONS

Oh, just a little outfit started by a guy named J. Edgar Hoover. You actually look a lot like him come to think of it, if I squint and imagine this is a much shittier movie. Anyway, you can all finally relax, the protagonist has arrived so this movie can at last begin!

DIRECTOR MARTIN SCORSESE

(hurries over)

Whoops, sorry, change of plans. You were going to be the main character like in the book, but then it occurred to me that maaayyybe this story of one of the most horrible tragedies to ever befall native Americans shouldn’t be told from a white perspective.

JESSE PLEMONS

Aw come on, I don’t see what’s so offensive about making the hero of this tale be

(looks up character name)

Thomas... WHITE?! Holy fuck that’s on the nose. Okay, you might have a point.

DIRECTOR MARTIN SCORSESE

Exactly, so we’ve done a complete rewrite, and now instead we’re putting indigenous voices front and center!

LILY GLADSTONE

(hobbling downstairs)

Oh really? Does that mean I can stop spending the entire third act incapacitated and mostly offscreen, cause-

DIRECTOR MARTIN SCORSESE

(ushering her back upstairs)

Now now, you’re sick remember? Back to bed with you.

LILY GLADSTONE

Are you sure? Cause I’m here acting my heart out in a movie that you claim is meant to tell a native American narrative from a native American perspective, but the whole time I’ve barely contributed to the plot and none of the other Osage characters are developed at all and really you just seem to be making all the murderers into the main-

(shoved into bedroom, door slammed)

JESSE PLEMONS

Anyway, if I may resume, I’m here to find out who committed this gargantuan pile of murders.

ROBERT DE NIRO

Heh, good luck. I think you will find that all the cops and coroners and whatnot were so indifferent and/or complicit that not a shred of useful evidence was ever collected anywhere.

JESSE PLEMONS

True. I guess we’re relying being able to manipulate your criminal cohorts into incriminating themselves.

ROBERT DE NIRO

(sneers)

JESSE PLEMONS

Although for that to work, they’d have to be some pretty dumb criminals.

ROBERT DE NIRO

(sneer fades)

Oh. Ohhhh. Er. Excuse me, I have to visit a couple people real quick.

(runs off)

(returns)

Well of all the luck, would you look at that? It seems like all the dumb criminals you wanted to interview suddenly got involved in crimes where they were ambushed and shot dead, almost as though they were set up or something, what are the odds.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

He he, good idea Bob! Sure is a great plan for you to kill off every dumb criminal out there who’s a liability to HEY HOLD ON A MINUTE.

ROBERT DE NIRO

Thanks. Incidentally, could you sign this document that says I get all of Lily’s oil money if you happened to trip and fall onto some bullets one day?

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

(grabs Jesse’s handcuffs and puts them on)

I’LL TELL YOU WHATEVER YOU WANT JUST GET ME THE FUCK OUTTA HERE

INT. COURTROOM

LEONARDO is brought into COURT to testify against ROBERT. Before he can speak, defense attorney BRENDAN FRASER leaps to his feet.

BRENDAN FRASER

(screaming)

Your HONOR I must OBJECT! I OBJECT to the FACT that I just WON AN OSCAR and REGAINED THE GOODWILL OF THE MOVIEGOING PUBLIC and now I’m stuck playing this SHOUTY CARTOON CHARACTER whose tone is COMPLETELY AT ODDS to the ENTIRE REST OF THE MOVIE and ALL MY CAREER MOMENTUM might be KILLED IN ITS TRACKS!

JOHN LITHGOW

Don’t listen to him, Leo! Testify for us!

BRENDAN FRASER

NO! TESTIFY FOR YOUR EVIL UNCLE, WHO ONLY WANTS THE BEST FOR YOU, plans to have you killed notwithstanding.

JOHN LITHGOW

Come on Leo! Here, boy! Come here!

BRENDAN FRASER

NO! COME OVER HERE!

(whistles, pats knees)

THERE’S A GOOD LEO!

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

All right, all right! Everything I said to the feds was lies. Including the stuff that was corroborated by multiple other witnesses and all the evidence.

JESSE PLEMONS

Damnit! If only something else could happen to change his mind back. I’d take anything, even if it’s completely unrelated to anything that happened before and seems borderline irrelevant.

LEONARDO’S YOUNGEST CHILD passes away from NATURAL CAUSES.

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

NOOOOO!!! I will now cooperate with the feds.

JESSE PLEMONS

...That’ll do I guess?

EXT. FIELD

The FEDS arrange for LEONARDO to be able to meet up with a no-longer-being-poisoned LILY.

LILY GLADSTONE

No more bullshit, Leo. Were you poisoning me?

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

Well, it depends on your definition of “poison”. See I was VERY careful to not find out what was in that weird chemical I kept putting into your insulin, so TECHNICALLY-

LILY GLADSTONE

Okay, I’m done. I’ve forgiven a lot of stuff in our time together, but this? This crosses the line!

(storms off)

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

...I mean I did also give the order to have your sister blown up so I feel like that should already have been a dealbreaker, but you do you I guess.

INT. RADIO STUDIO

After THREE AND A HALF HOURS of SLOWLY AND DETAILED NARRATIVE, SCORSESE realizes he’s finally tried his audience’s patience long enough and puts on an old-timey RADIO TRUE-CRIME DRAMATIZATION to quickly summarize what happened to everybody in the end.

RADIO ACTOR

So good news, Robert and Leonardo did actually get thrown in prison for their mini-genocide, hooray! But only for a while before they decided to just let them go home, boo. Robert didn’t even die until 1962, at the age of eighty-seven, which means that the beginning of the movie his character was

(does quick math)

Like forty-nine? Does Scorsese know how old ANYBODY looks?

DIRECTOR MARTIN SCORSESE

(no for real, he’s actually in this scene)

And of course the one person who did die young in all this was Lily, because heaven forbid anything in this story stop being bleak for a damn second. And if you’re wondering why I’m here, it’s to formally acknowledge that this is still a white guy who’s presuming to tell this story to the world. So even the movie you just watched is distorted and compromised.

RADIO ACTOR

Okay, so you call attention to it, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re literally doing-

DIRECTOR MARTIN SCORSESE

Shush, I called myself out which means you don’t get to, LOOPHOLE BITCHES

END.