This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Taylor Sheridan has spent a fair amount of time on film sets.

He started as an actor, picking up small TV gigs culminating in a recurring role as a deputy on "Sons of Anarchy."

But it's as a screenwriter that Sheridan is making his name in Hollywood. His first two screenplays have been the backbone for two of the most acclaimed movies in recent memory: last year's drug-trafficking drama "Sicario" and the Texas crime drama "Hell or High Water," which opens in Salt Lake City theaters Friday.

"There's not much for a writer to do on set," Sheridan said in a phone interview recently. "By that point, the train's left the station. … I came by and spectated, and cheer-led for a little bit."

Sheridan said visiting the "Hell or High Water" set was rewarding, but not as shocking as being on set for "Sicario," his first movie.

"When you're watching a movie being made, there's very little romance to it," Sheridan said. "It totally demystifies and deromanticizes the thing. I wish I could say that there's this euphoric moment where you're like, 'Yes, look at all this brilliance happening around me!' It doesn't work like that. It's 'I hope I'm not in the shot. Where's my shadow?' The reward comes when you see it on the screen."

What's on the screen in "Hell or High Water" is exceptional. Set in west Texas, the movie follows two brothers, played by Chris Pine and Ben Foster, robbing small-town banks as part of a plan to save their mama's ranch. The major obstacle to the plan is a soon-to-retire Texas Ranger, played by Jeff Bridges, who takes on the case as his swan song.

Sheridan grew up in Texas — he went to high school in Fort Worth, and his family had a ranch outside Waco — and he knows the state well.

"It's a place that's very romanticized, even amongst people who live there," he said. "It fought for its own independence and then continued fighting to keep or maintain that. My guess is the people who make it there feel a tremendous amount of pride in succeeding."

That Texas, though, has fallen victim to modern market forces.

"I'd been back in Texas and driving through some of these little towns that I remember being so vibrant as a kid. Whether they were or not, I don't know. But at least all the stores were open. And now they were all closed. They were gone, and it was very sad to me. And oil prices were going up. There's just this appetite for land. All these properties that used to be little ranches were being purchased and drilled and turned into recreational ranching. It's a way of life that's really pretty iconic, and very identifiable with the state, and that's going away."

In creating the story for "Hell or High Water," Sheridan started close to home: a family member who was a federal marshal in Texas, "a larger-than-life figure to me in my childhood," who was forced into early retirement. That marshal inspired Bridges' character, a lawman whose sharp mind is disguised by a good-ol'-boy demeanor and a steady string of insults aimed at his half-Indian/half-Mexican partner (Gil Birmingham).

Bridges was the first actor Sheridan and director David Mackenzie approached for the role. "When he read it and responded, it was pretty great," Sheridan said.

Sheridan called Foster's agent to beg to get him to read the script and play Tanner, the more reckless of the two brothers. For Toby, the more sober-sided brother, Sheridan thought of Pine, with whom he had met about another movie.

"I didn't expect him to have this kind of empathy," Sheridan said of Pine, who's best known for action-movie roles like Capt. Kirk in the "Star Trek" franchise. "He's such a movie star, and yet when you meet him, he's really this character actor wrapped in a movie-star body. There was just such a caring, the way he listens when you speak. He's a really caring man, and that's what Toby had to be."

Following the success of "Sicario," which received three Oscar nominations and showed up on many critics' best-of lists, Sheridan knows he's been lucky.

"With any movie, there's so many ways the wheels can come off," he said. "I believed in the script, and I hoped that some of the unconventional things I did on it would be rewarding for an audience."

Sheridan has written a follow-up to "Sicario" called "Soldado," which will bring back Josh Brolin's and Benicio Del Toro's characters. He's also finishing editing on his directing debut, "Wind River," a thriller starring Marvel Universe co-stars Jeremy Renner and Elisabeth Olsen that was filmed earlier this year in and around Park City.

It's too early to say when "Wind River" will reach audiences. There's a chance it will screen where it was filmed, in Park City, at next January's Sundance Film Festival. The way Sheridan's luck is going lately, I wouldn't bet against it.

Sean P. Means writes The Cricket in daily blog form at http://www.sltrib.com/blogs/moviecricket. Follow him on Twitter @moviecricket. Email him at spmeans@sltrib.com.