Quote · The Bill Simmons Podcast
A Crazy NBA Month With Zach Lowe, Plus Taylor Sheridan on Building a TV Empire and the Problems With Hollywood
Where this was said
Taylor Sheridan on his new book, screenwriting, and more!
At 1:56:48 · chapter starts 1:26:40
Sheridan traces the book's origins to around 2003-2004, when he met a heavily tattooed former career criminal at a West Hollywood gym — a man who'd spent most of his adult life in state and federal prison before discovering fitness and getting clean [1] — Taylor Sheridan "Sheridan met a tattooed ex-con at a West Hollywood gym who became a friend, a trainer, and eventually a single father in financial crisis. …" 1:28:55 . The two became close; the ex-con trained Sheridan's wife, eventually opened his own gym, and became the largest privately-owned personal training operation in LA. The friendship cooled during Sheridan's Wyoming move, then revived when the man called in 2021, a single father with a terminal health scare, an ex-felon unable to find stable enough work to support his young daughter, and one month's rent left. Rather than loan money (which Sheridan says has a 100% failure rate for friendships), he proposed a book modeled on Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places: a travel guide to prison, written with the expertise of someone who spent 17 years inside. Simon & Schuster bought it quickly, and the two collaborated to produce what Sheridan describes as an honest, sometimes funny, genuinely deterring account of surviving incarceration.
Sheridan met a tattooed ex-con at a West Hollywood gym who became a friend, a trainer, and eventually a single father in financial crisis. Rather than give a loan, Sheridan pitched a book — a travel guide for prison — and Simon & Schuster immediately said yes.
Taylor Sheridan's co-author for How to Not Die in Prison spent 17 years in state and federal prisons as a career criminal before turning his life around through fitness.
Taylor Sheridan was the first film/TV production in the US to resume filming during COVID, convincing guilds to allow work by isolating crew on a Montana ranch.
Taylor Sheridan didn't begin screenwriting until age 41, having spent 15 years as a working actor with mostly small roles before quitting Sons of Anarchy to write.
Studio executives are mostly marketing and legal professionals terrified they won't understand the story — so they demand rewrites, backstory documents, and consensus. Sheridan demanded the opposite: pay him, stay out of his way, and he'll deliver. His track record proves it.
