Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone Was Explicitly Influenced By These 2 Beloved Western Authors

Taylor Sheridan's hit Paramount Network series "Yellowstone" seems like it was tailor-made for gruff older men and the women who love them, and that's in large part because of the Western authors who inspired it. In an interview with Variety in 2022, the writer and producer revealed that he was heavily inspired by the late, great Western authors Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurty, both known for their gritty demystifications of life on the frontier. McMurty was best known for writing novels like "Terms of Endearment," which was turned into an Academy Award-winning film, and he also co-wrote the screenplay for Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain." McCarthy was a bit bleaker, writing novels like "Blood Meridian" and "No Country for Old Men," which was also turned into an Academy Award-winning film. 

For Sheridan, the unusual perspectives of these authors helped shape his own work in the Western genre, from "Yellowstone" to his screenplay for the fantastic neo-Western "Hell or High Water," which definitely feels at home alongside McCarthy's work and its tendency towards violence. The hardened grit and heavy themes of Sheridan's series all come from McCarthy and McMurty, though it's hard to imagine either of them coming up with some of the more ridiculous parts of "Yellowstone.".

While explaining his influences and how "Yellowstone" came to be, Sheridan was effusive in his love for the two Western authors, along with the great novelist Toni Morrison (who wrote a number of novels, including the phenomenal Southern gothic "Beloved"):

"I was very influenced by writers like Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, Toni Morrison, who wrote about the time around the Civil War, which is obviously very similar themes. There's a lot of Westerns about it. And in terms of the movies that influenced me, it was watching 'Unforgiven' when I was in my late teens or very early 20s. The same with 'Dances With Wolves,' where you're looking at the Western genre through a whole new lens that had never been explored before."

The connections between Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" and "Yellowstone" seem pretty direct, as they're both about showing cowboys as more human and less like mythic heroes, though the Morrison connection is definitely a bit fuzzier since she wrote so heavily about race and the main "Yellowstone" series is very, very white. Perhaps the most satisfying thing for Sheridan is that he found out that McCarthy was actually a huge fan of the series and watched as much of it as he could before he passed away in 2023. They say to never meet your heroes, but it sounds like Sheridan really lucked out on that one.