Taylor Sheridan Quotes

If you want to get an email to Robert Redford, you send it to his assistant, and she prints it out. And then he will write you a letter, which is incredibly rare and incredibly classy. Unfortunately, I can't be that removed from technology.

- Taylor Sheridan

I like to describe 'Yellowstone' is 'The Great Gatsby' on the largest ranch in Montana. Then it's really a study of the changing of the West.

- Taylor Sheridan

Some of the most fascinating scenes in 'Unforgiven,' for me, is that scene with Gene Hackman where he's talking about the Duke of Death that Richard Harris played, and he's basically demolishing this myth of this man very unwesternly - not what you expect in a western.

- Taylor Sheridan

In 2011, I was in Hollywood peddling 'Sicario' to constant and resounding 'no's. Texas was suffering the worst drought on record. Wildfires spread across West Texas, burning some 4 million acres and 3,000 homes. While the urban centers in Texas were experiencing an economic boom, West Texas was collapsing under the weight of drought and fires.

- Taylor Sheridan

In the late '90s, I spent a lot of time on reservations, and there was a level of poverty and injustice that I had not witnessed before. I was shocked by it. This is federally controlled land, and there was an insidious mix of apathy and exploitation.

- Taylor Sheridan

I don't write tracking shots in my screenplays or any camera directions, but I do try to give a sense of how the action is moving.

- Taylor Sheridan

One of the major issues that's constantly batted around Hollywood and the media is my industry's responsibility toward the portrayal of violence. There's the irony of the films that glorify it and the individuals taking positions against it. It's a very confusing, confounding place.

- Taylor Sheridan

I can recognize a good actor. I can recognize someone that can convey emotion and that has the essence and not get lost in the minutia of, 'Well, that person's got red hair, and so does the other.' Some of the decisions in casting that seem so important at the time, until you get on set and you're starting to shoot.

- Taylor Sheridan

I've been very fortunate with my three spec scripts - which is sort of my thematic trilogy of the American Frontier. With 'Sicario', 'Hell or High Water' and then 'Wind River' - which is the third - there were no rewrites. It was the first draft for all three.

- Taylor Sheridan

I had three attorneys dedicated solely to find the statistic of the number of missing Native American women on reservations. Any reservation, not just 'Wind River.' They don't exist. The federal government, which is responsible for the reservations, don't keep those stats.

- Taylor Sheridan

I believe in the Constitution - and I believe in common sense.

- Taylor Sheridan

I broke a lot of conventions. Look, I spent a long time as an actor. I spent a lot of time playing pretty ordinary arcs.

- Taylor Sheridan

To me, a purely good individual or purely bad individual, that's a comic book - that's a fantasy - and I don't do fantasy.

- Taylor Sheridan

Plot is just not my gift. I'm fascinated with complex characters, and that doesn't mix well with complex plots. And by the way, when the plot is simple, you can move one piece around and make it feel fresh. 'Hell or High Water''s a good example: I don't tell you why the brothers are robbing the bank.

- Taylor Sheridan

I look for absurdly simple plots so that I can simply focus on the characters. Having an understanding of what dialogue's easy to say and hard to say - I think that that's helpful, too.

- Taylor Sheridan

To get a film in Cannes is a real honor. To have it play and not get booed is a real relief.

- Taylor Sheridan

You've been entrusted with a lot of money and a lot of careers, and a lot of people put their faith in me, and every director goes through that every time.

- Taylor Sheridan

With 'Wind River,' I became fascinated with the notion of how you overcome a tragedy - accepting it, making whatever peace you can with it - without ever knowing what really happened.

- Taylor Sheridan

I finished 'Hell or High Water' and started writing 'Wind River' literally the next day.

- Taylor Sheridan

I didn't know if I could make a good movie. But I knew I could make a respectful one.

- Taylor Sheridan

The machine of awards season is very stressful. But this is the Oscars! It's your peers, your heroes, people you admire, the people who inspired you to get into this work in the first place. It's a pretty overwhelming feeling when you think about it.

- Taylor Sheridan

Every writer has written a spec. It's the first thing you write, and it basically stands as a means of, 'Here's an example of how I tell stories.' It's almost like a business card.

- Taylor Sheridan

I work very hard to line up stereotypes and then smash them with a hammer.

- Taylor Sheridan

I watched a lot of old movies. Clint Eastwood movies, a lot of John Wayne films, a lot of movies that celebrated the region of where I lived.

- Taylor Sheridan

I love to play with the notion of who the protagonist is - who is the audience supposed to root for? I did it in 'Sicario' and feel it was the strength of the script - guiding the audience's allegiance toward the villain because they think he's the hero, until it's revealed that he's the villain.

- Taylor Sheridan

We can't assign beliefs to people who don't have a voice to express them. And we can't assume what someone thinks.

- Taylor Sheridan

To me, 'Unforgiven' is one of the best films ever made. Aside from the fact it takes the genre and kicks it between its legs, it's this fascinating deconstruction of the myth of the West.

- Taylor Sheridan

Part of our job as storytellers is to show people pockets of the world that they don't know. The more we understand, the more we don't judge.

- Taylor Sheridan

Bad people sometimes do good things, and good people do really bad things or do something the audience disagrees with.

- Taylor Sheridan

'Kramer vs. Kramer' is one of my favorite films, where you have a story that really juxtaposes a lot of ideas that we have about family and about parenting.

- Taylor Sheridan

I spent most of my time as an actor in television, so directors in television - it's such a machine that's already in place that I don't think you notice the direction as much on the set.

- Taylor Sheridan

I've been fortunate to work with partners like Weinstein and John and Art Linson in developing 'Yellowstone' and am grateful that it has found a home in the Paramount Network. The show is both timely and timeless.

- Taylor Sheridan

I thought of Jeff Bridges in 'Hell or High Water' and Ben Foster, and I kept trying very hard not to, because you're terrified you're going to write this thing that then feeds specifically to this one person that then won't do it.

- Taylor Sheridan

For me, the greatest thing a movie can do is rivet you while you're watching but also give you something to chew on for days and weeks after you've seen it.

- Taylor Sheridan

Where having been an actor was extremely helpful to me was in casting. That's where I think a director who has acted can really shine, and casting is the most important thing you do.

- Taylor Sheridan

Think about 'GoodFellas': It could be a textbook on how not to write a screenplay. It leans on voice-over at the beginning, then abandons it for a while, then the character just talks right into the camera at the end. That structure is so unusual that you don't have any sense of what's going to happen next.

- Taylor Sheridan

I've made up little mantras for myself, catchphrases from a screenwriting book that doesn't exist. One is 'Write the movie you'd pay to go see.' Another is 'Never let a character tell me something that the camera can show me.'

- Taylor Sheridan

I'm a big believer in,'If anyone can understand my politics, I've failed.' If you can get a sense of which side of the fence I'm on, then I'm not doing a service. I'm preaching, and that's not my job.

- Taylor Sheridan

I had to push exposition through dialogue, which is really, really hard for an actor do.

- Taylor Sheridan

If you're going to make a sequel to 'Sicario', you have to - you know, you've got to go beat a brand new path.

- Taylor Sheridan

I learned a tremendous amount about dialogue because I suffered as an actor.

- Taylor Sheridan

I was surprised by how much I liked 'Hacksaw Ridge' and its depth.

- Taylor Sheridan

I'm a storyteller, and I was an actor, so I have a fairly thin grip on reality to begin with.

- Taylor Sheridan

I think 'In The Heat Of The Night' was one of the most influential films on me. Looking back now, I can see how influential it was on my screenwriting because here you have what looks to be a crime procedural, and it's actually a study in race and loneliness, and a perception of an era.

- Taylor Sheridan

I was going to be the head wrangler at a ranch in Wyoming, and the reason I didn't take the job is because I couldn't have my family there - the family had to stay in town. I just wasn't willing to do that.

- Taylor Sheridan

How does one endure in a place they shouldn't be condemned to live in? You could take that same question and apply it to any number of neighborhoods in any number of cities.

- Taylor Sheridan

As a television actor, I was held to a tight, rigid structure.

- Taylor Sheridan

As a filmmaker, you have to stand in front of what you did and make choices that you could do with a clear conscience.

- Taylor Sheridan

My wife was pregnant, and I was doing the math, and I was realizing that I couldn't be living in a two-bedroom apartment in Hollywood for the rest of my days. I didn't want to raise my kid there.

- Taylor Sheridan

I mean... directing is a holy, unpleasant experience, to be perfectly honest.

- Taylor Sheridan

I had a one-year-old son. How will my failure or success limit what he becomes? I was trying to write screenplays. It doesn't pay very well until you sell one. I was poor.

- Taylor Sheridan

Until you've been to Cannes, it's hard to describe to someone the magnitude of that festival.

- Taylor Sheridan

I think my mission, if I could call it that, as a storyteller is to try and find ways to show how similar we are and not how different we are.

- Taylor Sheridan

'Sicario' was successful, but it was successful because Denis and the producers were, you know, they were very lean. It was very lean filmmaking.

- Taylor Sheridan

The movies I make - the goal isn't a mass audience. They're not expensive films. So the attempt is to reach a much more limited audience - one would say an audience that enjoys films that challenge them emotionally and intellectually.

- Taylor Sheridan

I think that marriage of music and picture is so vital, especially in a film that's almost exclusively exteriors.

- Taylor Sheridan

It's very hard for me to go to the movies because I know all the tricks, and I know everybody. I don't watch many at all. And the ones I do watch are generally much older films.

- Taylor Sheridan

I don't outline. I sit down to write, and I take the ride. If something starts to not feel right, I go back to the last place that felt like jazz to me.

- Taylor Sheridan

Unfortunately, there is still much to mine in this world and explore creatively.

- Taylor Sheridan

In 2005, I visited my home state of Texas, spending time on a ranch outside the town of Post. Then spending some time on a large ranch outside Archer City. I was taken by just how few young people I saw anywhere.

- Taylor Sheridan

Josh Brolin is fascinating to watch because he is just so effortless. It's like watching a really gifted athlete run, and I just didn't have that.

- Taylor Sheridan

Whether we can call 'Hell or High Water' this rogue buddy bank-heist movie, it's also a meditation on assimilation and failure and what happens when someone loses their purpose.

- Taylor Sheridan

I spent a lot of time doing really unimportant work as an actor. It was important when I started writing that I obviously make it entertaining, or no one is going to go see it - but to really make you think, that is my goal.

- Taylor Sheridan

I sent 'Hell or High Water' to Peter Berg, asking if he'd like to be involved.

- Taylor Sheridan

I made a very conscious decision to quit acting. I was on a series, and we were in the process of renegotiating. They had an idea of what they thought I was worth, and I had an idea that was quite different.

- Taylor Sheridan

You set something in modern-day Texas, which is so identifiable as the Old West, and everyone's wearing guns, so it looks like it's going to be, by default, partially considered a western.

- Taylor Sheridan

Sometimes audiences want to see what we're doing to their world. It's our obligation sometimes to reflect it.

- Taylor Sheridan

I don't know if I've ever met anyone that's purely good or purely evil myself. I think most of us live with some varying degrees between the two.

- Taylor Sheridan

There's not a lot of pure evil in the world, but it's amazing how little it takes to do great damage.

- Taylor Sheridan

Growing up, my mother was a very strong woman who was not very big, about 5'1'', but boy, you grabbed a tiger by the tail if you messed with her. I know grown men that messed with her, and through her wit and intelligence and her no-quit, she never lost a fight. That's very influential on me when I'm telling stories. I love exploring that.

- Taylor Sheridan

People in Texas wear cowboy hats; they're good at keeping the sun off your neck and face.

- Taylor Sheridan

I've been in some bad TV shows and suffered through so much poor writing.

- Taylor Sheridan

I saved every script I'd ever worked on as an actor.

- Taylor Sheridan

Violence is literally the glue of the cycle of life, and yet I think that we're the only species that does it maliciously.

- Taylor Sheridan

Once I finished 'Sicario,' I knew I wanted to follow it up with 'Hell or High Water.'

- Taylor Sheridan

You know that saying, 'You broke it, you bought it'? With horses, if you don't make sure it's a good fit... they tend to break you.

- Taylor Sheridan

You can really examine the suffering and consequences that happen when there's a loss in a family.

- Taylor Sheridan

Most of us don't confront pure anything. What our life does involve is a whole lot of 60/40 and 70/30.

- Taylor Sheridan

My education - my Ph.D. in storytelling - comes from having worked on it, being a lover of film and watching them, from working with some great writers and some very good TV directors and then working with some who weren't.

- Taylor Sheridan

I'm not the guy to ask to write a sequel.

- Taylor Sheridan

I think I was a decent actor, but it took a lot of work for me to make a choice on how to read a line.

- Taylor Sheridan

I think film cannot only teleport you to places you don't know, but it can help you see people you thought were one way and in fact are another. They can allow us to examine ourselves.

- Taylor Sheridan

I let characters be human and flawed and relatable.

- Taylor Sheridan

I let characters be human and flawed and relatable. When we do things that aren't that great, we can understand it.

- Taylor Sheridan

My job is not to give you all the answers. My job is to ask the questions.

- Taylor Sheridan

I just lost interest in performing.

- Taylor Sheridan

While I feel it's important for films to examine our society, I don't particularly like watching the films that do it.

- Taylor Sheridan

Honest communication is a rare thing.

- Taylor Sheridan

I wanted 'Hell or High Water' to feel like a road movie and an exciting, fun film - until it's not.

- Taylor Sheridan

Don't try and make a movie for someone else. You have to make it for you and trust that you're not that unique. And that'll matter to other people as well.

- Taylor Sheridan

When I write a movie, I write it for me.

- Taylor Sheridan