TAYLOR SHERIDAN

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

'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.