Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan has spent the last year working to maximize what producers like him can get from Texas’ film and TV production incentives. Now he’s giving back to the state – or rather, to his alma mater, Texas State University.
TXST has just announced that the Wittliff Collections at the university’s San Marcos campus will become the home of Sheridan’s archive, with the collection becoming available to researchers and visitors later this year. The donation will begin in somewhat chronological fashion with early drafts and notes for his earliest work in film – Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River, as well as materials relating to the pilot episodes of three of his biggest TV shows: Yellowstone, 1883, and 1923. Over time, the collection will add documents from the rest of his long relationship with Paramount+, Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Lioness, and Landman.
A native of North Carolina, Sheridan was raised in Fort Worth and has played an increasing role in the state’s film and TV industry, including opening SGS Studios in Fort Worth as well as shooting parts of the last season of 1923 in Austin. However, his biggest involvement recently has been in providing some star power in hearings for the state’s new Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund.
Sheridan’s connection to TXST goes back to the early 1990s when he was a theatre arts student there. In a statement, Wittliff Collections Literary Curator Carrie Fountain wrote that “we’re honored to welcome Taylor Sheridan home. … There’s hardly another American writer whose work would be more at home here. Within these walls echo the voices of Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry and Charles Portis. To acquire the papers of such a preeminent writer making work at the very top of his game will provide endless inspiration and insight to generations of creatives and researchers.”