Snapshot · The Bill Simmons Podcast
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.
Where this was said
At 1:29:00 · 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 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.
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