'Why Were They There?': Screenwriting Guru Robert McKee Takes on Right-Wing Attackers
Earlier this week, a contributor to the right-wing film and culture Web site Big Hollywood offered up the delightfully titled tale, "For $745 You Too Can Be Insulted By Famed Hollywood Screenwriting Teacher Robert McKee." Author Ann McElhinney proceeded to recount her time in McKee's celebrated (and, indeed, expensive) story seminar last October, time reportedly spent chafing under the instructor's prodigious use of profanity, social criticism, "Bush bashing" and other liberal bloviation. A torrent of conservative bile followed in the site's comments. Of course, anyone who's seen Adaptation, featuring Brian Cox as the legendary -- and legendarily irascible -- writing mentor, could have warned McElhinney of at least some pedagogical turbulence ahead. So Movieline asked McKee on Wednesday: What, if anything, went wrong here?
In a nutshell: Nothing.
"These kinds of people always make me nervous, because they're right on the edge of being a groupie," McKee said. "Their fascination with me, my personality, my life, my feelings, my ambitions and whatnot really is misplaced. What they really should be there for is to take notes on their own writing. And instead they do some sort of biographical study of me, and I'm wondering, 'Why were they there?' If I'm the most fascinating thing they encountered, and not the ideas in the lecture, then maybe their heart's not in the right place to begin with."
McElhinney did find plenty to note in McKee's lecture, cataloging a succession of claims like "1/3 of all women will suffer sexual abuse in their lives" ("Yeah, that's research," McKee told me. "That's a fact."), "Everybody hates everybody in the US" ("Yeah. They do"), and "Columbus killed 5 million Indians, it was genocide, chopped up Indians to feed to their dogs, we killed them because we were Christians and they were heathen." ("I didn't pull that out of the air," he elaborated. "When I say it's a fact, it's something that I've read in my research of other projects. I came across the Haitian genocide by Columbus and his crew.") McKee cited, then laughed off, his attributed "Conservatives have famously thin skins" claim from memory.
Other McElhinney observations hewed closer to basic psychoanalysis. "He is very angry and it's hard to understand why," she wrote. "He is making a fortune, is, according to himself, blissfully and happily married and when he actually breaks off from his juvenile Bush bashing, he is very good at what he does. One gets the feeling that for all the money and fame as a teacher this is not what he'd like to be famous for. Instead, he'd like to be a talented screenwriter and he is not."
As you might imagine, McKee has heard that one before.
"They often take [my tone] as angry," he said. "But it's more frustrated than angry. They presume my tone, as strong as it is, says that I'm a disappointed screenwriter, and that what I really want is success as a screenwriter, and instead I have this -- though richly rewarded -- success as a teacher, and that I live in some kind of profound disappointment, and that's because of my anger. And what they're doing, of course, is they're projecting themselves on me. They want to be screenwriters. I do not wish to be a screenwriter. I was a screenwriter. I had some success, indeed, on television 20, 30 years ago, and I gave it up willingly and happily to do what I really love, which is to lecture and write about writing. Because in that, I'm the best. I know where my talents lie, and I'm a fine teacher and writer of writing. I'm happy and thrilled to be that, rather than a struggling screenwriter. With or without success, I love what I do. But they presume that I don't, and that what I really want to do is something else."
OK -- then what is upsetting McKee? "The source of my anger," he replied, "if I'm angry, is the incredibly disappointing films and plays and novels that I read month after month, year after year, when I would hope the quality would go back to what it once was. I just want to see more good writing in the world." A little more optimistically, McKee later added that TV is the superior narrative medium of our day, claiming "many, many dozens" of his alums had fled screenwriting for work on series like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, In Treatment and Damages.
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Comments
Thought experiment - a liberal aspiring writer signs up for an expensive writing course and is treated to a tired recitation of anti-liberal talking points between the instruction. Any reaction at all?
Ideology is funny. People pay a great sum and travel from far and wide for a course taught by a man who gleefully insults some of them, peddles the ravings of a quasi lunatic and wastes time with his political asides that should be spent, you know, teaching stuff.
But because this site is liberal you have to come down fully on his behalf.
"In a nutshell - nothing."
That's kinda sad.
The Big Hollywood post was pretty balanced - I didn't read the comments section.
The next time someone tells you to 'fuck off,' just know that person isn't angry. He or she is just frustrated.
"People laugh continuously for four days straight, I turn water into wine, hundreds upon hundreds from all around the globe worship at my feet, I heal the sick and the blind, I once fought the devil with my bare hands!"
"Nothing" isn't necessarily my or Movieline's sense of the proceedings. It's a summary of a reply to a question that was asked -- McKee saying he does what he always does (and always will do).
For the record (because apparently this matters), I'm pretty middle-of-the-road politically. But I don't see how sitting through a multi-day seminar by a guy who _tells you up front_ about his own ideology and pedagogical style can possibly amount to a political affront. He offered her the chance to walk out with a full refund. She didn't, and she took it out on McKee. Isn't accountability one of the cornerstones of conservative philosophy?
Ha! Now this is more like it.
It's utterly unfair to plan to attend a three day event, cut a large check and arrange your personal schedule accordingly and then, after arriving, learn that the class will be ideologically charged, ugly and full of insults.
His offer was thoroughly disingenuous. A good teacher teaches ... he or she doesn't offer talking points that don't apply to the material at hand.
This site is consistently left of center. Nothing wrong with that. But let's be intellectually honest.
Fair enough. Just don't call us a "left-wing film site" like Nolte does. The only flag I've waved recently is Jacki Weaver's.
Wow. What a complete, arrogant jerk...
thanks for the give and take, ST ... it's nice to engage in topics like this without things getting ugly. I am a regular reader and enjoy the site.
Agreed! Thank you for reading and weighing in.
I went to the same seminar this Woman was at. He does cuss, but it's a couple F-bombs. But the class is not riddled with insults or curse words, it is actually very informative. She is exaggerating, borderline lying. McKee is this way. If you don't like it, don't pay to go to his seminar - simple as that.
In the current issue of "Creative Screenwriting" is a full-page advertisement for Robert McKee with "THE ONE" written across the top. But please, folks, remember it's not about him, but the writing.
If you want to make it as a screenwriter, take that $745 and invest in a good, affordable computer, a screenwriting software and a decent desk and chair. There are mountains of scripts in bookstores and online from which to learn. You can find interviews with nearly any great screenwriter (or filmmaker or technician) of past and present. Everyone from Coppola to Lehman to Goldman to Eszterhas to Wilder. They'll tell you how they do what they do! You don't need to have it all filtered through someone else. If you take the same class as everyone else, you'll write scripts like everyone else, and you won't stand out.
"Is that what it’s really like to be on the receiving end of me?" Oh, puh-leeze! The receiving end of you is about as threatening as a soap bubble. Get over yourself, Bobby.
The materials you are sent PRIOR to the seminar clearly states that McKee curses and has a strong political ideology and that if any of that makes you uncomfortable you should not attend. I guess McElhinney conveniently overlooked that PRIOR to her arrival.
First, to criticize this woman for being offended by such vulgar language is rather contemptible. Is there no common decency anymore? This was not a bar, nor a locker room, it was a classroom of 300 people in which, in my case anyway, roughly 40% were women. Although not personally offended, let's at least celebrate character and applaud someone who criticizes the gratuitous crassness of today.
Now, what is completely lost on Mr. Vanairsdale (or is it Miss?), is that people can expect cheap pot-shots at Republicans, or Christians shoe-horned into the latest film, but $12 and a few eye rolls is not something to write about. However, when tuition is spent for a class on screenwriting, it is absolutely disconcerting to be hit with a barrage of insults, wildly inaccurate charges, and, yes, even hatred towards people you may admire, or a philosophy you hold dear, or a faith that is sacred to you. Especially, when there is nothing remotely relevant between these tirades and the subject at hand - screenwriting.
McKee has become a caricature of himself, and I would say he rather enjoys the propagation of it. I personally found his three day seminar very inspiring and entertaining. I loved his no-nonsense approach to teaching, for he clearly does not suffer fools gladly, and his flame thrower aimed at the pathetic state of motion pictures today was spot on. Also, I admired the fact that he articulately criticized sacred cows like "Citizen Kane."
What was greatly offensive to me was his tireless attacks on capitalism, republicanism, and most of all, Catholicism. They served no point other than to hear himself pontificate and to play to a mostly NYC liberal, religiously dismissive, audience. Mind you these were not classless jokes, but time-eating harangues. This has nothing to do with skin thick, nor thin, and everything to do with verbal machine-gun fire aimed squarely at the beliefs you hold most dear. Even though his arguments were sophomoric and laughable, it was beyond annoying. You pay good money to hear a man lecture on a subject you care deeply about, and he wastes some of that time with angry assaults on your religion and your brand of politics. If this was the 92nd Y, than fine, I'm there to learn more about the man Robert McKee, but in a class about screenwriting I could care less about the man, and his offensive positions! These angry diatribes are more than distractions, they are bound to tick people off. I asked him at the break if what he was inferring was that Catholic Republicans cannot be good screenwriters, he replied, "Not at all, there are some good ones, but THEY LACK THE COMPASSION TO BE A GREAT SCREENWRITER!" I truly look forward to reminding him of that comment after my film is produced. Then I can get to the bottom of his curious water drinking habits during his seminar. Who else places three bottles of water on the desk. Each labeled "Poland Spring." And throughout the day he gentle pours this water into an empty coffee cup which he gingerly sips, slaps his lips and exhales. Odd. Actually, I could have used a drink during his seminar too. I only mention this with a wink, you're not fooling anyone McKee.
Finally, for Movie Line to call Big Hollywood "right-wing" is typical, inflammatory language used to dismiss a website who dares speak about Hollywood from a right of center voice. Actually, I would say a great majority of America would completely agree with an average post from Big Hollywood. And, of course, to make his/her bias complete, neither S.T. Vanairsdale, nor Movie Line has ever referred to Huffington Post as "left-wing."
So, Movie Line, McKee is an entertaining jack ass, but instead of regurgitation his press release-like rebuttal, why don't you write something that is actually interesting.
I wrote a long and thoughtful comment on Ann's piece at Big Hollywood which Movie Line evidently didn't read, for if they had, I don't think they would have dismissed it as "a torrent of conservative bile." Here it is again, if anyone is interested in the opinion of someone who invested ten years of his life (perhaps foolishly) in screenwriting...
I'm a screenwriter who's written half a dozen scripts and actually sold one. I, too, took McKee's seminar back in the day.
McKee was always an arrogant, dogmatic SOB, but it sounds like he's angrier than ever. Despite having some genuine and deep insights into the nature of story, McKee symbolizes a lot of what's wrong with the whole screenwriting scene.
First of all, the lack of transparency. McKee claims to have written a bunch of movies and TV shows, and imdb confirms some of that, but who compiles this data, and how? All my teachers at UCLA claimed McKee was a fraud, yet they didn't have many imdb credits either. It's impossible to know who's telling the truth in this industry. Sometimes I think they're all liars.
Secondly, there are dozens of screenwriting "gurus" like McKee. Hell, you can even pony up tens of thousands of dollars and get an "MFA" in screenwriting from UCLA, USC or NYU. Yet the overwhelming majority of screenwriting students will never make a living in the industry (including me). I have to wonder: if you added up the total annual earnings of actual WGA members and compared it with that of screenwriting teachers, which number would be higher?
Third, a lot of the analysis that McKee and other "gurus" provide is actually pretty insightful. Trouble is, it simply isn't very useful when you actually sit down to write. What you need in order to write even a lousy first draft of a screenplay is an endless supply of optimism, enthusiasm, hope and inspiration. Few teachers can provide this. It's certainly the last thing you're going to get from Robert McKee.
Fourth, I haven't had one screenwriting teacher who didn't spout the same kind of asinine left-wing political talking points that McKee is famous for. Why do they all have to think the same way? It's scary. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers scary.
Finally, what the hell is the point of writing an original screenplay anyway? Hollywood seems to have no interest in producing them anymore. I grew up watching movies like Lethal Weapon and Romancing the Stone—great movies based on original screenplays written by UCLA grads. No more. Nowadays it's all franchises like Harry Potter or sequels or remakes or adaptations.
Quick, somebody cheer me up by proving me wrong!
Of course McKee doesn't think anything went wrong. He scammed several hundred dollars per person. A Nigerian banker married to a prince in government service couldn't have done better.
Is McKee going to refund the money?
I had McKee's book Story recommended to me by the teacher of a directing course. Some ten years and three attempts later, I still haven't finished it. I'm quite left-leaning with my politics, but McKee's angry-old-man grouching ("movies aren't as good as they used to be") has caused me to tune out on each attempt. He makes some very good points about story structure, but his pompous tone is incredibly tiresome. In fact, I'd recommend J. Michael Straczynski's Complete Guide to Scriptwriting over McKee's Story in a heartbeat, particularly as it covers scripting and structure over several different mediums. Also, Straczynski is an incredibly prolific and productive writer, as opposed to McKee, who simply teaches.
I never heard of McKee before any of this. After reading this article, I can see why. If ever there was only one example of small name, big ego, that hack is it.
McKee is a brilliant teacher. Period. The STORY seminar is not a multi-day messianic mania, it's just an admirable attempt to compress an entire Humanities BA into a weekend. He's going for a hybrid persona of George Carlin and Socrates. It's scathing and passionate and profoundly NOT FULL OF SHIT. He provokes. He pulls no punches, and he intentionally subverts the politically correct cultural edicts every chance he gets.
And rightfully so. That culture is the dehumanizing over-correction that has ironically devolved the artistic output of an entire culture to adolescent naval gazing devoid of hard truth or insight.
And if a student will not lower their censure and need to control long enough to learn, there is very little a teacher can do, even a charismatic like McKee. Learning involves a yielding of ego and arrogance on the part of a student so that ignorance can be exposed long enough to yield to instruction. If you can not do so, you've entered the classroom as a critic and not a student. And in that case, you can not complain about having not found the lecture penetrating from your intractable defensive position.
His description of the rousing effect of the seminar is entirely accurate. And by the way, while he teaches classical story structure he openly laments that the state of education is such that he has to reiterate these basic core insights.
The seminar is really not just a "how-to" for wannabe's. Which is why such people will be disappointed. It also suggests that you need SOMETHING TO SAY in your writing. Something about humanity beyond a wagging finger to the bad mean folks who use the naughty words.
McKee in a nutshell: Tell the truth, tell it in the compelling structure of story that has been with the race since prehistory. Actually write instead of talking about how you are going to write. Stop procrastinating. In the end, if you have a compelling story, the spine can be sketched on a cocktail napkin and hollywood will buy it. Be a professional writer, which means understanding the art as WORK and SUFFERING like all art, and not an amateur who is just an enthusiastic audience member. This is not a field for dabblers, and without the total mad commitment to the hard road, you should try to find fulfillment elsewhere in life. You don't write because you want to be "a writer," you write because you HAVE TO.
I urge you to actually read "STORY," and tell me you can honestly disagree with the idea that characters making choices and a plot that consists of meaningfully integrated turning points where something IS AT STAKE is invalid advice or insight that would not improve the quality of our cinematic output a thousandfold.
If you don't understand the irony of going to A SEMINAR, and criticizing the TEACHER for, you know, JUST teaching-- then perhaps your basic cognitive limitations are why your simplistic self-absorbed screenplay isn't being bought.
For those of you who confuse your politically correct speech enforcement with a humane ethical viewpoint, I can suggest a new, improved Mark Twain novel that is safe for you to read.
You must mean, "I'm pretty middle-of-the-road politically." in the Hollywood sense....
What's really amazing to me is how seriously these Hollywood people take themselves. You're just making movies. Period. You're not curing cancer FFS. All that you do evolves around entertaining people, and frankly, you guys in Hollywood aren't that good at it anymore. That's why no one really goes to see movies anymore.
That being said, this guys class sounds just like the majority of college courses I took, where almost everything you would hear would be (at the very least) sprinkled with the delusions of some aged hippy, pining for the make-believe days of the 60's socialist utopia.
"· Former TLC journeywoman Sarah Palin might be a dubious speaker and intellectual, but she’s an unparalleled breather! In a new video, Palin’s inhalations are clipped together in a bracing sequence. It’s tenser than mumblecore — it’s breathcore."
Yeah, doesn't look lefty-leaning to me. It's not like it's on the index page or anything. Oh wait......
"Just don't call us a "left-wing film site"
From the site who's front page prominently displays the sexist, idiotic, "Palin breathing video" ...
*sry* awful comment lag here :/
I have taken this course twice, first in 1990 (ish) and most recently in 2007. The teacher changed a lot since then. In the first instance, it was 2.5 days (Friday, 5:30 - 11pm or so, Sat/Sun all day) and it was the same material he now takes 4 full days to impart. You do the math - that's 1.5 days of pontificating and ridiculing people and things he disagrees with, plus the original seminar, which was quite tightly woven and informative. During the 2007 seminar, he appeared to take great pleasure in demeaning his audience. Yet one of the principles of screenwriting he used to embrace was "Respect Your Audience". Teacher, teach thyself.
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