The McKee to Success
Every year, thousands of writers around the world pay hundreds of dollars to attend this man’s seminar. Miguel Gonzalez spoke with the one and only Robert McKee about how he’s planning to educate Australian writers.
His official website (mckeestory.com) boasts the names of hundreds of former students turned celebrities with a combined 35 Academy Awards (and 160+ nominations) and billions of dollars earned at the worldwide box office.
He’s been famously celebrated and satirised in Spike Jonze’s 2002 film Adaptation (where he was played by his friend, actor Brian Cox). He claims there are no money-making formulas or rigid rules, but forms and principles of story structure and design. He is Robert McKee, and in a world where content is king, he is the Emperor.
This is the Encore interview with McKee, prior to his Australian tour later this month.
Screen Australia is supporting your visit. In a country where Government funding plays such an important role, should our decision-makers/screen agency bureaucrats attend your seminar?
I would not argue with that. They should and they do in fact come to my lecture all around Europe and Canada; they’re certainly welcome. They’re sincere people who are trying to do their very best, but often their understanding of story is under-educated. They have their own taste and they know what they like personally, but they can be skewed, and they often recognise that.
Has Screen Australia briefed you about our local industry issues?
I know they’re unhappy that they haven’t had the kind of success that Australia had in the past, when the world had the impression that every year your country was making films of excellence, and Australian directors were known to be auteurs. That has slowly faded, and Screen Australia wants to revive that film culture, to raise the quality of Australian films and get back on the international screens, and I’m all for it. I come to Australia with the intention of trying to educate writers. That’s what I’ve been doing for 25 years, because it’s often the case that writers are educated at universities. That’s not really a writer’s education; they may learn criticism of literature or film from their professors, but creative writing is often neglected.
What do you know about the way Australian films are usually perceived?
Some people think that Australian films have gotten too gritty, too dark, and I laugh at that. Films that are dark like The Departed or Black Swan are wonderfully successful, so it’s really not that but the quality of the work. Artists have to make films and tell the stories – whether for the page, the stage or screen – that they believe in.
If the money, wherever it’s coming from, tries to influence the artist into making things that are insincere, the result is a disaster. It’s not a matter of having dark stories or happy cartoon-like points of view; it’s really the characters, the setting and the way in which the story is told, that compel audiences to become deeply enthralled in that world.
So audiences can see through money-making formulas…
Of course they can. Audiences can always smell insincerity. The same sort of thing happens everywhere in the world. Money, whether it’s private, corporate or government investment, wants to make money, and dumb money doesn’t give a damn whether the work is of quality or not because often a lot of bad writing makes a lot of money.
There is a formula that people follow and, as a result, they often lose a hell of a lot of money. Disney’s Mars Needs Moms may be the greatest financial disaster in the history of Hollywood, and it took to the letter exactly what you’re supposed to do: an action adventure story, stereoscopic 3D, computer-generated animation. It ticked the check list of how to make a successful film, and they’re going to lose $200m.
It’s the fallacy of following trends; if a writer tries to jump on a trend, they’re always too late. Those who are creating the next generation of successful films have already seen or felt where things are going and are making projects that are quite contrary to whatever is out there now, so what Australian writers should be trying to do is tell the truth from their point of view and be the innovators of the next trend. Let other people imitate you.
Can a national industry lose faith in its writers?
I see it over and over. For example, I’ve had a great response in South America; I have to be the one to tell them in Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, etc., that they are vibrant creative cultures that can make films that will knock off the socks of the world, because they don’t believe in themselves. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be making superb films! I have a feeling that there’s a kind of cultural insecurity that often infects a country. It could have already infected Australia.
So it’s like an individual with low self-esteem, and that’s something that shows in his/her work…
It’s like a national personality that can lose self-confidence as well. I know that wonderful work of all kinds – prose, theatre, film and television – has come out of Australia in the past, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t continue. You just have to get your guts together, keep your head down and work… just don’t listen to those negative voices.
How did you incorporate cross-platform writing into your seminar?
I don’t teach that. That’s spontaneous; you can’t cultivate or manipulate that. The guys who made Toy Story are all my students; when they came to my lecture they were very sheepish and they told me ‘We’re just these computer nerds; we love movies but we don’t really know anything’. I asked them if they’d done any work and they showed me that short with the animated lamp (Luxo). It was wonderful, so I just told them to pay attention and they’d be fine. They did not come to my lecture contemplating that they were going to cross-platform their work. They were just trying to make a movie about toys coming to life, and as a result, many of these films they’ve made have developed all sorts of ancillary markets for them.
You can pray, you can hope but nobody can sit down and calculatedly design a project that they know is going to be a success and generate all these other markets for them. I teach story; the people who attend my class are not just film and TV writers and creatives, but novelists, playwrights, documentary filmmakers, journalists, people writing biographies, autobiographies and history. I don’t teach commerciality.
You’re the leading screenwriting lecturer, but many others are now doing this type of work. Have you ever attended your competitors’ seminars?
I don’t have any competitors.
Why is that?
Because I just don’t… there are imitators and pretenders but no, I’ve never been to their events. I know they have been to mine, and they do their version of what they think I do, and I pay no attention to these people. They may be worthwhile, but I can’t tell you because I don’t ever think about competitors. What I do is what I do; people love it, demand it, and the only thing that makes me happy is the success of my students. When they create something wonderful and win that struggle in the real world, then I’m happy.
What was the last Australian film you’ve seen?
Samson & Delilah. Animal Kingdom is on my list; I’ve got a month to catch up on my Australian films before Sydney and Melbourne.
(Note from the Editor: Encore sent McKee DVDs of Animal Kingdom, Tomorrow, When the War Began, Bran Nue Dae, The Loved Ones, The Tree, Summer Coda and other recent Australian features).
Any advice for those attending your lectures?
Read my book. Before it was published, people used to take literally 200 pages of notes. They didn’t hear what I was saying, because they were obsessed with getting it down verbatim. If they read the book, it will free them to listen so their notes will be relevant to whatever they’re working on, and they will absorb the ideas so much better.
McKee’s tour includes the four-day Story Seminar in Sydney (June 17-20, The Atrium Theatre, Australian Technology Park) and one-day Thriller, Comedy and Love Story Genre Seminars in Melbourne (June 24-26, Palace Cinema Como).
Tickets are still available for both Sydney and Melbourne session. For bookings (02) 9572 7222, epiphany.com.au.
