 . . . June 1995
"I am an institution," Robert McKee says. "I've become famous in the strangest way anyone in Hollywood ever has." A 1991 Wall Street Journal article says McKee has become a millionaire doing what he does. His persona has been laid bare in the Los Angeles Times, GQ, the New York Daily News and countless other periodicals. And just about every man, woman and child in Hollywood knows his name.
McKee calls himself "a champion of the writer"--especially the screenwriter. Although Hollywood actors, directors and producers receive more popular praise than do screenwriters, he says, with typical tactfulness, that "only a fool confuses the conductor with the composer."
He argues that screenwriting is "technically more difficult than the novel or the play" because it has "so many conventions--a loose page limit, three-act structure, a premium on dialogue--that it can at times confine and frustrate the writer with its rigidity."
Enough people think that McKee can teach something that is hard to do that "take Robert McKee" has become standard advice in Hollywood. Paramount and Disney sent their entire creative staffs to his class. "I couldn't have had a more enlightening experience" says On Golden Pond director Mark Rydell. Other pupils include Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway, Robert Townsend, Harry Belafonte, John Cleese, Rona Barrett, David Bowie, Gloria Steinem and Quincy Jones.
Scripts can sell for anywhere from $10,000 to $6 million. Yes, $6 million for a story roughly 100 pages in length. Is that wildly out of order? "For a lousy $3 million, you give them something that, if they do it right, will make them $300 million," McKee says. "One percent of what it's going to cost them to make the film is the writing. One percent. I don't know what Michael Crichton got for Jurassic Park, but it was not enough."
McKee's teaching style is not for everyone. He forbids questions from the class except during coffee breaks. Even then, the question better interest him. An erstwhile thespian with a short fuse, the blunt McKee can reduce a blustering Hollywood type to a self-conscious child with the harshest of quick glances.
McKee says his style comes not from bragadoccio, but confidence in his knowledge, much of which he says he gained during his 10 years at Michigan, where he earned a BA in English literature in 1963, his MA in '65, and also studied cinema arts. "It was such a conducive environment for learning. The camaraderie, and spirit was just so pleasant," he says of Michigan. "I had a terrific education."
It was at Michigan that McKee laid the foundation for his insights into story-telling. He directed and/or acted in over 30 theater productions. "There was a stretch there senior year where I was auditioning for one play while I was doing another," he recalls. "I did nine major productions in a row.
Since leaving Am Arbor, he has appeared on Broadway and studied Shakespearean production at the National Theatre in London as an artist-in-residence. He was also a story analyst for United Artists and NBC and served on the faculty at the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television, where he developed his Story Structure class.
His strongest love, however, is for writing. He has penned episodes for the television shows Quincy, Columbo, and Spenser: For Hire, and his program Abraham appeared on TNT last winter. And he won the BAFTA Award (England's equivalent of an Emmy) for best arts program of 1991 for J'accuse Citizen Kane, a television program he wrote and hosted.
He confesses, however, that even though he's sold all nine of his screenplays, he still lacks a screen credit. "The world is full of people who teach things they themselves cannot do," he says by way of explanation. He cautions his students that it takes 10 years of working at the craft before one can possibly expect to write a screenplay of top quality. That's a decade of solid dedication.
McKee still pursues that first credit and his ultimate goal of directing a film. Meanwhile, he continues to teach what he knows well. "There are certain aesthetic principles of the nature of an art form that distinguish music from noise, painting from a doodle and aimless meandering from a story," he says. And for a measly $435, he will explain the difference to you.
Brett Forrest '95 of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, was a sports editor for the Michigan Daily and has interned at Sports Illustrated.
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McKee lectures on "Story Structure" to more than 3,000 students each year. He take his show on the road to major US cities and European capitals as well. The tuition fee for the three-day, 31-hour seminar is $435. You do the multiplication.