Taylor Sheridan has been in the news cycle lately because he left his home base, Paramount, where he built an empire, and set up a new deal with NBC and Universal (said to be worth 1 billion dollars).
There are several articles out there about it. If you like your tea laced with soy sauce, check’em out. Cause they’ve got some kick. The rumor is that David Ellison didn’t like Sheridan, who’s notoriously stand-offish and likes to do his own thing. Ellison brought in two women to run the division and their first idea was to give Sheridan a bunch of notes on his gestating projects. I mean do some homework girls. Everyone knows Sheridan doesn’t do notes.
There were also many insights into how Hollywood is stupid. And why certain good movies don’t get made. Sheridan has this great script (F.A.S.T.) that he sold to Warner Bros before his Paramount deal. Once Sheridan got big, Warner Bros wanted to make it of course. So they went to Paramount and said, can we have Sheridan for this movie? And Paramount said, “Sure. Just give us half the profits of the film.” Needless to say, that movie never happened. But, it’s that sort of stuff that pissed Sheridan off.
Also, Paramount wanted to be more hands on whereas Sheridan wants to be left alone. I have no idea what Paramount was thinking on that front. I get wanting control of a rookie, or some middle-of the-road guy. But you don’t micro-manage the dude who’s propping your entire studio up.
I remember back when I entered into the screenwriting fray. All of my heroes were forged in the past. I had seen their movies, fallen in love with them, thought of them as Gods. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino. They were iconic. And, therefore, when I looked at their stuff, I saw it as unachievable. How can you compete with Gods?
But everything feels a lot different when you watched someone become a God in real time. You were there when that person was nothing. You saw the climb they made, even those first baby steps. And when you see it that way, the goal feels a lot more achievable.
I watched Sheridan from a very unique point of view. I read all of his scripts before any of them were made. So I didn’t have anything influencing my judgment. He was just another writer trying to make a name for himself at a time, around 2010, when screenwriting was extremely competitive. Much more so than today.
That’s why I look at Taylor Sheridan and I say, “If he can do it, so can you.” Because look. When he had that one-two screenplay punch of Sicario and Hell or High Water (Comancheria), those were good solid scripts. But they weren’t genius scripts. I didn’t read them and say, “This guy is shooting straight to the top.” I just saw very solid writing principles at play. A storytelling foundation was there. Character writing was better than the average professional. His scripts moved fast. They all had these moments in them that were a little surprising, something to latch onto and tell others about. But that was it. That was his beginning. And, if you ask me, that’s achievable.
But there’s something in there I glossed over which is the first lesson in becoming the next Taylor Sheridan. He had TWO SCRIPTS floating around. Not one. TWO. The reason I bring that up is because when a writer TRULY BREAKS OUT from the pack, it’s because they have a quick 1-2 punch.
You can forge a very solid career slowly. Write a script, sell it, it gets made. People like it. They ask you what you have next. You work on finishing the next one, get a package together, shoot it. And 2 or 3 years later, your second movie debuts, and you start to establish yourself as a dependable writer.
But when you have two scripts – and specifically two scripts in the same general tone – and those movies both hit (either at the box office, critically, or both), you become EXTREMELY HOT in this town. The red carpet is pulled right up to your crappy Los Feliz apartment and they say to you, “Here’s all the money in the world, do whatever you want.” And if you can then deliver a hit on a THIRD movie or TV show, you’re a bona fide superstar all within the span of 4 years. And that’s what happened to Taylor Sheridan.
So get that 1-2 script punch ready.
But the thing that really sets Taylor Sheridan apart is that he writes fast. This is something I’ve learned is of supreme value in every trade in the world. There are a lot of people who can give you a good product if you give them 5-10 years. But there are only a few who can give you a good product in one year.
That’s what Taylor Sheridan is good at. He writes fast (the dude literally has a screenplay titled “FAST”!) but he still manages to write with quality. Now, I want to point something out here because nobody is a machine. I have noticed that Taylor Sheridan’s pilot scripts are all good. But they’re never great. And that’s because he does write so fast. He doesn’t have the time to make them perfect.
But they’re ALWAYS GOOD.
And all “writing fast” is, is practice. You gotta keep writing and practicing so that you get the fundamentals down. You want to be able to write first drafts that have a solid foundation because that’s what takes up all the time in writing – is when you have to rewrite the foundation of your screenplay. But if that’s there (you have that clear vision and you know exactly the story you’re writing and how it’s going to play out) then you’re only rewriting scenes and dialogue and moving small pieces around the board. It takes much less time.
Finally, you can’t talk about Taylor Sheridan without discussing the subject matter he writes about. It’s part and parcel with his rise to fame. Nobody was writing modern westerns. The western was thought of as a dead genre. But he walked towards that instead of walking away from it.
That is usually where the biggest success stories are going to come from. The big shocking rags-to-riches success stories don’t come from people who try and copy whatever is popular at the moment. The success stories always come from writers who write something that nobody else is writing at the moment.
And notice I said “modern western” not Western. These are the nuances that must be noted when you put together the success story. If he would’ve written straight Westerns, I don’t think we know Taylor Sheridan’s name today. He smartly combined modern America (or almost-modern America) with the Western. Hell or High Water has cowboy hats and the desert and horses. But it also has cars and phones. That tweak made the stories more accessible to modern audiences. And the exact same thing can be said about Yellowstone.
There’s a final caveat to this. Taylor Sheridan didn’t say, “Ooh, nobody’s writing modern Westerns. That’s a way to make money!” He clearly loves that subject matter. So that has to be a part of the equation. You have to look for something that nobody’s doing that you’re also personally passionate about.
Guys, I know it seems absurd thinking this big. But it seemed absurd for Taylor as well. And look where he is. It’s possible. I watched it happen in real time. Now I want to watch it happen in real time to one of you. So, get to work!
