Biography

Prefers simple plots so he can focus on character.

Likes to toy with form and structure to subvert expectations.

Has made cameos in two of the films he has written. First as the Cowboy lamenting the death of the American frontier in Hell or High Water (2016), then as the angry trucker in Wind River (2017), though the scene was deleted from the final cut.

Nephew of former U.S. Marshal and McLennan County Texas sheriff Parnell McNamara and his brother Deputy U.S. Marshal Mike McNamara.

Has cited the Coen brothers, Cormac McCarthy, and Larry McMurtry as his writing influences.

When Taylor first moved from Texas to Los Angeles in his twenties, he lived at Rosewood & Hayworth in a fourplex that had once been home to filmmaker Michael Mann in the 1970s.

Brother of journalist-author John Gibler.

It is the great shame of my nation the manner in which it has treated the native inhabitants of North America. Sadly, my government continues that shame with an insidious mixture of apathy and exploitation. (...) There is nothing I can do to change the issues afflicting Indian country, but what we can do as artists - and must do - is scream about them with fists clenched. What we can do - is make sure these issues aren't ignored. Then the people who can effect change will be forced to. [Cannes 2017]