“I wanted to find a way to show the beauty and the violence and the connection and the visceral realities of moving out west, and I wanted to put it in a very concise moment and I felt that that encapsulated all those.” Read More: Along with the heavy lifting of introducing an entire family, this premiere episode closes with a surprising development: the murder of Lee Dutton (Dave Annable). A highway horse trailer collision leading to a mercy killing is an idea that came very early on in Sheridan’s conception of the show. The point it evolves from, the first scene of the episode, is a jarring opening to a show juggling beauty and pain. So I think that was probably the best benefit of it, looking back.”. “It allowed me to make changes visually as the thing evolved, that hopefully make it feel fresh and unexpected. But since I was the producer and the director and the writer, I didn’t have to hold myself to what I had done,” Sheridan told IndieWire. “A lot of times in TV, you build a world with a pilot and then you try and replicate that world. When plans to bring in other people in both roles for Season 1 of the series fell through, Sheridan says that being behind the camera for all 10 episodes actually alleviated some of the standard stylistic pressures of a TV show’s first episode.
Writing and directing the entire season of “Yellowstone” wasn’t always the plan for.
