Taylor Sheridan took two things from his years as a journeyman TV actor. Number one: a paycheck. Sort of. "Acting on a cable show doesn't pay very much, contrary to popular belief," Sheridan says. And number two: a deep familiarity with conventional, by-the-numbers storytelling, which proved surprisingly handy when he decided to start over as a screenwriter. "I saved every script I'd ever worked on as an actor," he says. "I reread 'em. Reread 'em all. And I said, 'If I just don't do that, this'll probably turn out okay." (Sons of Anarchy excepted.)

Sheridan sat down and wrote a clear-eyed story of drug-war realpolitik that did not shy away from implicating its audience in the monstrous violence onscreen. He titled it Sicario. Next he wrote a neo-Western called Hell or High Water. Neither project had clear-cut heroes, or villains, or anything resembling a moral. ("At some point in the '80s, everyone decided they needed fucking closure.") They revealed themselves slowly and followed no formula. Somehow, though, both got made within a year of each other. In both cases, they shot the first draft. And both became sleeper hits.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Sheridan's latest is Wind River, which he also directed. The third installment of his "thematic trilogy" exploring unsettled history on the American frontier, it concerns a rape on an Indian reservation. "I spoke to a screenwriting class recently," Sheridan says, "and afterward the professor said, 'I just want to thank you for contradicting everything I've been teaching them all year.' " He must be doing something right.

CBS Films

For Sheridan, the secret to breaking into screenwriting was breaking the rules of structure that he learned while working in TV.

When I first started writing Sicario, I sat down and said, "I want to tell stories that matter to me. I want to tell them in ways that I find riveting to watch. I'm gonna break all the rules I've been taught to as an actor for exposition and structure." It was a little bit childishly rebellious, and yet it was real liberating.

I spent all my time in TV, and in television, it's an extremely rigid structure to the teleplay. You've got a teaser that lasts a minute that sets up the episode, then you have four or five acts depending on what network you're on. Show me the teaser, and I'll tell you how the whole thing's gonna end. I've said it before: The last frontier is demolishing the structure that we've all been held to for so long because we were told you had to do it this way.

The last frontier is demolishing the structure that we've all been held to for so long because we were told you had to do it this way.

Rules are meant to be broken, but it has to be to serve the story. The rule is—and everyone who reads this will now know—about 15 to 17 minutes into a movie, I'm going to tell you what the movie's all about. And I don't do that in Hell Or High Water. I don't tell you what the movie's about until the end of the second act going into the third act. Hopefully the result is that you're extremely conflicted about which characters you're rooting for.

He focuses on developing his characters and their pasts so that plot decisions come more easily.

A lot of times you go write something and try to discover it along the way. With me, I write really fast, but I build it in my head really slow. I'll spend months thinking about a character's life. What was his life before the movie started? That all influences every action he does. I'll do things today with my son that are dictated by the way I interacted with my father 25 years ago, and I won't even know it. You have to know that life. I think the more clearly you understand that—you really know that character—the easier it is to decide what to show when, and how much.

Taylor Sheridan Marcelo Krasilcic

He writes his stage directions with such emotional tension that it weeds out any half-interested directors or actors.

In the screenplays, I don't tell you "cut to or dissolve to or fade to or close up or extreme close or pan or whip or dolly." None of that shit. That's not my job. I give you visual things to go find. I try to inject so much tone and emotion into it and tension through the way that the stage directions are written that you either want to do it or you don't. There are people who read Hell or High Water and said absolutely not for me. Absolutely don't want to direct that. But because of that, with the ones that it appealed to, there was no question of What's my motivation? We all got on this boat. We know exactly what this boat is.

He knew he would have to direct Wind River himself for it to be true to the story he wrote.

Wind River is such a personal story, and I wanted to make sure it was handled exactly the way I thought it needed to be because of what it was dealing with. If it didn't work, it needed to be on my shoulders. It takes place on the Wind River Indian reservation. I spent a lot of time on reservations, and there was a period in my life when I was really lost in my late 20s, reading a lot of history books and feeling pretty shameful about myself. And I just got my truck and drove to the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota—not known for being the most welcoming of places for white guys.

I said, "Hey, man. Can I stay with you guys for a while? I'm just really lost, like spiritually lost." Just trying to figure out what I think of this planet and world. And they're like "Yeah, you can stay here. We ain't got no food, but you can stay." And so I did. I made this really good friend, and I learned about a level of injustice that's so completely ignored. When I finally wrote a screenplay, for my friends on the road, I had to be the one to helm it.

Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River are thematically linked.

They are absolutely a thematic trilogy. If someone were to watch Sicario, watch Hell or High Water and then watch Wind River—which makes for about a six-hour downer day—they're going to see things that were introduced in Sicario and answered in Wind River, and themes that were brought up in Hell or High Water that are resolved in Wind River, even though the stories are in no way connected.

What I wanted to do was explore the modern American frontier. I wanted to explore the consequences of the settlement and assimilation of that land 130 years later. How much has really changed? And how much hasn't? And it's not unique to America. You can make the same study in South America. You can make the same study in Europe. It was all settled, and it was all taken from someone, or someone was assimilated or pushed out. It happened so recently here that the waters are still muddy.

I wanted to explore fatherhood, and the failure of it. I'm terrified and fascinated by the thought of How does someone move on from a tragedy without ever getting closure? I don't know what closure means. At some point in the '80s, everyone decided they needed fucking closure to move on, which sounds wickedly selfish. How can I divorce myself from the emotion of this relationship so I can be happy again? Well maybe you can't. Maybe you're not supposed to. Maybe you're supposed to be sad about it—forever. So, those are things in all three of these films.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io