In October I attended Robert McKee’s critically acclaimed screenwriting course.
It’s pretty expensive, $745 for three days. The seminar was packed. I roughly calculated he cleared about $100,000. The students were all highly motivated and ambitious writers, McKee was happy to boast that some of them had come from as far away as Brazil and Spain.
Before he started he was anxious to set down some housekeeping rules that he required us to follow.
He wouldn’t tolerate any talking or use of Black Berries or any cell phones, I was delighted, I had just forked out a bunch of money and didn’t want any annoying noises.
But then things took an odd course.
McKee explained he likes to curse and if you didn’t like it, you could “fuck off.”
He also explained that he has strong opinions on a whole range of issues not confined to writing and that we’d be getting to hear them. He explained that conservatives have famously thin skins, so if anyone didn’t like his politics they could “fuck off right now.” He helpfully added that he would give people their money back.
He did not address the issue of the travel expenses for those who had arrived from Spain and Brazil and might be having second thoughts.
He also explained that he would not engage in a debate on any of his unsolicited rants, we’d have to sit quietly and take it or we better ” fuck off right now.”( I list a sample of some of his pronouncements below.)
McKee is an odd character, he is very angry and it’s hard to understand why. 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. He can teach writing, he just can’t write himself and that makes him angry. I spoke to a number of attendees at the seminar who had been to his courses in the past and they all said he had improved immensely and was not as angry as he used to be.
Believe me, that’s hard to believe.
The course lasted 3 long days, I certainly felt as if he could have better marshaled himself and restricted himself to the actual teaching of story, the days could have been shorter, more productive and more pleasant. Shame he seems incapable of that.
Sample the wisdom of Robert McKee:
- Americans like simplicity, you talk like Obama they are turned off
- 1/3 of all women will suffer sexual abuse in their lives
- Enron…that’s why we have government, because there was no regulation, we have to have regulation because people are greedy
- 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
- American hospitals are filthy, 50,000 people a year die of strep, not in Scandinavia, hospitals here are about greed and incompetence
- Need to fear corporations, look what BP did
- The homophobia of the fucking republicans
- Business has no interest in capitalism, they want monopoly, who makes them compete? Government
- There isn’t enough food in the world for everyone
- We created the mess that is Africa… we built our lives on their poverty
- Everybody hates everybody in the US and everyone hates everyone in Europe, Europe is the most violent place ever
- No one in France drinks Perrier or Evian- they know its distilled municipal water
- Religion is rubbish
- America is not remarkable, it’s just like every other place
- Christians killed hundred of millions of people
- 42,000 factories closed during the 8 years of the Bush administration
- The gallant American South would have slavery back if they could
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