One of Hollywood’s most prolific actors, Leonardo DiCaprio, has a frustrating habit–ad-libbing and improvising scripts without permission. While Martin Scorsese was doing a press junket tour for his recent, Oscar-caliber film, Killers of the Flower Moon, he shared some details about his prized colleague.
DiCaprio has a reputation for adding many lines to his script, like every single one he is given by Hollywood’s elite. Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott — all have worked with Leo and evidently, all have exhausted through his creative license.
It’s been a thing all the aforementioned ingenues have suffered, but Martin Scorsese took exception to it on the set of his 26th and latest film. The funny note about the illustrious director coming forward about this is he knew this would happen whne he cast him for the lead role.
The two have partnered on seven feature films and one short, so it shouldn’t have been a huge surprise that Leonardo DiCaprio waxes loquacious off-the-cuff. Think about it:
- Gangs of New York
- The Aviator
- The Departed
- Shutter Island
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- The Audition
- And now, Killers of the Flower Moon
These movies average 2.75 hours each and probably 45 minutes of each was commentary Leo was “feeling” at the moment. Yet, if Scorsese and Robert De Niro are talking about it now, his practice is getting old.
Leonardo DiCaprio and His “Titanic” Issue
Killers of the Flower Moon very well could be Scorsese’s magnum opus. The film is based on a true story depicting the attempted genocide of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma to strike the oil underneath the reservation.
It’s a stellar script and an important film. Hundreds of hours probably went into crafting the script, but that doesn’t stop Leonardo DiCaprio from adding his two cents. Evidently, it’s more like a few million dollars. He does it a lot.
His improvisations were “endless, endless, endless,” Scorsese told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview, while “Bob [De Niro] didn’t want to talk…Every now and then, Bob and I would look at each other and roll our eyes a little bit. And we’d tell [DiCaprio]: ‘You don’t need that dialogue.’”
Can you imagine the engrossed brass ones it takes to tell that director and that actor, “Yeah, I’m thinking the script should go this way.” It’s not like he’s a bad actor. Some of his most famous lines in movies weren’t planned.
“I’m the king of the world” in Titanic, “Sell me this pen” in The Wolf of Wall Street, and “Make a promise to yourself you’re going to stop f*ck!ng drinking” in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — all ad-libbed by the great extemporaneous speaker, Leonardo DiCaprio.
Knowing that, it may not be a surprise that he confronted Scorsese about the script and requested massive changes, like the vantage point of the story. No biggie. Scorsese’s team had only been working on the script for two years.
Leo came to me and asked, ‘Where is the heart of this story?’ I had had meetings and dinners with the Osage, and I thought, Well, there’s the story. The real story, we felt, was not necessarily coming from the outside, with the bureau, but rather from the inside, from Oklahoma.”
Martin Scorsese, The Irish Times
Methods to the madness. But, Leo carries a big stick in Hollywood. So, when he ad-libs something, it may be for a good reason. Scorsese knows when an actor is feeling it. Remember Taxi Driver with Robert DeNiro? Yeah, that line is ad-libbed too.
Killers of the Flower Moon is now in theaters. And if you ask our own Dom Fisher, this film is a “masterful cinematic proclamation of a sinister history.” If that is the result of ad-libbing a script, I’m in. What about you?
Since he saw ‘Dune’ in the $1 movie theater as a kid, this guy has been a lover of geek culture. It wasn’t until he became a professional copywriter, ghostwriter, and speechwriter that he began to write about it (a lot).
From the gravitas of the Sith, the genius of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, or the gluttony of today’s comic fan, SPW digs intelligent debate about entertainment. He’s also addicted to listicles, storytelling, useless trivia, and the Oxford comma. And, he prefers his puns intended.
