The Press Box - The Big Picture—Taylor Sheridan, 'Wind River,' and How to Write a Killer Movie (Ep. 338)

Episode Date: August 4, 2017

The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey and Chris Ryan discuss screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s films ‘Sicario,’ ‘Hell or High Water,’ and his new film, ‘Wind River,’ starring Jeremy Renner (0:40). Then, Sean and Sheridan discuss 'Wind River,' how he depicts raw and realistic scenarios in his movies, and why he decided to get behind the camera (11:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, you're listening to The Big Picture, which is a part of the Ringer podcast network. And today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Talk the Thrones. Make sure to watch The Ringer's new live reaction show Talk the Thrones each week as Andy Greenwald, Mother of Dragon's Mal Rubin, Chris Ryan, and our very own master Jason Concepcion, are coming you live after the East Coast airings of Game of Thrones every episode of season seven. Talk the Thrones will stream exclusively on Twitter and Periscrope right after each episode ends and can be found on the Ringer's Twitter handle at Ringer. They'll be reacting at the same time as you, contextualizing the events and explaining everything that just unfolded.

Again, the show is called Talk the Thrones. You can stream it live after the East Coast airings of GOT Season 7 on our Twitter and Periscope at Ringer. Welcome to The Big Picture. My name is Sean Fennacy. I'm the editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and we have a really great show today because we are joined by the writer of two of my favorite movies of the last few years, Sicario and Heller High Water. His name's Taylor Sheridan. And also, he's a director now.

He has a new movie called Wind River. starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olson out this Friday. But before that, I'm joined by the Sicarioologist, the Doyen of the Drug War. That's right. The executive editor of the ringer, Chris Ryan. What's up, Chris? What's going on, man? Chris, you love Taylor Sheridan's movies.

Yes, I do. What we want to find out is whether I love them for Taylor Sheridan or the people who make them. What do you mean by that? Well, I, too, love Sicario, and I love Hell or Highwater. but I want to find out with Wind River, which I have not yet seen, am I reacting to two very, very fine directors interpreting his work, or am I reacting literally to his script? So this is something that Taylor and I talked about a little later in the show,

and it is an interesting thing because Wind River is a little bit different from his first two screenplays. And we should talk about these three movies. He has said, this is a trilogy about the American frontier. Sicario is about the drug war. Hell or High Water is essentially about poverty in Texas. Wind River is about violence against women in Native American Wyoming on reservations. So these are three different ideas, but they're about sort of ignored communities or problems that we don't want to look at or deal with.

You mentioned these two filmmakers on his first two screenplays, which, gosh damn, that's really good luck to get Denisville and Nive on your first movie and David McKenzie on your second. Absolutely, yeah. Wind River is a little different, though. It's a little bit slower. It's a little bit more meditative. It's a little bit more frankly tragic and purposefully so. But, you know, one thing that I've been talking to some people about with Sheridan is the first two movies that you love are these really propulsive, aggressive stories. You know, like tell me about what's so great about Sicario, which as you have memorialized on your podcast, The Watch, is a film of great importance to you.

Yeah, I think it's Villanue making a art film out of a war film. and militarizing something that I think most of us think of as a crime story, right? So it becomes this almost an apocalypse now. I mean, this has been used a lot, but this idea that it's basically the apocalypse now of the drug war, that it's,

you have an audience cipher who goes down the river with these people on the metaphorical boat and just keeps going further and further into the jungle, in this case, the desert. So Emily Blunt's character thinks she has a moral compass, and she thinks she understands what she will or won't do to get the result that she wants.

And she meets these two men played by Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin, who are dissuader of those notions of what is up and what is down and what is right and what is wrong. But ultimately, it was the calling card for Villanin, like, if you've seen enemy, if you've seen prisoners, it was just the perfect marriage of this guy who is probably the most stylish active director working. You know, just every shot is this sumptuous, creeping, dreadful picture with this really bare-knuckled, terse, noirish script that found some nuance in characters that I think in lesser hands could just be archetypes, just bad stereotypes. And what about Hill or High Water, which, you know, I'm not sure you and I have ever really discussed that movie, but is slightly different and not, I would say it's certainly as masculine, but maybe not as metaphorical. You know, that's a bank robber movie, basically, about two brothers who were trying to raise enough money to buy back their mother's foreclosed farm. Well, that's another case where I think that McKenzie makes this really interesting choice to essentially depopulate the frontier.

You know, in a way, when you look at that movie, most of the scenes are, you have these incredible picturesque landscapes. And there's like one or two people there. You know, and part of that is obviously it's just a different, it's a different, you know, density of population in the West. anyway. But there's a real feeling like you're watching ghosts and you're watching these, like, it's these guys who are the last few occupants of a ghost town. And that ghost town is the west. It's, it's Texas. It's these places that used to have oil or used to have industry or used to have small towns that were self-sufficient and now are just essentially like a diner, a pawn shop, and a liquor store and a church, you know? Yeah, it's funny. And that movie in particular,

there was a lot of comparison to Trump's America and how this is an iteration of, you know, red state abandonment and the people who are forgotten and what the actions that they take to avenge the way that the country has treated them. And, you know, Taylor has talked about this in the past about how, you know, some of that could be reflected and some of that is a bit overblown. And he's thinking more specifically about people and not about politics. You know, Wynn River, I think, is a very similar sort of story. It could be a very politicized story.

And he's gotten a lot of credit for, you know, casting thoughtfully. And, you know, he shoots this story through the eyes of. a white protagonist played by one of your favorite actors. We'll talk about him in a minute. But it's an interesting choice. And he mentioned to me that, and he thought it would have been irresponsible to try to write the story from the perspective

of the Native American characters, which makes sense, though they play a huge part in the story, and I would say are not marginalized at all. But the white man in question is Jeremy Renner. And you love Jeremy Renner. I do. I mean, I think Jeremy Renner is a really interesting test case of someone who probably isn't magnetic enough

to play Captain America, but is still famous enough to be in the Avengers. And because of that, has taken up a lot of his time with being in Mission Impossible and being in the Avengers and being in, you know,

Hansel and Gretel, witch hunter or whatever the hell that was called. And hasn't really appeared in enough movies like The Town and Hurt Locker and the Immigrant. You know, these movies are happening too infrequently for my taste for how good I think he is in them.

he brings a real, like, stoic humanity that reminds me a lot of guys like Robert Ryan, like these great face, great silent actor that doesn't, does a lot with a little. And it's just a really inventive guy. And the best kind of combination of those two worlds in movie that I am pretty much on an island about being obsessed with, which is born legacy, which I think he's excellent in. But he's a really interesting person where it's like came out of Hurt Locker, obviously picked up a lot of franchise work, and essentially, I think it's really important to understand

was supposed to take over Mission Impossible which explains a lot about what's happening in some ways he has been tied up with the Mission Impossible movies I don't think he's in the new one and the Avengers movies and the Avengers movies too he has been the most disgruntled member of that ensemble

He has the worst powers He's a good archer It sounds like he's also like They put me in from this green screen I have no idea what part of the script I'm reading I just say what they tell me to say and then I get out of there but, you know, they've never been like,

well, this is, like, he had his kind of a moment in Age of Ultron, but, like, I think for the most part. You mean when they went back to the farmhouse? Yeah. With Linda Cardalini? Yeah. Yeah, that was, that was a moment. Yeah, but that's like seven years of his life to get, like, one scene with Linda

Cardalini. It's like, think about all the other movies he could have, couldn't have made. Now he may kill the messenger. There's stuff in his filmography. He's great in arrival. But I think it's just, it's tough. You know, he hasn't really, I think he's an example of the bad side of our actors getting too locked down by these,

hey, we're going to need you for eight months every other year, nine months every other year. So that's interesting the way you describe him too. I would say Win River, regardless of what you think of the movie, is a great use of his talent because he's very taciturn, he's very masculine, and he is like, he's a person that you believe as a skill set guy. You know, he's like he does one thing really well. Sure. You know, he can be Ethan Hunts, number two.

He can be a master archer. In this movie, he plays a predator tracker and killer. Great. Which you can imagine how his skills come into play in a movie in which he has to hunt down murderers. But there is something still a little bit vacant or absent. And in this movie, it makes a lot of sense because he's kind of a hollowed out guy who's had a very difficult and troubled family past. but for me personally I've never quite been on the

on the renter train the way that you have been in part because I think he's been unable to save movies like Kill the Messenger in the past which on paper is catnip for me and then if he can't sell it then it won't work

but maybe that's why he's not even hunt number two yeah I mean a lot of the times it's not necessarily like you know I do think to some extent the market determines your value and like he probably could make a lot more

out of the franchise appearances he's had. There are other people in Mission Impossible movies who are on the screen for a lot less time than him who are like, I'm going to have a ton of fun while I'm doing this. That's the thing. I think he has a fun problem. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I would never describe Robert Ryan as a fun actor. Yeah, right, exactly. But by making the choice that you say you make, you know, he has to be Hawkeye now for another five years. Can I ask you one quick Sheridan question before you get into the interview? Yeah. Do you feel like he pulled more from Sicario, Hell or High Water,

like what kind of, what is his sort of style in his first time behind the directors in the director's chair? It's way more John Ford. Interesting. It's way more the big open vistas and the snowy mountains and one man's struggle against another.

And it's a very moral, quiet, tragic movie that then in the final act turns into this explosive combination of the best parts of Sicario and Heller Highwater. I would say the movie is completely worth it for the, for the ending. Okay. So yeah. I mean, Chris, thank you for coming in and sharing your expertise on

the truth about masculinity and movies and about Jeremy Renner. That's great. And now let's go to my interview with director, writer Taylor Sheridan. Taylor, how are you, man? Good, man. How you doing? I'm really good. Thank you for taking the time out. I know you're a busy man. So listen, Taylor, wind river completes the trilogy that you started with Sicario and later had hell or high water. and you've said these movies are about the American frontier, and I'm curious about these three movies together. Were they written as a piece, or did they come at separate times as a writer? Did you know that, as you were writing Sicario,

that a movie like Wind River was coming, or does this just all happen organically? I was plotting out that... What is it about stories in these parts of the country that appeal to you? Well, I just think it's fascinating. We're such a new country, really, and the West that have been all... So, Wynn River is, you know, you know, in part about the violence against women in Native American communities and on reservations.

How did this first come to you? Did you have a lot of experience with this issue? Why was this part of this trilogy that you were writing? Well, yeah, tragically exciting, hopefully, to watch and yet still emotional. I think our job is to hold them. Do you ever ever have apprehension about tackling something like this as a white person or thinking about the criticism that's going to happen, or do you just focus on writing the story that you want to write?

You know, there's right, and be naivor era. And again, because of that. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you show your scripts to other people and have them vet them, or do you try to keep it a solitary experience? I need to hear the same thing. Have you ever changed something really significant in a screenplay after getting a note three times like that?

I don't think so. Usually, if you take the time, which is a difficult thing's done, you know, I have the time to... Right. You know, you mentioned that you're writing these stories for yourself and they're not doing for higher work. I assume after a movie like Sicario, you got a lot of opportunities to do

for higher work. Is that true? Yeah, absolutely. And I do. I have done assignments, but assignments are different. It depends on you know, sometimes you want to go on a ride. Well, you said something interesting about that once. You said that, you know, the true theme

of the trilogy is failed fathers, but then you wrap it in a suspense thriller package. You know, like, what comes first for you? Is it that theme or is it the suspense thriller? No, it's the theme, and then it's real. You know, what's the most, if you look at, it's Sicario, which is really, I mean, it's a, but it's structured like a Greek, like a tragedy.

So it's on a five-act structure, like a Shakespearean tragedy. Dissertation on the death of a way of life. And it's wrapped in a buddy road flick slash bank heist movie. And when really, it's told in a two-act structure, the goal with each of these is to try and create something that's really exciting to watch and suspenseful and thrilling. and yet emotional and give you something to think about, you know, hopefully days or weeks after you've seen it. It's interesting to hear you say CSI Wyoming. I saw someone write that in a review this week about the movie, and I was like, huh, I wonder if that would offend Taylor or not.

But that's it, you know, in some ways you do use this kind of like detective noir structure on this new movie. And then the movie does really blow up and has some incredible tense action near the end of it. Were you always trying to plot this one out in a slightly slower structure this time? time around? Well, there was a sense that in the first half, that even though they're hunting, it is. And these events to magnify the attention for an audience, these big

long, drawn-out battles, et cetera. You know, I think I compiled, which was pretty morbid, about an hour and a half's worth of some ball shootings, some massive engagements, some very rapid things, none of them lasted longer than a minute. They were incredibly, and guys

didn't fall down when they got hit, and they did frequently, and I wanted it to have that sense of realism. This is something you did before you started Wind River? It's something I did before I directed it. And let's talk about that a little bit. So you had two really gifted filmmakers making your first two films, which I think is very lucky in some respects.

And then you obviously have decided to make this movie. I've heard you say that you felt like you were the person who could best, you know, a treat and respect this material that you wrote. But was there anything about it that made you nervous trying to direct? Everything. I said that specifically in, for that's true. that I knew that was I saying

I think I could direct it better than Vinnie or David what I meant is I could execute this vision in a way that was that was well received and did exactly what I wanted it

to do for this community and that I did it was more the manner in which the material was treated for the very people that I was to give a voice to than it was

any cinematic style so making achievement that makes any sense it does and you know you many people know that you were an actor for many, many years before you were a writer and a director.

Did you know when you were working on Sons of Anarchy, for example, that one day you wanted to be behind the camera, or has this been a really recent revelation for you? It's something I've always, it was one of those things that how does the college dropout do that? You know, most filmmakers have studied film. I realized one day I have two. I just didn't realize I was doing it. You know, all of my adult life on TV and film set.

You know, I was friends with writers, and Kurt was... It was very open about really smart things as a, you know, when you directed episode, understanding this from a structure. Actors get on the caboose. The screenwriter, you know, he designs the engine and then the director drives it. What was the hardest thing about it that you didn't expect once you were in that chair? That every single can be delegated. The directing is the only, it is a dictatorship.

Some people might disagree with that, but, you know. Not directors. Right. A lot of other people. Pete Berg told me. before I talked up to you at one point with three pebbles in their hand. One's going to be a sand-colored pebble. One's going to be a tan pebble. One's going to be, I'm telling you right now, it doesn't matter. And I had no idea what the hell that meant. You know, every decision matters, but you just have

to make it. Will this affect how you write in the future, if you're going to direct another film? I assume you will. The challenge is to try and not let it, you know, because it can, you know, as a director, I can go, gosh, this can be difficult. It's going to be the many days. It's going to be too hard, let me shrink the scope of that moment. That would be the director in me. Or let me manage that moment in a different way. And you just have to write the movie you see in your head. You can't put those, you know, you've got to just let it be what it is. Tell me about how you cast the movie. So Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olson are two of your stars. We talked a little bit about also casting, you know, Native American actors. And what kind of process did you go through there to make sure that

you were getting the people you wanted? Well, I think having been an actor, I know what to look for. Some people may get really focused on a look, and I'm like I think that you can see. Do you miss acting yourself? Not even a little. Hey guys, let's take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors. Support for today's show comes from Audible.

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I highly recommend you guys check out Audible to use that right now. So to check out West of Eden or get a free audiobook with a 30-day trial, just go to www.baudible.com backslash picture. That's www.audible.com backslash P-I-C-T-U-R-E. And you can get your free audiobook 30-day trial right now. Okay, now back to my interview. Taylor Sheridan. Do you read the reviews of your work and what's going to define success on Wind River for you? You know, and we don't read any of them. At the end of the day, and this is

no disrespect to film critics, the movies aren't made for them in an authentic way. You know, that's the goal. Out of their day or night and 14 bucks out of their wallet and sit down my job. Tell me a little bit now about what you're working on next. You have a TV series at the Paramount Network with Kevin Costner called Yellowstone. What should people expect from that? It's a much different genre been to it. You know, television gets to really dive in and to get to study human nature and look at this place. And it's something that audience familiarity of returning to this become a really interesting soulmaker-friendly medium. And now it is.

And so it's great to get an opportunity to it. Does it feel like significantly different as a TV experience, even from the past few years that you weren't working on television? Well, I'm shooting like a movie. A filmmaker told me there's that one moment. with myself in right now. Well, good luck on that, and congratulations on your directorial debut. And Taylor, thanks for joining me today, man. I appreciate it. Hey, I appreciate it.

Thank you very much. Okay, man, take care. Thanks for listening to today's show, guys. And come back next week because I have a really great interview with the brother Safdi. That's Josh and Benny. Their new movie, Good Time, starring Robert Pattinson, is one of the best crime movies I've seen in the last few years. So be sure to check that out on the big picture. And thanks for listening.