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" 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. "

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" 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

You

Clear

Choices

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Taylor Sheridan

Water

High

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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

Ride

Jazz

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

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

" '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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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.' "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

First

You

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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

Important