Larrystone
Yellowstone writer cites Larry McMurty as a major influence on dialogue
I have yet to watch Yellowstone. After this summary of the show, with extensive profiling of creator Taylor Sheridan, from The Atlantic, I’m nudging toward a month of Paramount Plus (grain of salt: I say this about every lofty dramatic series and I have yet to watch a third episode of The Sopranos or The Wire). In the middle of the profile, Sridhar Pappu included a bit from creator-writer about Taylor Sheridan about the influence of Larry McMurtry on his dialogue. I am a massive McMurtry fan. Just hearing about him makes me want to drop whatever I’m reading and return to his human-centered Texan tales. There little better out there for dialogue than Lonesome Dove.
Sheridan zeroes in on McMurtry’s economy of language.
Sheridan’s dialogue owes something to the novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show). McMurtry, Sheridan told me, “doesn’t waste words. You could add a lot of words to his dialogue and the dialogue still works, but you can’t take any away. And that, to me, is the cornerstone of writing good dialogue. If you took one word out of the sentence, the sentence doesn’t make sense.”
Jamie Dutton: Working with them is a deal with the devil, Dad.
John Dutton: All the angels are gone, son. There’s only devils left.
But the economy with which Sheridan writes isn’t merely about artistic vision; it’s also about artistic control. “It makes my point of view, the tone, what the scene is about, and what the sentence is about for an actor very, very clear. It becomes very difficult to misinterpret it or reinterpret it.”
Such economy is an aspiration I share for whatever I’m writing, be it professional or personal. Vibrant language uses every word. To eliminate extraneous phrases always improves the writing. (Unless you are a master. Michael Chabon can do whatever he wants, in my book.) I was excited to see McMurtry in the conversation, as I don’t feel he gets his due. In a writing class here in Houston, no more than one or two of a group of enthusiastic Houston-based writers was familiar with his work when I brought it up. And he’s a legend!
Every writer can stand to learn something from Larry McMurtry, and it gave me a cheap thrill to see that a famous TV writer fellow indeed had.
