Although I have never fallen prey to the yoyos passing themselves off as "gurus," I kept hearing about Robert McKee's Story Structure seminar. I figured, "What the hell. What do I have to lose?" (The answer, $400 dollars.)

It was held at the auditorium of the Los Angeles Design Center. The first thing I noticed was the number of people. Quick multiplication determined that, even subtracting overhead, Robert McKee was making a shitpot of money for a weekend's work.

Although there was a fair number of writers (distinguished by bad haircuts and a tragic lack of fashion sense), the crowd seemed to include an alarmingly high percentage of of junior development executives.

This is what's known in the business as "buying a clue."

I must admit, McKee commanded the stage. His passionate delivery and sheer presence was captivating. I'm only glad he chose a reasonably benign subject to advocate rather than, say, genocide or world domination, or I'm sure the whole crowd would have been whipped into a murderous, goose-stepping frenzy by the close of the weekend.

Nevertheless, the grim reality was dreadful enough. Robert McKee was creating a whole generation of studio Structure-Nazis.

Like any great salesman (and if McKee is anything, he's a great salesman), he has a talent for weaving hard facts and complete bullshit into a tapestry of something that resembles "common sense." At its core, his mantra is that if you can master story structure (the only aspect of the craft that is quantifiable and, thus, can be objectively weighed, measured and analyzed), then you can write a great script, an exquisitely sinister form of tortured logic that goes something like this:

All masterpieces, from "Starry Night" to "Nude Descending a Staircase," have the following in common:

Each is painted on canvas stretched over hardwood;
The under-frames have a fixed range of dimensions and;
The canvas is stretched to a specified tension.
Ergo, you too can paint a masterpiece if:


You obtain the proper hardwood;
Cut the frame within the determined range of dimensions and
Do a competent job of stretching the canvas.
This is, of course, utter crap.


It is also, however, very seductive crap.

It eliminates pesky, subjective factors like talent and vision, distilling the process down to a simple matter of following a specific three act structure--an objective task easily imparted to any tight-assed, left-brained business school grad.

Throw in some jargon--beats, arcs, pay-off, spin, etc--and even the most robotic, clueless, creatively challenged twit can walk away from the seminar convinced that he or she actually knows what makes for a great screenplay. Worse, they walk away thinking they could write a great screenplay (if it wasn't for all those damn phonecalls and meetings and screenings and stuff).

Though this is a tragic rip-off for the writers in attendance, it is lethal for the industry at large.

The proliferation of such seminars has replaced the fostering of gut instinct on the part of studio execs. Rather than addressing stories from the standpoint of whether it works or not, they're concerned with whether you hit some arcane but all important beat that should be on page 77. Furthermore, said execs are armed with a strange language one can only decipher if he or she has attended the right seminar.

Everything McKee postulates seems, at first blush, true and practical. It is only upon closer analysis that his statements betray his utter ignorance of the creative process.

A small example from among many:

McKee states that, when one is confronted with a decision--location of a scene, for instance--that the first idea should be disregarded. So far so good. The first idea usually sucks. But then he goes on to insist that the writer should come up with at least a dozen different approaches, and then choose the best one.

Sounds good?

Okay. I'm looking for my car keys. I can't find them under the sofa. They're not behind the TV. Oh! Here they are! In my pocket. McKee, however, says I should look in another ten places. So I'll just forget I found them and keep looking until I find the "best" place, right?

And this is all assuming the writer (or anyone, for that matter) is capable of objectively choosing "the best" of anything. Sure, it's possible, but by its very nature, a creative decision is a subjective decision and, therefore, unquantifiable. Yet McKee reduces the most ephemeral, difficult part of the creative process--that is, making clear, original choices--into something akin to choosing an item from the menu at Burger King.

Given the sheer volume of creative decisions that must be made in the course of completing a screenplay, not only is this "pick the best of a dozen" approach a monumental waste of time, but an excellent formula for paralysis and writer's block.

Furthermore, I would venture to say that nobody--nobody--who has ever completed a work of art or fiction in the history of mankind has ever used McKee's methodology. "Uhm, gee. That's a pretty good cave-painting of a mammoth, Zog. What say you draw the tail in a dozen different places and see which one looks best."

In reality, the process of making a creative decision goes more like this:

Hmm. No. That sucks.
Hmm. No, not that either.
Ahh. There. That'll work. For now.

The last two words, "for now" are key. They facilitate improvement. Sometimes, the writer will go with a crappy line just to hold a place in the screenplay for a better one, which will be determined during the revision process.

Another technique he employs is repeatedly asking the audience to define very broad terms for which he has extremely narrow interpretations (believe me, you won't find them in any dictionary).

Short of being a mind-reader, it is impossible to guess the answer McKee has pre-formulated. After fielding a couple of guesses from the participants, he will then reveal his own "correct" definition. This faux-Socratic technique serves two functions: 1.) it gives the illusion of interaction and 2.) it firmly establishes Robert McKee as the only sentient life-form in the room.

Now, I'm not suggesting that McKee did not offer legitimate advice and methodology. He did. The problem is he delivered both, wheat and chaff, with the same overwhelming zeal and conviction.

The third day of the seminar was to be dedicated to the dissection of a film, illustrating--shot-by-shot, line-by-line--how each point of McKee's method applies to its creation. He indicated that he would be running CASABLANCA, and that it's 102 minute running time would be augmented by some six-and-a-half hours of his interjections.

As I had already paid a large fee, I had to consider some important questions at that point:

Is Robert McKee actually capable of determining what prompted and inspired Howard Koch, Casey Robinson and the Epstein brothers?

Can I conceivably learn anything of value from such a tedious exercise? Will I ever be able to watch and enjoy CASABLANCA again? The answer to the first two questions were "not likely." The answer to the third was self evident. I decided to pass.