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Kevin Costner lives by the philosophy:If the mountains don’t feel the need to move, why should I?In that regard, the 69-year-old actor resembles hisYellowstonecharacter John Dutton all too well. Both the actor and his fictional counterpart struggle to overcome their love for the past while maladapting to the changes of the futuristic today.
![Kevin Costner as John Dutton in Yellowstone [Credit: Paramount Network]](https://i2.wp.com/fwmedia.fandomwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/16154801/Kevin-Costner-as-John-Dutton-in-Yellowstone-Credit-Paramount-Network-1024x576.jpg)
Taylor Sheridan, on the other hand, has been a driving force in making the Western star’s life come full circle withYellowstone. What began as a naked appreciation for Westerns soon developed into an undying passion and obsession with the genre for Costner. The only problem was that films about the Wild West all tell the same fantastical story of outlaws, gunslingers, rodeos, and ho-downs.Yellowstoneerases that constraint entirely.
Hollywood Has a Problem With Westerns in Film
For more than 100 years, Hollywood has been stuck with a singular recipe for Western culture. AlthoughKidnapping by Indians(1899) is officially the first Western ever made, it was director Edwin Porter’s 1903 film,The Great Train Robbery,that is widely considered as the pioneer in the genre.
Following a standard heist movie blueprint,The Great Train Robberyset the precedent for all Hollywood Westerns to come. Gunslinging outlaws became a staple of the genre which was further compounded by the Golden Age of the Western from 1940 to 1960. The period epitomized the cowboy subculture, while legend turned the historic Vengeance Ride of characters like Wyatt Earp into romantic notions about life in the American West. It has remained the same ever since.
![The Great Train Robbery (1903) [Credit: Edison Studios]](https://i2.wp.com/fwmedia.fandomwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/16154425/The-Great-Train-Robbery-1903-Credit-Edison-Studios-1024x576.jpeg)
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ButYellowstonecreatorTaylor Sheridancuts through the red tape of the Old West and brings something refreshingly alive, real, and accurate to the table. Desperate for an escape from the fakery of the urban cowboy culture while erasing the ridiculousness of the past Westerns, Sheridan creates a world in the middle of Montana that witnesses the last surviving vestiges of the ranch lifestyle through the eyes of a seventh-generation cowboy family.
Kevin Costner Reveals theYellowstoneSecret Sauce
While Taylor Sheridan found a kindred spirit inKevin Costner, that kinship burned bright and fast and gave the audience some of the best years in television ever recorded in Hollywood history. But it was not simply the contemporary freshness or the socio-political relevance ofYellowstonethat made the tale so gripping. It was Sheridan’s effortless storytelling too.
In an interview withCBS Sunday Morning, Costner breaks down the blueprint of his Paramount series and describes whyYellowstoneworks so well, despite an abundance of Westerns in the industry, including his personal filmography.
Westerns specifically can look really dumb. They can look obvious. They are hard to make and that’s the problem.
Costner claims that it’s easy to make a bad Western, but creating a good one is Sheridan’s gift.Yellowstoneand its prequel spin-offs are glaringly devoid of cowboy cliché and the writer-director refuses to give in to the age-old time-tested recipe that Hollywood put into Westerns until he came into the picture.
![Yellowstone [Credit: Paramount Network]](https://i2.wp.com/fwmedia.fandomwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/16154420/Yellowstone-%E2%80%93-the-legacy-of-a-father-and-son-Credit-Paramount-Network-1024x683.jpeg)
Kurt Russell’s Potential Casting in ‘Yellowstone’ Spin-off Keeps an Old Rivalry With Kevin Costner Alive Even After 30 Years
With Taylor Sheridan’s ambitious vision for the world of the Duttons, the political conniving, domestic tyranny, generational trauma, and corporate Machiavellianism always seem to leave a lasting impact on the audience. Teenagers to octogenarians have all been equally rooted in the show and that in itself is a signifier of how powerful Sheridan’s storytelling can be.
Not only has the Oscar-nominated filmmaker produced one of the most successful television shows ever written but he has also singlehandedly revived a dying genre in Hollywood and saved an entire subculture from going extinct by shedding light on the reality of ranch lifestyle and the life of a cowboy.
Yellowstoneis streaming on Paramount+
Diya Majumdar
Senior Writer
Articles Published :2410
Diya Majumdar is a Senior Content Writer at FandomWire with over 2000 published articles on the website. Since 2022, she has been working as an entertainment journalist with a special focus on films and pop culture.Among the countless genres and themes of Hollywood, the ones that particularly favor Diya’s tastes include Game of Thrones, DC, and well-aged thrillers and classics.
