Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto Talks "Tricky" Killers of the Flower Moon to Barbie Transition

Martin Scorsee's next feature film, Killers of the Flower Moon is heading to theaters in October, and it shares something very important with Barbie: Rodrigo Prieto. The Oscar-nominated cinematographer is known for many films, including 8 Mile, Brokeback Mountain, and Argo. He's also worked as the director of photography on multiple Scorsese projects, including The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, and The Irishman. Despite the fact that Barbie was released months before Killers of the Flower Moon, the Scorsese movie was actually filmed first. In fact, Prieto recently spoke with The Wrap and revealed it was a "tricky" transition. 

"It was right away," Prieto said of the transition between films. "And in fact, right after Barbie, I jumped into the movie that I'm editing now – I've directed a film called Pedro Páramo, which is yet another completely different project. It happens during the time of the Mexican Revolution and has to do with people who are dead and now they're ghosts. I'm kind of used to doing that. After Silence, I did Passengers. But it wasn't too bad, and we started talking about the ideas of Barbie while I was still actually prepping Killers of the Flower Moon – that was a little tricky for me. I had one moment I said, 'Greta I can't anymore. I have to focus on Killers. Let me just finish it, and then we can keep on talking.' But we did talk enough that the basis of what we then developed was in place. So by the time I finished Killers of the Flower Moon, I guess I felt kind of ready. I knew what it was. I had an idea of what Barbie was going to be and almost immediately went to London and started prepping." 

He added of Killers of the Flower Moon, "It was a very long process. It started with a very different script, and then it evolved and in between that there was a pandemic, so that was more than a year just prepping that film and participating in all of that transition to what the script ended up being. Then diving deep into the Osage world and learning of their culture and being welcomed by them. It was really wonderful, because Scorsese, for him it was very important – and rightly so – to go deep into the research and understand the culture properly, and not look at it as just "OK, we're gonna do a movie about this horrible thing that happened and here we go, we know how to do this." It was very respectful of the families that lived this."

What Is Barbie About?

In Barbie, to live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you're a Ken. From Oscar-nominated writer/director Greta Gerwig comes Barbie, which hit theaters on July 21st. Barbie stars Oscar-nominees Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, alongside America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell. The film also stars Ana Cruz Kayne, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, Jamie Demetriou, Connor Swindells, Sharon Rooney, Nicola Coughlan, Ritu Arya, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Dua Lipa and Oscar-winner Helen Mirren. Gerwig directed Barbie from a screenplay by Gerwig & Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach, based on Barbie by Mattel.