- Robert McKee
HOLLYWOOD – I am in town this week on a creative writing retreat, the centerpiece of which is repeating Robert McKee’s legendary and mind-blowing Story Seminar.
McKee recently turned 70. Story Alumni include dozens of Academy Award winners, over 100 Emmy Award winners, and nearly three dozen Writers Guild and Directors Guild Award winners. respectively. The Guardian calls McKee “the most influential storytelling theorist since Aristotle.” Like a fine wine, McKee gets better with age. Unlike wine, he has an expiration date.
McKee will tell you that he teaches the chemistry of story. I agree. But, buried in the not so subtle subtext of McKee’s thirty-two hour, four-day data-dump, is the philosophy that drives exceptionalism.
For my money, McKee’s one hour module comparing “literary talent” to “story talent” is worth the price of admission alone.
I have the printed book. I have the audio book. I use them as post-seminar reference tools, returning to them again and again. I don’t know much, but as a legal scholar and nationally touring spoken word artist, I know this: communication is 90% body language.
When I decided to take on the daunting, personal task of saving America from itself, I didn’t write a book. I wrote a show. There’s a reason lawyers put witnesses on the stand, instead of on the phone. It’s the same reason 200 people from all over the world (including one from Siberia) are in Los Angeles this week actively witnessing Robert McKee, instead of passively viewing the wedding of William and Catherine.
You can see me being interviewed by McKee on Storylogue later this summer. I’ll promote the release of this wide-ranging interview right here on WJAGDM. This interview represented my first opportunity to meet McKee, an individual I have admired for years. We rolled for a couple of hours, discussing writing across multiple verticals, the opportunity of adversity, stand-up, the theatre, our mutual love and respect for George Carlin, profanity, processes, road-maps, life in Post-Constitutional America, my tragicomedy, Fool For A Client and the documentary I’m executive producing for release to the 2012 film festival circuit.
Over the course of five years touring North America, critics have likened me to Lewis Black, Mort Sahl, Michael Moore, Tim Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Mike Daisey, fellow Rhode Island native, Spalding Gray, and Mark Twain. The Mark Twain thing you take with a grain of salt. If you perform a one-man show, it’s just a matter of time before some critic hails you as “the next Mark Twain.” The struggle to be the next Mark Whitney is difficult enough.
McKee said I reminded him of playwright/director/performer Ken Campbell. Campbell passed in 2008. In a posthumous tribute, the Guardian judged him to be “one of the most original and unclassifiable talents in the British theatre of the past half-century.”
In contrast, critic’s have noted my talent for “easily transitioning between real-life stories, to a quick power round of dick jokes.”
It wasn’t ten minutes ago, that I discovered a hard copy of the message below, on the floor by the table outside the packed lecture hall at the Westin LAX. You need a great sense of humor to be the world’s greatest, living writing teacher.
“jay – i just got an email from u guys and am thinking about taking the righting seminar but i like have some questions!!!!! your massage sez i can submit any story questions to u so hear goes. it has been a life long dream of mine to like right a story or whatever!!!!! is it better if i right in a coffee shop or a maul?????? do sentences always start with like capital letters?????? that is soooo boring!!!!! my problem is that a brain storm to me feels more like a light breeze!!!!! i have like a grate wrack though so i have the two things I need two be a sucesfull righter. every time i get an idear, jersey shor cums on and i get like so many good idears from jersey shor!!!!! i luv michael the situashun sorrentino!!!!! OMG!!!!! did you know he named his abs the situashun????? genius!!!!!!! OMG!!!!! LOL!!!!! this gives me an idear!!!!! maybe my story should be about MY sitch!!!!! my boyfriend says my sitch is hopeless!!!!! but mister mckee has inspired me to never, ever, ever, ever, ever stop writing the word “ever” over and over and over and over and over as many times as it takes!!!!! give him a big hug four me!!!!! LOL!!!!! can you right back and tell me what my story is so i can get started????? my boyrfriend sez my sitchuashun is like hopeless or whatever!!!!! you no what im saying????? i tried reading the book but as you can imagin that was not e z four me. then i got like this idear to buy the cee deez. i listen to them alone in the tub and like the combination of mister bubble AND mister mckee has me like so inspired to never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up or whatever! pls right back!!!!! kisses — lindsey”
WASHINGTON D.C. – “Jihadism is evil and we need to say what it is. We need to define it and say what it is. And it is evil!” Santorum said to applause.
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