Taylor Sheridan’s Six Favorite Movies Are Perfect

Taylor Sheridan is a miniature industry unto himself. He wrote the Oscar hopefuls “Sicario,” “Hell or High Water,” and “Wind River,” as well as the thrillers “Without Remorse” and “Those Who Wish Me Dead.” On TV, Sheridan has been blasting barn doors off with “Yellowstone” and its multiple spinoffs, as well as shows like “Tulsa King,” “Lioness,” and “Landman.” These are in addition to a modest acting career that put Sheridan on TV shows like “Walker, Texas Ranger,” “Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman,” “Party of Five,” “NYPD Blue,” “Sons of Anarchy,” and even “Star Trek: Enterprise.” He also plays the supporting character of Travis Wheatley on “Yellowstone” and Charles on the prequel series “1883.”

Sheridan has evolved into the modern torch-bearer for Western machismo, and he is often drawn into the dark hearts of manly men. He also seems to love crime stories, tales of criminals/lawmen, and conflicts that end with gunplay. That said, he’s no action junkie or violence-monger; his films and TV shows tend to be very dour and downbeat, pointing out the tragedy of a waning Old West. His works feel very, very old-fashioned, which may be why they’re so popular. Seriously, “Yellowstone” is a juggernaut.

When asked about his favorite movies by Rotten Tomatoes back in 2017, Sheridan picked six films that could have been predicted (mostly). He is drawn to grizzled heroes, suffering dads, and tragic figures with guns in their hands. Perhaps unpredictably, he was drawn to multiple winners of Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Five of the six films below won the Award, and the sixth was nominated.

Clint Eastwood’s 1992 anti-Western “Unforgiven” won Best Picture, and even then, it was Eastwood declaring — in a meta way — that his career playing badasses and stoic gunslingers would merely light the way to dusty death. One can see a lot of parallels between “Unforgiven” and “Yellowstone,” in particular their shared Wyoming settings. “Unforgiven” follows William Munny (Eastwood), a former bounty hunter who is now trying to live a live of quiet asceticism. However, he finds himself having to tragically accept violence again after he is hired to track down some villains who have assaulted and mutilated a local sex worker.

About the film, Sheridan said:

“What about it, is simply the way that Clint Eastwood demystified and destroyed our notion of a Western. I mean, demolished the genre; he turned it upside down. It was marvelous acting, and at times, his use of monologue and dialogue — that doesn’t ever take place in Westerns. He just took a baseball bat to the genre, and it was just incredibly profound to me.”

“Unforgiven” is clever in that is gets to have it both ways. On the one hand, it’s a horrid tragedy about how one cannot escape their violent past, and the reputation that comes from a career of violence will follow one to their grave, no matter the level of attrition beforehand. On the other hand, the film does feature Eastwood, along with co-stars Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, and Richard Harris, engaging in brazen acts of masculine badassery. One can cheer when they fire their guns and enact vengeance (although one might be missing the point if they do).

Sheridan has made multiple crime procedurals, but feels that his movies are undergirded by something thematically important beyond the crime. That was certainly the lesson he took from Norman Jewison’s 1967 film “In the Heat of the Night,” which also won the Oscar for Best Picture. The film centers on a homicide detective from Philadelphia, Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), who, while passing through Mississippi on a family visit, become roped into an investigation overseen by a racist local cop (Rod Steiger).

About the film, Sheridan said:

“‘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. So, I think that, that was one of the most influential films.”

“In the Heat of the Night” contains an intriguing police story, but is very much about racism in then-modern Mississippi. In one of the film’s more famous exchanges, the racist Steiger character makes fun of Virgil’s first name, asking him what he goes by back home. Poitier, in a powerhouse line reading, shoots back “They call me Mister Tibbs.” That line was so popular, it became the title of the 1970 sequel. Steiger did not return for that film, nor did he for the third film in the series, 1971’s “The Organization.”

One might have predicted that Taylor Sheridan likes Michael Mann. Mann’s steely photography and no-frills storytelling turns any ordinary story into something cold and cerebral, and Sheridan seems to like that. “The Insider,” Mann’s Best-Picture nominee from 1999, is a biography of Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), who aimed to blow the whistle on the tobacco industry that was secretly sneaking chemicals into cigarettes to make them more addictive. Al Pacino played real-life investigative reporter Lowell Bergman, who aimed to break the story and had to be in cahoots with Wigand.

Sheridan loved the cinematography of “The Insider” (by Dante Spinotti) and was astonished when a Steadicam shot — a shot he ordinarily hates — was used to great effect. As he put it:

“To study it from a filmmaker’s standpoint, he does things in there, breaking rules, and usually if you’re going to employ a method of camera operation, you’re going to employ that throughout. But there’s one scene where he brings in a Steadicam, and he does shots with that thing that are just incredible. And you don’t even recognize that’s what you’re watching! When it’s usually one of the most telling methods of operating a camera, and one I don’t personally like.” 

“The Insider” lost Best Picture to “American Beauty” which was kind of a massive success in its time. But, overall, 1999 was a crackerjack year for movies.

Robert Benton’s 1979 film “Kramer vs. Kramer” was yet another Best Picture winner, likely because it was one of the more visible Hollywood dramas to deal with the travails of America’s increasing divorce rates. The film follows the separation between Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) and his wife, Joanna Kramer, née Stern (Meryl Streep). It goes through the stressful details of the pair sharing custody of their young son, Billy (Justin Henry), and follows them into court, revealing that divorce proceedings are little more than a series of insults and recalled slights that culminate in a messy and expensive break-up. Many Gen-Xers with separated parents can probably relate all too well to “Kramer vs. Kramer.”

Unlike the other films on Sheridan’s list, this one isn’t about crime or violence. It’s, instead, about put-upon parents facing the everyday travails of legal separation. This was the only film on the Rotten Tomatoes list that Sheridan described in emotional terms, stating:

“‘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. Again, an incredibly simple plot that allows for really rich exploration of character, and one of the best screenplays I’ve ever read.”

Benton also wrote the screenplay, based on the novel by Avery Corman. It won Best Picture over Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” “All That Jazz,” “Norma Rae,” and “Breaking Away.” That, like 1999, was a damn fine year for American cinema.

What can be said about Coppola’s 1972 crime epic “The Godfather” that hasn’t already been written by enthused pundits everywhere? It’s a Shakespearean tragedy, a tale of immigrants, a crime epic, and a moral examination of the inevitability of violence. Its characters have become archetypes in the American consciousness, and fratboys everywhere have “Godfather” posters on their walls. Sheridan, it seems, is spiritually one of those fratboys and, like everyone, loves the movie. As he put it:

“‘The Godfather’ is such an interesting film in that it does a lot of things to establish character in place in a way that’s so economical. You don’t realize that you’re being given information; you don’t realize that you’re learning. It was one of the best-directed films of all time.”

While “The Godfather” is pretty unassailable, one can say that it is an aggressively male film, and that male viewers tend to gravitate strongly to it. There’s a reason why “The Godfather” became the butt of a joke in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” A certain kind of insufferable cineaste always feels the need to mansplain “The Godfather” to his girlfriend. Sheridan, perhaps aware of its reputation, doesn’t delve into the story or the meaning of “The Godfather” with Rotten Tomatoes. He simply admires the film’s craft.

It’s like “Citizen Kane.” Why bother saying it’s one of the best of all time? We all already know.

Sheridan was a little torn between calling “The Godfather” his favorite movie or Oliver Stone’s 1986 Vietnam War drama “Platoon,” also a Best Picture winner. “Platoon” is based loosely on Stone’s own experiences as a soldier in Vietnam, and examines how the war ripped the souls out of an entire generation. Sheridan looked at “Platoon” the same way that he looked at “Unforgiven” in that both belonged to traditionally masculine genres that the filmmakers sought to dismantle.

Sheridan recalled his experience seeing “Platoon” in theaters as a teen, and how he was surrounded by actual Vietnam vets. That kind of experience can certainly lodge a film deep in a young person’s mind. As he put it:

“I think I was 15 or 16 when I saw that movie in the theater. I was so riveted by it, and the experience around it. I remember when I saw that movie, this is when there was still lines to get in the next one. The movie hadn’t come out yet, and we’re all standing in a line, 400 people to go in, and when the door opened, it was all these Vietnam Vets in their gear, grown men, crying and holding hands and arms around each other. When I sat down, I had no idea what I was about to see. Again, it was a deconstruction of the war film, the antithesis of John Wayne’s ‘The Green Berets.'”

Stone won Best Director as well, beating out Woody Allen, David Lynch, Roland Joffé, and James Ivory. This kicked off a glorious 10-year period of Oliver Stone ascendancy, with the director makings classics like “Wall Street,” “Talk Radio,” “Born on the Fourth of July,” “The Doors,” “JFK,” and “Natural Born Killers.” Sheridan clearly found “Platoon” to be the most formative.