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Screenwriting guru McKee says Hollywood is finished
2008-11-21
PARIS (AFP) - If screenwriting guru Robert McKee has the plot right, Hollywood is the villain in the piece and TV is the hero. But how the story ends is another question. "Hollywood films? The death rattle of a dying industry," said the acclaimed screenwriting instructor, in Paris for one of his sold-out "Story" seminars. "The best writers are creating TV series. It's all in TV," he told AFP. Undisputably one of the globe's top story-masters, the 60-something former actor, theatre-director, script-writer and consultant, has delivered three to four-day seminars to some 50,000 paying students in the last couple of decades. Among them are David Bowie, Ed Burns, John Cleese (three times), Kirk Douglas, Quincy Jones (three times), Emilio Estevez, Diane Keaton, Meg Ryan and Brooke Shields. While his best-seller "Story" is required reading for students at Harvard and Yale universities, McKee himself was portrayed in the Academy Award-nominated film "Adaptation" in which Brian Cox played the writer. On his own count, attendees imbued with his insights have scooped 27 Academy Awards, the most recent including Akiva Goldsman for "A Beautiful Mind," or Peter Jackson, who won best picture and best director Oscars for "Lord of the Rings". Thoughtfully pacing the stage in a Paris auditorium packed with more than 300 people who paid up to 1,000 euros (1,250 dollars), McKee holds forth with a free-wheeling jibe-peppered banter, more stream-of-consciousness than power-point lecture. "If you make a film it's to make a film about people, a film that's yours, without references to the past, to Hollywood, to movements," he said. "I don't get involved in movements," said McKee, who has a deep hatred of art movies. "Self-conscious unconventionality was poisonous." "Only artists should be concerned with art," he added. "Thank goodness the post-68 syndrome is ending. It's been 40 f...... years!" McKee explained how a writer chooses a setting, a time, and makes sure the intrigue fits. "If a story is set in Beverley Hills, there can be no race riots because there's only one race and no riots -- these people only shop!". To get the right location, characters, and a plot that works, the answer, he emphasized, lies in research. "Writers love the idea they're free. But wanting to be free is one of the stupidest ideas an artist can have." Writers, he told the audience, need to dig into their own past and knowledge, spend time reading and researching, and put down everything they feel, think and discover on paper. "Daydreaming is not research. Taking a walk along the river to be creative is s...." he said. "The idea that writing is a creative process is mythical. Writers who take the time to research see the story almost writes itself." Citing a film like "Dr Strangelove", built around just three sets, or huge Russian works "War and Peace" or "Crime and Punishment" contained to a couple of families and a microcosm, McKee said successful screenwriters must build worlds where they have all the answers. "The world of a story must be small enough that you can become the God in it," he said. "If you have a huge canvas it's impossible to be the God of that universe and you'll write cliches." Speaking to AFP, McKee contended that today's most creative writers have sought refuge in television, citing "American Beauty" writer, Alan Ball, who after failing to find takers for subsequent projects wrote cult series "Six Feet Under". "We're going through a wonderful period of television," he said, also citing "Damages" or "In Treatment". "In US television, the writers have all the power." But this admirer of Ingmar Bergman had a few comforting words for the big screen, hailing the emergence of a new generation of directors in their 30s who "are not interested in the esthetics of the past." Among films he enjoyed were "Let The Right One In" by Tomnas Alfredson of Sweden, "Reprise" by Norwegian Joaquim Trier, "Run Lola Run" from Germany's Tom Tykwed and French director Guillaume Canet's "Tell No One". "They just want to tell stories, they're fresh and original, and not old-fashioned," he said.
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